Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

[piikea]

MBR in white isn't showing but perhaps there's not enough room on screen(?). Otherwise, seems right......

[dencorso]

MBR in white isn't showing but perhaps there's not enough room on screen(?). Otherwise, seems right......

Sure. The MBR is above the 1st entry, and there may be a partiton #9 unused, containing a handful of sectors. To know for sure, you have to use the arrow keys to move up and down.

So, now move the highlight up to partiton #2 and hit the letter "B". A number 1 will appear between "Pri" and "Windows FAT-32 LBA" and a red message below the partition entries will say "Please enter a row (in MBR) for this partition [default is 1]" (which is that number 1 that just appeared). So hit the "F2" key and you'll now see a green message saying "Partition table was saved to hard disk".

Now move the highlight to the MBR (hit the up arrow key until it appears), then hit "enter". A new highlight will appear in the details box (the bigger box to the right at the botton of the screen). This highlight will be over "Unknown IPL". So hit the space bar and it'll become either "Boot Manager" or "Standard IPL". If the former, hit the space bar again. If it already says "Standard IPL" after the first hit at the space bar, don't hit it again. We want it to say "Standard IPL", and hitting the space bar alternates between it and "Boot Menu", and back again. So, once it says "Standard IPL", hit "enter", then hit "F2", and you'll now see again a green message saying "Partition table was saved to hard disk".

Now please give me a screenshot with the MBR highlighted, and another one with the last partiton you can highlight (the logical #8 or a possible unused #9) highlighted, please.

Then dismiss RPM. Disconnect the external HDD. Wait ten seconds. Connect it again and check with RPM whether all remains as it was, and let me know, please.

[piikea]

Arrrrrrrgh......

MBR

partition 8 (there wasn't a 9)

Sadly NONE of the changes remain....I saw each step AND at the end the "saved to hard disk" messgae(s) indicating they were saved.......

Now, after dis- and re- connecting.....

[dencorso]

Wait. Before doing anything, reboot the system, then look at it again with RPM. Notice that the primary partition remains active, and we activated in the last step. Also the Standard IPL remains in place. Reboot. Then look. If the other partitons don't appear even so, look inside the HDD with Partiton Logic. Also verify how many letters does the windows explorer give it. Then report.

[piikea]

Wait. Before doing anything, reboot the system, then look at it again with RPM. Notice that the primary partition remains active, and we activated in the last step. Also the Standard IPL remains in place. Reboot. Then look. If the other partitions don't appear even so, look inside the HDD with Partition Logic.

RPM looked the same - the changes aren't there.

PL only showed the 1st Partition -

953,869Mb, 121601 cyls, 255 Heads, 63 secs/cyl, 512 bytes/sec

# partition file syst. cyl. size(Mb)

1 FAT32 (LBA) fat 0 - 4045 31,737 primary/active

empty space 4046 - 121,600 922,129

Also verify how many letters does the windows explorer give it. Then report.

Windows gave it 1 drive letter @ 31.2 GB

________________________________________

If RPM isn't "taking" - could I not just take the beg & ending cyl #'s as shown in the RPM screenshot above & input them into PL & see if they "take" w/ PL?

Edited October 2, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Yeah. Well... I've seen that happen with SATA disks before. Never with USB disks. So, here's my suggestion: Start over recreating the extended partiton and it's logical partitions. After creating each, disconnect, wait and reconnect. And check whether it stuck. Let's do it with RPM 2.44, this time. You do have a copy of it, don't you? I said you needed patience, before we started. On the brighter side, now you know exactly how to do it. And I remain here to help you.

[piikea]

Yeah. Well... I've seen that happen with SATA disks before. Never with USB disks. So, here's my suggestion: Start over recreating the extended partiton and it's logical partitions. After creating each, disconnect, wait and reconnect. And check whether it stuck. Let's do it with RPM 2.44, this time. You do have a copy of it, don't you? I said you needed patience, before we started. On the brighter side, now you know exactly how to do it. And I remain here to help you.

I don't have 2.44 but can try & get it. This whole endeavor could take quite awhile & it's 1:20 am so perhaps continue tomorrow? I will re-do it & see then report. Ok?

[dencorso]

Sure. I added a link for 2.44 in my previous post. Tomorrow is good enough. Good night!

[Ponch]

So, now move the highlight up to partiton #2 and hit the letter "B". A number 1 will appear between "Pri" and "Windows FAT-32 LBA" and a red message below the partition entries will say "Please enter a row (in MBR) for this partition [default is 1]" (which is that number 1 that just appeared). So hit the "F2" key and you'll now see a green message saying "Partition table was saved to hard disk".

Now move the highlight to the MBR (hit the up arrow key until it appears), then hit "enter". A new highlight will appear in the details box (the bigger box to the right at the botton of the screen). This highlight will be over "Unknown IPL". So hit the space bar and it'll become either "Boot Manager" or "Standard IPL". If the former, hit the space bar again. If it already says "Standard IPL" after the first hit at the space bar, don't hit it again. We want it to say "Standard IPL"

Unless you use "Boot Manager" and Ranish's special features in MBR, only partitions that receive a number (1 to 4) will be saved to the MBR. This is why here, only 1st partition is saved to MBR. You simply needed to assign number 2 to your 3rd row (2nd and Extended partition) for it to be saved along with all the logical partitions it contained. ... Case closed hopefully ?

[dencorso]

I think you've solved it, Ponch! Thanks a lot!

But then, the internal structure of the Extended LBA partition ought to be already there, in the disk, too.

@piikea: So, try the following: highlight partition #3, which is unused, and hit "enter". You'll see again a gray window open: in the Step 1 field use the down arrow to highlight Extended and hit "enter". Then hit "enter" again to accept the default size (which is the rest of the disk, don't worry about that, it is as it should be) present in Step 2. A red window will appear with "Save now" highlighted: hit "enter". That should leave you in the main screen of RPM again, with the MBR in white, partition #1 unused in blue with a size of 31 kB, partiton #2 in red (because we didn't format it), but with the right size and partition #3 in green, identified as Extended. Now, move the highlight back to partiton #3 (if it's not there already) and hit the left arrow key. A black box will open, just below the number "1" (which is on the line above) and you then type 2 in it, then hit "enter", then hit "F2" and you'll now see a green message saying "Partition table was saved to hard disk". Then dismiss RPM, unplug the extenal HDD, wait 10 seconds, replug it and check with RPM. Did all logical partitions reappear? If so, great. If not, confirm that at least the Extended LBA partition you just recreated has not disappeared. If it's still there, but the logical ones we created yesterday did not reappear, it's sad but just a matter of recreating them again too, and this time they'll persist. Now, if the Extended LBA partition you just recreated has disappeared, then things are not OK, and you should post about it, instead of going on recreating all the logical partitions, OK? Good luck!

[piikea]

I had to re-do them all because they weren't there. They seem to have "taken" this time. It still says Standard IPL. They aren't formatted so in Windows they assigned drive letters (4) but only displayed size for partition 1(31.2GB). I will hold off on the formatting in case there is anything yet to be done beforehand. OR, if it matters if I format with Windows, RPM or PL?

The bad news: I got several BSOD's during this process - hooking up the drive, then at last step of RPM-ing it sort of "froze" & had to reboot to continue, & also after disconnecting the drive in Windows & clicking restart got blue screen Windows error.

edit: Also 1 since then just trying to access 1 of my existing partitions on 1 of the internal HD's.

Edited October 3, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Great! Problem solved! You now have a perfectly standard partitioned external HDD.

Congratulations!

You can move on to formatting them. Use Windows Explorer to do it: highlight the correct logical drive, right-click on it and select format, and you'll be taken to the format window. Your 31 GiB partition is primary and active partition, so you may now make it bootable by copying to it the system files after the formatting process (there's a check box for this, entitled "Copy system files"). The logical partitions don't need system files. So all you need to do is format them. But formatting 300 GiB from scratch can take a long time so don't hold your breath while it proceeds. You cannot use the quick format option, because the disk was never formatted before.

As for the BSODs, my guess is the USBHUB20.SYS v. 4.90.3000.1 installed by USB20DRV is great for VIA chipsets but not so much for Intel chipsets, which is your case. I'd like to substitute it for the one present in NUSB 3.3, which is v. 5.0.2195.6891. You can extract it from the NUSB33 installer by opening it with 7-zip. But it's best to install it from true DOS. Can you boot from a diskette, or should we create a bootable CD for this purpose? Or you'd prefer to boot from a SD(HC) card or pendrive?

Now, if we don't solve the BSODs with this update, then I think we should start a new thread for this particular troubleshooting.

Then again, the formatting of the external HDD and the correction of the MBR of your HD1 (caused by RPM) do belong in this thread, for closure.

[piikea]

Formatted the drive in Windows (but didn't see the option for adding system files so didn't). Running a thorough Scandisk on them now which will take FOREVER.

I was able to "fix"/"solve" the HD1 MBR correction using a WinME startup floppy & fdisk /mbr which seems to have resolved it afaik.

I can boot w/ a floppy for substitution. Is 7-zip different than say winzip? Not familiar w/ it. Will have to wait since I won't be able to restart etc w/ Scandisk running for 300GB's at a time!

[dencorso]

Formatted the drive in Windows (but didn't see the option for adding system files so didn't).

Great! And it's OK... We can make it bootable later.

I was able to "fix"/"solve" the HD1 MBR correction using a WinME startup floppy & fdisk /mbr which seems to have resolved it afaik.

Yes. You've solved it completely and correctly. I was thinking of using RPM to change the MBR code to "Standard IPL", which is another way of doing it. But that's because I love RPM. What you did is the MS recommended way of doing it. So we have another problem solved. Congratulations!

Running a thorough Scandisk on them now which will take FOREVER.

Sure. Too bad it cannot be any faster. But it's good to do it at least once, so patience is required. And maybe going to the movies or getting a good one on TV.

I can boot w/ a floppy for substitution. Is 7-zip different than say winzip? Not familiar w/ it. Will have to wait since I won't be able to restart etc w/ Scandisk running for 300GB's at a time!

There's no hurry. It can wait. 7-zip does about everything WinZip does and then some. It's quite possible WinZip is enough for the task. Then again, 7-zip is a powerful freeware you ought to add to your toolbox, IMHO.

[piikea]

I can boot w/ a floppy for substitution. Is 7-zip different than say winzip? Not familiar w/ it. Will have to wait since I won't be able to restart etc w/ Scandisk running for 300GB's at a time!

There's no hurry. It can wait. 7-zip does about everything WinZip does and then some. It's quite possible WinZip is enough for the task. Then again, 7-zip is a powerful freeware you ought to add to your toolbox, IMHO.

Tried locating NUSB 3.3 to download & try & extract the driver or .sys file but haven't found it.

Edited October 4, 2010 by piikea