Partitioning existing drive

PikeyPriest

PikeyPriest

PikeyPriest

Associate
Joined
21 Jun 2004
Posts
1,739
Ive had several problems with drives crashing and needing to be `fixed` by adding them to another PC and TBH its becoming a pain. The HD setup is as follows:

c:\ 500 gb windows/games/apps
d:\ 250 gb some older games (this drive was moved accross from old PC), MP3s photos (about 30 gb free)

Drive C is sATA and has these occasional times when it refuses to boot (not recognised properly by BIOS, maybe MBR problem) and has to fixed in another PC. Would is be possible to make a 10 gb partition on D: without loosing the existing data? Im just thinking i could then load up a version of XP with just apps for data recovery/MBR recovery to avoid the physical drive moving.

Would this work?
 
Yes, you can create a new partition on an existing working drive.

Use something like Partition Magic, of if you want to do it for free, download GParted LiveCD (or Clonezilla LiveCD if you want to add making a mirror image of a drive). Its an ISO file, so burn to a blank disc, boot to that disk, and use. Advisable to defrag the drive wou want to partition first.
 
Yes. If you have 10Gb or more space free on C: then you can make a partition. Use Partition Magic/GParted/Acronis' partitioning tool.

If its an MBR problem have you tried fixmbr or something?
 
To be honest im not really sure what the cause of the problem is. Without making any changes and only running chkdsk the PC booted in to XP fine. Then about an hour ago it locked and now everytime it reaches XP i can do less and less before it locks. This happened before and reformatting does work, but its a pain and when this last happened (7 months ago) it could happen again days to weeks later.

So far this has happened with 3 sata drives (all the windows drive - 250 gb WD new, 500 gb WD (the replacement as i thought the HD was broken), and old 80gb maxtor. I have also used 2 different sATA cables and 2 difference power lines from the PSU (450 or 500 watt liberty).

There were problems with the build at first (dodgy PSU/CDrom - both of which were swapped and have given no further problem), but nothing else seems to get effected apart from data on the this drive.

The PC is at stock with normal temps, 24 hr orthos and memtest stable and the problem is very intermittent. Its happened 8 times in the year ive had the PC. The only thing i can think of is an underlying motherboard fault or error, though im sure getting ASUS to sign off and give me a replacement with such an intermittent problem that cant be traced will be a nightmare!
 
Its working again, despite me not changing anything. I might change the sATA cable to one that didnt come with the MB to see if that improves things. Heard that the north/south bridge can be slightly unstable with heat though and it may be the scythe ninja isnt giving enough airflow accross the board (though the 120mm fans are going at 1.5k rpm and i would expect that to be sufficient).
 
Try booting into the BIOS and looking at the status page where you can see the fan speeds and cpu temp etc. See if the cpu temp or case temp is ridiculously high or not.

If they aren't then its unlikely its your fan not being effective enough.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom