Partitoin Magic messed up my hard drive... or part of it.

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Dreamcube017

New Member
Hey guiys. I know my other post was a little whiny and I'm sorry about that.

Well as for this one, I wanted to create a partition to test Windows 7 on. At the time, I didn't know Partition Magic didn't play very nice with Vista... or 7 for that matter, so I went ahead and ran it... BAD idea. I suddenly started getting these odd invalid partition table errors and it kept saying it couldn't make the partition. I then restarted the computer which was an even worse idea because then it took me to the grey screen that talked about repairing the OS. I didn't wanna do that. So instead I just booted into a tiny version of XP from a CD and pulled the files off that I wanted and started to reformat the drive. I then got an error saying it couldn't reformat it. It did erase all the files though.

I tried just installing windows 7, but the disc can't see the partition that I wanted to pick. This is because this is the one Partition Magic messed up. This wouldn't be a big deal except for that the partition is like 300 gigs and therefore most of my drive. The only other ones are a 14 gig one and a 30 meg one. I've tried a bunch of different programs such as KillDisk and HDDerases to erase the entire drive or format the partition, but nothing seems to work. The XP install disc won't run because it knows something is wrong with the drive. I just can't figure out what.

Now I can't really even use the computer (which I just got like a week ago by the way) because I can't install anything on it.

Do you have any ideas of what I could do? Thanks.

-DC17-
 

My Computer

System One

If you have the recovery discs from your system you can do a complete recovery. If not that, it sounds like you have plenty of operating sytem install discs. If you are satisfied for now to just put W7 on the entire disk then get a partition program and delete all your partitions. The W7 install should be able to create a partition from the free space and install to it. If that doesn't work, use a partition program that supports Vista NTFS, create a partition of type NTFS and mark it Active. Then install to it.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G 2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
If your 14 GB partition is viable you may be able to install Ubuntu
and use the built in partition utility Gparted to clean up the mess
caused by PartitionMagic.

It's worth trying.

For that matter 14 GB is probably big enough for a temporary
XP or Vista install. Then run a Windows based partition tool.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Compaq/SR5130NX
    CPU
    AMD AthlonTM 64x2 3800+
    Memory
    4 GB
    Graphics card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE
Firstly - Welcome to the forums,
Secondly,
You can use ACRONIS Partition Recovery to recover your partitions, I have used it to recover accidentally formatted drives, it should work with your problem also :)
Data partition or hard disk recovery software: recover lost or deleted partitions with our partition restore software

Dreamcube017 said:
Hey guiys. I know my other post was a little whiny and I'm sorry about that.

Well as for this one, I wanted to create a partition to test Windows 7 on. At the time, I didn't know Partition Magic didn't play very nice with Vista... or 7 for that matter, so I went ahead and ran it... BAD idea. I suddenly started getting these odd invalid partition table errors and it kept saying it couldn't make the partition. I then restarted the computer which was an even worse idea because then it took me to the grey screen that talked about repairing the OS. I didn't wanna do that. So instead I just booted into a tiny version of XP from a CD and pulled the files off that I wanted and started to reformat the drive. I then got an error saying it couldn't reformat it. It did erase all the files though.

I tried just installing windows 7, but the disc can't see the partition that I wanted to pick. This is because this is the one Partition Magic messed up. This wouldn't be a big deal except for that the partition is like 300 gigs and therefore most of my drive. The only other ones are a 14 gig one and a 30 meg one. I've tried a bunch of different programs such as KillDisk and HDDerases to erase the entire drive or format the partition, but nothing seems to work. The XP install disc won't run because it knows something is wrong with the drive. I just can't figure out what.

Now I can't really even use the computer (which I just got like a week ago by the way) because I can't install anything on it.

Do you have any ideas of what I could do? Thanks.

-DC17-
Click to expand...
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Home Built
    CPU
    AMD 6000+
    Motherboard
    ASUS M3N78-VM
    Memory
    Kingston 8GB
    Graphics card(s)
    NVIDIA 8800GT
    Sound Card
    VIA
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CIBOX 22" Flatpanel & Panasonic Viera 42" Plasma
    Screen Resolution
    1920 x 1080
    Hard Drives
    Maxtor 250GB Samsung 250GB Samsung 320GB
    PSU
    500W
    Case
    XCLIO
    Cooling
    Air / Fan
    Mouse
    Logitech MS Revolution
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Internet Speed
    10MB
Thanks for rjeplying.

I'm now using KillDisk to erase the partition so hopefully that'll work.

Then I'll just go and give 7 a 150 gig partition and give the rest back to the original Dell 64 bit Vista one (which I'll have to reinstall) but that won't be3 too bad if things go well.
 

My Computer

System One

I think I fixed it, however, my drive seems slightly SLIGHTLY smaller than before like before it was in the 300 Gigs and now it's like 298 which is kind of odd.

Also It happened again when I installed Windows 7. I don't know if it was because of a bad update in 7 or if it was still having to do with this. The same thing happened though although this time, I still had my system restores although they didn't work. I'm reinstalling Windows 7 again to see if it'll do it if I don't do the updates. In the log, it said that there was a patch that made windows not start. I couldn't find it though and I couldn't find any problems through the disc scan or anything. So now I'm reinstalling. If it happens again, I'm going to write Dell and tell them the hard drive's messed up.
 

My Computer

System One

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