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    holyhoney's Avatar
    holyhoney Posts: 4, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #1

    Apr 21, 2007, 03:57 PM
    Unable to partition or format hard drive
    I have a Toshiba MK6014MAP 6gig hard drive that I am unable to partition, reformate, fdisk I am unable to do anything with it

    I have tried fdisk through dos and a windows98 bootdisc, I have tried partition magic, also ultimate boot cd, just about anything you can think of to no avail.

    The newest message I get is "failure fixed disk 1"

    I am using a Gateway 2000 Solo Laptop which does not allow for the floppy and cd-rom to run at the same time (there is only one slot, so it is one or the other)

    I am able to get the laptop to boot using the windows XP 6 discs but this setup cancells once it needs to read the cd-rom, otherwise no other boot disk will work

    Also the bios is "Phoenix Bios Note Bios 4.0 setup 1985-96 - Version 7.44". As my knowledge in bios is very limited I am unsure if this is all correct as it seems to me that there is a couple of different things conflicting ontop of the hard drive problem

    Please help

    Lisa
    Curlyben's Avatar
    Curlyben Posts: 18,514, Reputation: 1860
    BossMan
     
    #2

    Apr 21, 2007, 04:01 PM
    OK what are you try to achieve here.
    I'm bemused that you are try to partition a 6Gb drive, seems a bit of a waste of time.
    What OS are you looking to install, as part of the XP install is partition and format ?
    Also you start by mentioning a Toshiba machine than go on to talk about a Gateway one. Which is it?
    holyhoney's Avatar
    holyhoney Posts: 4, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #3

    Apr 21, 2007, 04:09 PM
    Sorry if little confusing but daylight now here and I still no closer

    It is a Gateway laptop with a toshiba hard drive and all I am trying to do is re-install any operating system so that my young daughter may use it

    I was not trying to partition a 6 gig hard drive... that would make no sense, all I want to do is format the hard drive which it will not do until it has a dos partition which I cannot get any fdisk program to do
    itsjb5's Avatar
    itsjb5 Posts: 39, Reputation: 1
    Junior Member
     
    #4

    Apr 21, 2007, 04:51 PM
    Does it see the hard drive? Maybe set to slave and not master.
    holyhoney's Avatar
    holyhoney Posts: 4, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #5

    Apr 21, 2007, 05:15 PM
    When I boot up with a win98 boot disk in the floppy I get 2 msg's - 1st, failure fixed disk 1, press F1 to resume , F2 to setup... I press resume (F1) and it all seems to go fine until windows is due to start, then I get 2nd message saying that there is no partition on the hard drive and to use fdisk at the a: prompt... upon doing that I get a final message saying error reading disk

    If I use the 6 windows xp floppies I am able to boot all the way up until it needs to read the cd-rom... which it is unable to find due to the problem that this laptop does not allow for both floppy and cd-rom to plugged in at the same time

    To add to my woes, the cd-rom only works part of the time... well actually only once and I cannot remember what settings I changed to get it to work... yes I tell it to boot from the cd-rom but it just won't do it... someone said it mite be a memory problem?
    ScottGem's Avatar
    ScottGem Posts: 64,966, Reputation: 6056
    Computer Expert and Renaissance Man
     
    #6

    Apr 21, 2007, 06:29 PM
    Sounds to me like the drive is dead.
    holyhoney's Avatar
    holyhoney Posts: 4, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #7

    Apr 21, 2007, 06:36 PM
    Finally, I can lay it to rest... thank you... I really wanted to make sure as a new one will cost a little more than I have, but I have tried everything and read just about everything so I am feeling better about taking the hard drive on a long drive to the country hehehe

    But I will connect it to my PC first just to make sure

    Thank you for your help and time
    TheSavage's Avatar
    TheSavage Posts: 564, Reputation: 96
    Senior Member
     
    #8

    Apr 21, 2007, 06:48 PM
    Lol -- you could have connected to your desktop for reformat --install operating system also -- Savage
    lchabo_2001's Avatar
    lchabo_2001 Posts: 3, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #9

    May 17, 2007, 09:10 AM
    Look for the "load default values" key from the bios setup and proceed to do that. Then try to reboot. If that fails then I think the hard drive is truly damaged and cannot be used.
    Also try installing linux on it and if u get the same situation then you have to conclude that the disk cannot be used.

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