Defrag - HD causes defrag to stop responding.

My System:
Win XP, Home
Wasp Motherboard
3.0GHZ 800MHz FSB P4 NORTHWOOD HYPER THREADING PROCESSOR
550W Power supply
Memory: 1024MB Memory Module
160GB SATA Hard Drive
200GB SATA Hard Drive
18 LCD Flat Panel Display Analog/Digital (18.1 viewable)
128MB NVIDIA GEFORCE4 TI4200 Graphics Card Drivers
DVD-RAM/-R/-RW/CDRW Recorder
TDK CD-RW: 52/24/48
SB Audigy (Twister) Sound Card w/IEEE 1394
Boston Acoustics BA7900 5.1 Speakers (5 + Boombox)
Multifunction PS2 Keyboard
Logitec USB Optical Mouse
Panasonic 3.5 Floppy ID Drive
Zip Drive
120Gig External Hard Drive (Smartdrive).

I recently installed a new SATA HD of 200Gig.
This gave me a HD description
of:
1st HD - C, D, E, F (Primary, Ext, Ext, Ext)
2nd HD - G, H ,I ,J (Ext, Ext, Ext, Ext)
K - Zip drive
L - DVD Combo
M - CDR

When i defrag my HD's, C, D, E, F work fine.
G will cause the defrag program to stop responding. When this happens, i kill
the job with task manager. After the hang and the task manager, I look at
the HD's available (open C and go up 1 level). and the G, H, I, and J drives
are missing. A re-boot brings them back tho. Then i rerun the defrag starting
with the G drive and it works (also for H, I, J).
I'm at a loss to figure this out since no error msgs are presented. Could this
be a paging (size 1536) problem (all i can think of), (i have 1 gig of memory)????

thanks,

 

First thing to do would be to re-check all the connections on the new HD. It shouldn't disappear like that. Second thing I would do is go to the HD manufacturer's website and see if they offer any diagnostic utilities you can download.

B

 

Connections was the first thing i looked at, all tight.

Went to seagate and they did have some utils, ran them but no help
for this problem.

thanks for the feedback,
savagcl

 

clif,
Was hoping for an easy fix. I don't think your page file has anything to do with it (and it shouldn't). Are your drives fomatted NTFS? Have you tried running chkdsk on your 2nd HD? Hopefully someone else will jump in here with some ideas. I'll keep chewin' on this one and will post back if I get anymore ideas.

B

 

B,

Thanks.
I tried DiskLite just on the chance.
While it did work and defrag all drives without problems, it would bomb
when i tried to close it (so i removed it).

Yes, all partitions are NTFS with 1 exception - Acronis (HD backup image
program) needs a small partition which it creates to hold interrim changes
to HD's). This small partition will also make Partition Magic report a bad
partition. This exception is on the J drive and shouldn't cause the defrag
program to bombout on drive G (J and G are same physical drive), should it??

thanks for the help,
savagcl
(Clif)

 

a shot in the dark...

clif,
DiskeeperLite is made by the same company that supplies the defrag in XP. I used Diskeeper for quite a while, but now use PerfectDisk and like it alot. They offer a 30 day evaluation version... maybe give it a try and see if there's any difference. You can find it HERE . Just follow the link for the trial version.

B

 

B,
thanks,i'll give it a test run.

savagcl

 

PerfectDisk hungup.
After defragging C, D, E, F, G, it got stuck on drive H.
When I did the Cntl-Alt-Del, i did get an error msg as:

Kernel_data_inpage_error
*** Stop: 0x0000007A (oXC03DDF64, 0XC000000E, 0XF77D9384, 0X14FB3860
*** atapi.sys - address F77D9384 base at F77CC000, date stamp 41107b4d

A reboot and i could defrag the remaining drives.

To recap: 2 physical hard drives (C and G), NTFS
1 primary partition (C), 7 logical partitions (G thru J)
1 FAT32 partition (J) for acronis.

Is it correct to have only 1 primary and 7 logical partitions for 2 hard drives??

thanks, B,
savagcl

 

From Windows Help Files, disc management:

 

Not sure i understand what that means except for unlimited logical partitions.

thanks for the feedback,
savagcl

 

Hi: I took it to mean that the place to put your logical partitions was inside of an extended partition and not on the primary. But, it is confusing and I could be wrong. (not the first time)

This quote came from "Best Practices" on the management console, disc management help files in Windows XP Home. Maybe you could read the whole article?

Take Care,

Martin

 

The *Primary* (extended) partition C, holds your OS and is bootable. The rest of your partitions D, E, F, and G, H, I and J are *Logical* partions. When you open Partition Magic and it shows all your partitions you should see...
A *primary* partition that is *active* and hold your OS (C), then another *primary* that holds your *logical* drives D, E, and F. Then for your 2nd HD a *primary* (extended) that holds the *logical* drives G, H, I, and J. Partition Magic also reserves a small *unallocated* space at the beginning of the second drive (mine is 7.8 MB) which is also *primary* but it is not assigned a drive letter. This, I believe, is in case somewhere down the road you want to make that disk bootable. I'm not sure why Partition Magic reports an error on your J partition. Does it give an error number? Does it offer to correct it?
I use TruImage also but I did not allow it to install the extra partition. I do all my image management myself. So I'm at a loss on that one, but it should not give you an error in Partition Magic. The partition being FAT32 should not cause the error message (because XP supports FAT32). It is used so that you can access it with a DOS bootdisk if your HD won't boot (so you can get to your image files). I hope this made sense... it can become very 'illogical'

B

 

That may be the problem. I show only 1 primary (C). None of the others have a
primary.

It may also be that the C,D,E,F was setup by Partition Magic and the others
was setup using windows disk management.....

Acronis - i also do my own backups but if i dont have the small fat32 partition,
then i dont get the F11 'restore msg' at bootup. Do you have the F11 msg?

I'll try running Partition Magic against G,H,I,J and see what that does. Might
have to create a primary on the 2nd drive (G).

Will post here of the results.

Thanks for the info
savagcl
(Clif)

 

I ran the partitioninfo tool and here is what it showed (only the error parts):

PartitionInfo shows:
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.

System PartSect # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect StartSect NumSects
======================================================================================================
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 1023 254 63 63 104,181,462
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 6484 254 63 63 104181462
0 1 00 1023 0 1 0F 1023 254 63 104,181,525 208,395,180
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 1 00 6485 0 1 0F 19456 254 63 104181525 208395180
104,181,525 0 00 1023 1 1 07 1023 254 63 104,181,588 30,603,762
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
104181525 0 00 6485 1 1 07 8389 254 63 104181588 30603762
104,181,525 1 00 1023 0 1 05 1023 254 63 134,785,350 52,532,550
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
104181525 1 00 8390 0 1 05 11659 254 63 134785350 52532550
134,785,350 0 00 1023 1 7 07 1023 254 63 134,785,419 52,532,481
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
134785350 0 00 8390 1 7 07 11659 254 63 134785419 52532481
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.
134,785,350 1 00 1023 0 1 05 1023 254 63 187,317,900 125,258,805
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
134785350 1 00 11660 0 1 05 19456 254 63 187317900 125258805
187,317,900 0 00 1023 1 7 07 1023 254 63 187,317,969 125,258,736
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
187317900 0 00 11660 1 7 07 19456 254 63 187317969 125258736
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.

I hope this makes sense to someone......... because, i'm lost.
I dont know if i can even run partition magic on drive c without losing my
data.

thanks, Mr. B
savagcl
(Clif)

 

I don't have the F11 option at startup. I made a bootable CD that runs TruImage off the CD. This works well except the drive letters on my external drives (USB) get mixed up, but I can still access my images and restore them if necessary. This is a known issue I figure they will straighten it out in the future. It's not a problem as long as you know it's going to happen and don't freak out because you can't find your image files.

B

 

Just as well, you cannot have the F11 without having the secure zone I guess.
Altho i dont see why you cant have the F11 without the secure zone...

I create my images onto an external (USB) HD. The one time i had to restore,
it worked well. Within a 1/2 hour i was back and ready to go.

I think if run Partition Magic against the C drive, i'll lose all of the data.
I sent an email to the PM support so will see what they say (eventually, maybe).

thanks,
savagcl

 

clif,
Does Partition Magic offer to correct those errors? I had a similar error once (don't remember the exact number) and PM wouldn't run until the error was corrected. It offered to fix the error and things were okay. Do you have the PM user guide (PDF)? Under 'Troubleshooting" is the list of error messages, and from there points to a solution (backup and re-partition). It is stated that PM support may be able help you correct errors with the info from the 'PartInfo' tool. So before doing anything drastic maybe you can hold on and see if they offer any kind of solution. When PowerQuest owned PartitionMagic their support was excellent. I'm not sure how it is now that Symantec owns PartitionMagic. Just before Christmas I bought Acronis' DiskDirector Suite and like it alot. I still have PartitionMagic 8, but I won't purchase another version when it becomes available (because of Symantec... it's a long story but I won't use their tools anymore). Acronis DiskDirector seems to offer everything that PM offered and works as well as PM.
If you don't have to much stuff to back up you may just want to go ahead and rebuild your partitions. It's not very complicated and the wizard will walk you through step by step. Post back with anymore problems (good news also accepted)

B

 

Sorry, i didnt answer that question before, getting old i guess.

PM does not offer to fix the problem. Just the error codes:
PartitionInfo shows:
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 7.

Not sure what the error means except that maybe using XP disk manager and
adding the new partitions, it changed the number from 1 to 7 - interesting
that, since i have 1 primary and 7 partitions. PM still thinks there is just 1.
So, maybe a conflict between PM and disk manager.... PM is showing the first
disk as 1 large partition (whole disk).

I'm not in a hurry since XP is still running (dont know how thats happening
either). I can wait for an answer from support then see what happens. I do
have a backup but i'm sure it will just restore the error. All my data is good
tho and everything except the partitioning info is good and can be restored
piece-meal if needed.

I have the PDF users guide but reading it (again) just generates more
questions. when i try to run PM, well, it runs, but reports disk1 as bad. If i
delete (or remove) the partition, is all the data gone also? Their not very clear
on that point.

Symantic has some horror stories to show. Had to use it at work, but never
will i have it or any of its products on my sys. I didnt know PM sold to
symantic.

Will have to look at acronis disk director.

Good news is, Perfect disk ran through all partitions without bombing.

Thanks for your help Mr. B, most would have given up long ago.

clif

 

No problem. Let me know how this winds up. I have a feeling you will probably wind up redoing your partitions. You'll have to save any important files, your images of the old partitions won't do you any good because they would restore the errors. Have a good evening (oops morning).

B

 

Mr. B,

Problem solved.

The problem was (apparently?) a dis-connection in communication between PM
and the XP disk manager.
I dumped PM and bought Acronis Disk Director, after installing it, no problem.
Never did get a response from PM (Symantec - why am i not surprised).

Now i just have to figure out how to get rid of the little 7.8xx MB partition that
PM used.

Thanks for the support,
savagcl