Hey up all... I have an odd little problem with a 2.5" SATA hard drive i took out of my Sony Vaio lappy. Well the lappy died,biggest pile of you know what,EVER ! So i took out the HDD to see if it was working and to get the files off it. Plugged it into my PC and bingo,up it popped,worked a treat. All the files were saved. Here's where it gets funny. I thought to mi sen lets load and OS onto it make sure all is well. After trying XP,Vista,W7 and iAtkos MAC OSX I can NOT get any OS to load onto the bloody thing. Error after error freeze after freeze after freeze. The latest error I got was " Windows can not load,GPT partition Style" never heard of that one. So anybody got any idea whay a HDD would work connected to a PC but not allow a OS to be installed onto it.
Easy! Windows can't install on a GPT style partition. You need to set it as a MBR style partition. GPT is a newer spec to MBR (which is ancient) but need bioses that can support it for booting purposes. Current bioses don't, but the newer EFI type does... Anyways, make sure you have nothing you want (as it will be unrecoverable, at least easily). From the start meny, in the search bar type diskpart type the following: list disk select disk (here you put the disk number corresponding to the 2.5" drive. DO NOT select the wrong drive!) clean quit Then, from the Windows 7 install disk (I assume thats what you want), create the partition when the list of disks shows, do a quick format, and you should be fine then!
Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.... Just what i wanted to hear...An easy sollution...( Well sounds easy.)....Hope it works. As soon as i get chance i will give it a go. Thanks "burfadel".....Nice one
Well tried what ya said. All looked well.thennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.. I tested with W7. It went all way of copying files,installing files, all the way to installing updates.....mmmmmmmmmm. It froze. Waited about 15 mins then got bored and switched it off. Gunna have a try with XP,then a Vista disc and a different W7 disc. fingers crossed..
It could be you have some bad sectors on the disk. Repeat the cleaning process, but this time, instal of typing: clean Type: Clean all Making sure you definitely have the correct drive selected of course! What clean does is overwrite a tiny part of the hard drive partition info etc. Clean all (haven't used this function before) overwrites every bit on the hard drive, including all the partition info and not just part of it. I can imagine this would take quite a while! Help for this can be found by typing in diskpart: help clean Then, try installing Windows 7 on the computer again. Create the partition as you would normally, or partitions if you want to split the disk, and exit out of Windows setup, then return to diskpart. Type: select disk (the Sata 3.5" disk again) list partition (shows you the partitions on the drive. There should be a 100mb system partition created by the Windows 7 setup, and the normal partition) select partition 1 format (will take a little time) select partition 2 format (will take quite a long time, do not stop process. It may seem very excessively long!) and if you created more than one partition on the drive, repeat for each one. This should mark any bad sectors. You then should try Windows 7 setup again. Use an unmodified Windows 7 install, slipstreaming/intergrating is really a pointless excercise! If you have got all the Windows updates or using SoLor's pack, divide them into groups of no more than around 40 or so and run each group then reboot. After around 40 to 50, each update progressively takes longer to install. It won't freeze up, but will be ridiculously slow in the end. So, after installing an unmodified Windows 7 and running the updates, if you still have problems its most likely a faulty disk. This may seem obvious on the outset, but going by your original problem and the resultant outcome from the first post it sounds like this longer process should work. I reckon it was a combination of a faulty partition table original, some bad sectors, and (I'm assuming you used one) a modified Windows 7 setup disk having the updates integrated. Because there are so many, there would be more than 50 installing at once and therefore slow anyway, and if trying to write to bad sectors if it hadn't frozen may haver taken several days or more to complete!
Wow..... Firstly.....Thanks for taking you time to help me out here....Very much appreciated.... I will print your last post out and give it a good reading then give it a whirl...
Well lets add one more error to the list. Printed off your post,read it and followed it. Man it took two washing loads to get done to "CLEAN ALL"... Thats two hours in normal time. damn. Then it took a one hour treadmill run to "FORMAT" the bloody thing. But i felt good after. Then the install. All was looking good then it gets to the bit "installing updates". I did use a clean copy of W7. No drivers,no OEM folders. NO NOWT.. It got to that bit,hummed and arrred for a bit then spat at me " windows could not set the offline locale information. Error code 0x80FF0000" Never seen this before iether. Googled it and came up with a couple of culprits. My BIOS time is wrong..mmmmm not checked yet. Or My HDD is dead....huuuuuuuuuuuuuu.. I am leaning towards DEAD. But having a bit of trouble understanding why. Why it works on my PC but can not load an OS... Any way i wont trouble ya any more..... Where did i put my lump hammer.....
Prolly cause loading the OS involves formatting the entire drive/partition (where there may be bad sectors) and doesn't have the same error handling to deal with it. When connected to your PC did you run a chkdsk on it? Also try an ubuntu live CD, boot it up and select check disk for defects, if it finds anything (especially if SMART was tripped) then tbh you need a new drive. I just had a crappy seagate failed on me this week, literally a day after putting data back onto it after a rebuilt (OS on an SSD, Data on Seagate 500GB regular Sata HDD)
Not tried running "chkdsk"....But i will give it a go. I have not got an Ubuntu disc, might have to download me one and try that as well.. Cheers for this info..
Well here's a twist in my tale... Ubuntu 10.04 is installed on my 2.5" SATA drive. Infact i am using it right now. So i guess the drive is NOT dead...Hurrahhhhhh To be honest though I dont really like the look or feel of Ubuntu but it is the first time i have used it. I guess now i will have to try and install a Windows OS and maybe iatkos MAC maybe... Thanks for the ubuntu tip....
Wasn't a 7200.11 model was it? I'd be surprised if there were many of those still running without the firmware fix.
Well just incase you not bored of my troubles i have an update... I did get Linux ubuntu running then i tried again with Vista...No it didn't load... So i slung the drive back into the Sony Vaio lappy. Loaded Ubuntu onto the lappy. BINGO......The thing is working fine. Which makes me feel pretty good, i nearly had the thing on ebay,spares or repairs. To me this proves there is summet up with the hdd, what i dont know. I suppose i could buy a new 2.5" SATA hard drive and sling that in the Vaio but this involves spending money .. So i recon i will just keep the lappy on Linux and see how that goes for now.. I would like to thank you guys for for your help and advice...
Well i dont know why i didnt think of this earlier. After installing Ubuntu i realised the drive was ok. So at the install of Vista i made two partitions the first at 10 gig and the second at 150 gig. I installed vista onto the second partition and it worked a treat.\what ever is wrong with the drive is at the begining. Now vista is installd and my Sony Vaio is running again. it still has the silly faults of the mouse pointer not working and keys missing but at least its running... Thnaks once again...