partition magic + EZ Drive = no HDD

[ghoulis]

Hello everybody and thanks in advance,

I had my Windows XP pro SP2 installed in HDD 1 which was divided in 3 partitions.

I tried to resize C to make it a little bigger in order to install a program using Partition Magic 8.

PM freed some space from the other partitions but when it tried to move it to C i got a message saying "cannot lock drive".

Ha! I thought i will use the bootable disks i've made with PM and it will do it on startup when c is not accessed by any program...Big,HUGE,ENORMOUS mistake.

After booting with the first disk i placed the second one with the program and after a while i received a message about error nr 89 and EZ drive installed but not running pressed OK got a second one with error nr 87 and when i tried to reboot my system it would get on the OS loader screen remain there for a while and then the computer would restart.It has done so every time i tried.

Got in the bios settings the hard disk was recognised as being there OK.

then i did a new installation on my SATA drive to try and recover my files which obviously I haven't backed up and cannot afford to lose.Surprise! Windows cannot see the hard disk or any of its partitions, partition magic can see it but cannot perform any action on it.Setup also cannot see it nor the recovery console can.

I cannot even format the disk so i could later try and retrieve some of its contents as a desperate solution.

If anyone has any idea I would really appreciate some help!

Edited November 23, 2005 by ghoulis

[scankurban]

Try again with acronis disk director.Its stable more than pm

[pmshah]

First of all make sure that the full capacity of your HDD is supported by the mb bios. Secondly never do resizing of the C drive from within windows.

I gave up on PM when I lost a partition with all the critical data on it. When ever I wish to resize a partition I generally use the facility provided by my boot & partition manger - BootIT Ng . I essentially use PQmagic only to convert and format a primary win32 format to EXT2 when some Linux systems won't install on unformatted partitions.

Edited November 27, 2005 by pmshah

[Daemonforce]

Get rid of EZ-Drive.

[Andromeda43]

Partition Magic is a technicians tool and should only be used by technicians who understand the program, what it does and how it does it and how to use it.

Reading these forums for the past few years I've read countless threads started by some user who's screwed up their HD with PM, (or similar software) because they didn't understand how to use it correctly.

I've been using PM for several years and to date (knocking on wood) I've not messed up one single HD.

PM will do almost anything you ask it to do. It only screws things up when you ask it to do the wrong thing, or the right things, but in the wrong sequence.

Doing the right steps in the right sequence provides the right results.....every time.

Get rid of EZ-Drive.

I heartily echo those sentiments.

Happy Holidays everyone,

Andromeda43

[spacesurfer]

I agree with Andromeda. I have been using Partition Magic for quite some time and it has not messed up on me yet. I've resized my OS partition without a problem.

To me, I don't think it's a technicians tool. Very simple to understand.

I also agree that you shouldn't use it from within Windows to resize the OS partition. Whenever I have tried to do it from within windows, it has warned me that it cannot lock the drive.

I ALWAYS BACKUP THE OS BEFORE I MAKE ANY CHANGES!!

Get the latest version from Symantec and make boot disks from it. Works great. I actually combined the two floppies into one (yes it all fits).

About your SATA problem: Windows installation does not natively support SATA drives. Therefore, you'll have to press F6 to install SATA drivers in order to install Windows XP.

Look for the SATA drivers provided with your BIOS.