hello again all

just a quick question (proably not with a quick answer)
the other day i used partition magic on a win xp HD (Western Digital 250 GB) and after creating a new partition at the end of the HD and rebooting i get unmountable_boot_device
now normally i would look into this sort of error and try fix it, but i could not get online to post on here or "google" it ...... so i just reformatted
now that my pc is back up and running i wondered if anyone knew of a simple (or difficult) fix to this error as im sure it doesnt mean partition magic ruined my whole HD, is there just some sort of file that needs replacing or a repair thingy that might work?

cheers (in advance)

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HOOD

You can do a Repair XP to fix this but a good Ole Chkdsk should do just fine. This error happens when XP can't read a portion of the Hard Drive. CHKDSK should identify the bad sectors of the HD so you shouldn't have the problem again.

i didnt do a checkdisk when i got this erro, but have done one since and alll tests test ok - eg my hd does not have bad sectors,,,,,, once a HD has bad secotrs i thought they stayed "bad" forever? or does reformat clear this and repair everything?

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HOOD

I don't think this is a bad section problem although I pretty sure your right bad sections are hardware problems on the disk and once they go bad they stay bad. When you used partition magic did you use the wizard and just resize the drive? If not it may have recreated both partition or it could have just left the first partition inactive. The unmountable_boot_device is an error that windows was unable to find the boot information.

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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

i used the wizard i think, though i am not entirely sure. it all loked pretty straight forward, maybe it didnt set th c as active but im sure it wouldnt have been that simple. i have had soooo many errors lately that its getting confusing. am writing down a diary of everything i do do pc now to try figure things out

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HOOD

[quote=pcxgamer]I don't think this is a bad section problem although I pretty sure your right bad sections are hardware problems on the disk and once they go bad they stay bad.
OK... I guess i need to be a little more clear about what I'm saying. You need to run Chkdsk /r This will go over you're hard drive and identify bad sectors and RECOVER readable data is those bad sectors. You can go further with it and do a /f as well to make sure that all errors found are fixed. You are correct once bad ALWAYS bad, But the chkdsk will identify what sections are bad recover the information and relocate it to good sectors.

Hood- I think you should do this first (chkdsk /r /f) and if that doesn't work you should probably do a XP repair to get all the system files back in place that you lost as a result of your HD issues.

I'll try to be more clear about what I'm saying in the future. Sorry

Haven't heard back from you. Must be all those other posts you have going.
So what's the result of the Chkdsk? Looking at your current posts where you said that 100g of your HD is bad? I have to tell ya, GIVE UP on that HD. Go get a new one. In previous threads I think you mentioned you have a 250gb HD. You should probably look at getting maybe two smaller ones to accomodate your music collection so if one starts to go bad you have the other to pick up the slack. That way you can get all of your "Eggs" out of one basket.

wel i cant afford another 250gb HD as they are quite expensive, also i only have one ide cable available for HD as i do a lot of cd / dvd work, so i cant free up another cable - this is why i had one large 250 gb hd.

i have my music backed up on an external 2.5 inch hd, so its ok,..... im just waiting to get some software, spinright or hd renerator, to try repair the "brokeN" 100gb as this seems like a more economical option

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HOOD

High level formats (dos format) will not recover bad sectors, Programs like SpinRite do a low level one track at a time format witch can recover soft errors. You need to run SpinRite on level 5 to have it try to recover bad sectors. I have been useing SpinRite for over 10 years It use to work wonders back in the RRL 30 meg drive days. It will take a couple of days or more to run on a 250G drive. Also if the drive has bad sectors the time will double or more. You can suspend the test and start it back up later it will start back up where it was stoped at.

ahh thats just wot i anted to heard - fingers crossed it wil work magic for me then! is it a free program? available from ahywhere? can i run it if i dont want to format the drive - or will all data be lost? cheers m8

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HOOD