Hard drive not recognized

I was going to mirror a drive off onto another one, but the Western Digital
software didn't recognize the source drive as having a valid partition to
copy from. The windows startup disk doesn't recognize it, but it recognizes
the second drive as "C". And Ramdisk is D. FDisk shows it as drive 1 but
doesn't give it a drive letter and under file system says "unknown".
However, the computer boots from it and into windows just fine. So at this
moment I'm copying everything to the second drive in Windows explorer. I
don't really care if the second drive boots or not, but I have done it
before and it did.
The source drive has GOBACK on it... I'm not too familiar with that. Could
that have anything to do with why FDSIK can't identify it? The drive is
only 9 gigs and I'm sure there's no overlay. If there was, it'd have been
EZ-Drive and the WD disk would have recognized it.
I wonder if an FDISK /mbr would be in order?

--
-- Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy. --

FDISK /MBR on a drive with an unrecognised partition is strongly not
recommended. The symptoms you describe are exactly like a custom
partitioning of some type, so I would assume it's GoBack. What does the
GoBack documentation say about boot from floppy or using a GoBack drive as a
second drive an another machine? Do they mention some special booting
procedure?
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message
...
I was going to mirror a drive off onto another one, but the Western Digital
software didn't recognize the source drive as having a valid partition to
copy from. The windows startup disk doesn't recognize it, but it
recognizes
the second drive as "C". And Ramdisk is D. FDisk shows it as drive 1 but
doesn't give it a drive letter and under file system says "unknown".
However, the computer boots from it and into windows just fine. So at this
moment I'm copying everything to the second drive in Windows explorer. I
don't really care if the second drive boots or not, but I have done it
before and it did.
The source drive has GOBACK on it... I'm not too familiar with that. Could
that have anything to do with why FDSIK can't identify it? The drive is
only 9 gigs and I'm sure there's no overlay. If there was, it'd have been
EZ-Drive and the WD disk would have recognized it.
I wonder if an FDISK /mbr would be in order?

Well, I read more than I cared to hear. Some pretty good horror stories,
Goback does indeed alter the master boot record. Symantec has
instructions on how to get rid of it. "To force GoBack to be removed from
the master boot record" is the title of one section... :-) What started
the whole thing was that this lady had tried to install Norton Antivirus
2005 and it wouldn't install. So she used Goback to go back to two or
three different "restore points". I finally brought the computer in to
work on it. Editing everything Norton/Symantec out of the registry and
removing all files and folders relating to Symantec did not help. Also,
Windows Update does not work, and I tried all the fixes for that to no
avail. I even did a reinstall of SE (an overinstall) which made no
difference at all with either problem. Apparently this version of Goback
was from before Symantec acquired it, because none of the Symantec
removal stuff affected it at all. I copied the whole drive to another
with Windows Explorer. After a sys c: and copying a good copy of
msdos.sys to it I can boot that one up. It does not have an altered boot
record, but it still won't let me install NAV or do Windows Updates. I'm
just going to wipe her original drive clean and do a clean install and
then retrieve her data from the mirrored drive. I told her when I took it
that it'd probably cost her $25-$30... :-) Ouch.

"Jeff Richards" wrote
FDISK /MBR on a drive with an unrecognised partition is strongly not
recommended. The symptoms you describe are exactly like a custom
partitioning of some type, so I would assume it's GoBack. What does
the GoBack documentation say about boot from floppy or using a GoBack
drive as a second drive an another machine? Do they mention some
special booting procedure?
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)

"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message
...
I was going to mirror a drive off onto another one, but the Western
Digital
software didn't recognize the source drive as having a valid
partition to copy from. The windows startup disk doesn't recognize
it, but it recognizes
the second drive as "C". And Ramdisk is D. FDisk shows it as drive 1
but doesn't give it a drive letter and under file system says
"unknown". However, the computer boots from it and into windows just
fine. So at this moment I'm copying everything to the second drive in
Windows explorer. I don't really care if the second drive boots or
not, but I have done it before and it did.
The source drive has GOBACK on it... I'm not too familiar with that.
Could that have anything to do with why FDSIK can't identify it? The
drive is only 9 gigs and I'm sure there's no overlay. If there was,
it'd have been EZ-Drive and the WD disk would have recognized it.
I wonder if an FDISK /mbr would be in order?





--
-- Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy. --

You've no doubt learned as much from the experience, but the conventional
wisdom is that you shouldn't touch a Windows 98 system that has a failed
Norton AV 2005 installation. Some people say the same for 2004. The
uninstaller provided on the Symantec www site might help, but I would guess
that when it's combined with something like GoBack the problems just
multiply. Ouch! indeed.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message
...
Well, I read more than I cared to hear. Some pretty good horror stories,
Goback does indeed alter the master boot record. Symantec has
instructions on how to get rid of it. "To force GoBack to be removed from
the master boot record" is the title of one section... :-) What started
the whole thing was that this lady had tried to install Norton Antivirus
2005 and it wouldn't install. So she used Goback to go back to two or
three different "restore points". I finally brought the computer in to
work on it. Editing everything Norton/Symantec out of the registry and
removing all files and folders relating to Symantec did not help. Also,
Windows Update does not work, and I tried all the fixes for that to no
avail. I even did a reinstall of SE (an overinstall) which made no
difference at all with either problem. Apparently this version of Goback
was from before Symantec acquired it, because none of the Symantec
removal stuff affected it at all. I copied the whole drive to another
with Windows Explorer. After a sys c: and copying a good copy of
msdos.sys to it I can boot that one up. It does not have an altered boot
record, but it still won't let me install NAV or do Windows Updates. I'm
just going to wipe her original drive clean and do a clean install and
then retrieve her data from the mirrored drive. I told her when I took it
that it'd probably cost her $25-$30... :-) Ouch.

"Jeff Richards" wrote
FDISK /MBR on a drive with an unrecognised partition is strongly not
recommended. The symptoms you describe are exactly like a custom
partitioning of some type, so I would assume it's GoBack. What does
the GoBack documentation say about boot from floppy or using a GoBack
drive as a second drive an another machine? Do they mention some
special booting procedure?
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)

"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message
...
I was going to mirror a drive off onto another one, but the Western
Digital
software didn't recognize the source drive as having a valid
partition to copy from. The windows startup disk doesn't recognize
it, but it recognizes
the second drive as "C". And Ramdisk is D. FDisk shows it as drive 1
but doesn't give it a drive letter and under file system says
"unknown". However, the computer boots from it and into windows just
fine. So at this moment I'm copying everything to the second drive in
Windows explorer. I don't really care if the second drive boots or
not, but I have done it before and it did.
The source drive has GOBACK on it... I'm not too familiar with that.
Could that have anything to do with why FDSIK can't identify it? The
drive is only 9 gigs and I'm sure there's no overlay. If there was,
it'd have been EZ-Drive and the WD disk would have recognized it.
I wonder if an FDISK /mbr would be in order?





--
-- Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy. --