Corrupt Disk!!! Help!

Hi all
Some 3rd party partitioning tools (inc Freeware such as GPARTED) yield strange results on occasion AFTER W7 has been installed and you want to re-partition Disks.

I've had an instance of where everything is Kosher in W7 but on wanting to create another partition GPARTED says "Found Error in the Partition table -- Do you want to fix it". I've said YES and when I reboot W7 it still can access the disk OK but the Administrative Tools ==>Disk management from Control panel shows "Unknown Partition type" .

For re-partitioning now I'll backup the data say with ACRONIS and then using a VISTA PE disk re-create the partitions using the administrative tools fropm that Disk (It's basically a "Live Vista CD") and finally using the acronis program restore my data to the new partitions.

I think it's all something to do with the "System Partition" that W7 sometimes creates (not always) which causes the problems - especially if you want to Dual boot with XP.

Gparted works well *most* of the time -- I don't know enough about the Windows boot mechanism to know what's happening here but it does seem that Partition Management in W7 is a bit different from previous releases.

Incidentally if you are Dual Booting XP and W7 DO NOT USE THE OLD POWERQUEST (SYMANTEC) PARTITION MANAGER on the XP system to re-partition. This will probably break your W7 system (and hence your XP system as well).

Cheers
jimbo

When I first installed Win7 RC, I began having disk corruption errors.
Through trial and error I have discovered that Win7 does NOT like being installed on a partition that was created and/or formatted by a third-party utility, like Acronis Disk Director 10... which is what I used to create a new partition so I could dual-boot with Vista.
Only when I used Vista's Disk Management to delete the Win7 volume, then reformat it as a simple volume and re-install Win7, did everything start working right. Since then no corrupt disk errors!
Before the Vista format trick, I was getting all kinds of errors trying to install drivers, apps, ...even simply copying data to My Documents in Win7. Every time I ran the suggested ChkDsk, it never found any problems either!!
Once I reformatted with Vista, everything is working GREAT!

aart12 said:

When I first installed Win7 RC, I began having disk corruption errors.
Through trial and error I have discovered that Win7 does NOT like being installed on a partition that was created and/or formatted by a third-party utility, like Acronis Disk Director 10... which is what I used to create a new partition so I could dual-boot with Vista.
Only when I used Vista's Disk Management to delete the Win7 volume, then reformat it as a simple volume and re-install Win7, did everything start working right. Since then no corrupt disk errors!
Before the Vista format trick, I was getting all kinds of errors trying to install drivers, apps, ...even simply copying data to My Documents in Win7. Every time I ran the suggested ChkDsk, it never found any problems either!!
Once I reformatted with Vista, everything is working GREAT!

Win7's one feature that has been overlooked, especially users coming from XP that i can speak for, has been the improved or enhanced disk management, as it does report failing disks. I wanted to discount this as i seen this from a beta, kinda like a 10yr old telling me how the world spins and i'm going to believe him over my adolescent educated self. Now since with RC, i loaded up those hdds that were apparently bad, my results as of a weeks use of RC now is about 50%... as with beta it was reporting 2 different drives failing, now only one, which for coincidence reasons, i only hear of the ONE failing in this box here. I also know of a reported sata drive as having bad sectors, my first drive that had win7 installed on it... now with RC i chose to choose another sata drive to install this on that atleast reported by 7 was in tip top shape. So like i stated, i only now show the report for just the one failed drive, but again, instead of a 10 yr old kid telling me facts, its now a 15 yr old teenager that knows how the world works, so i am still not taking this as a "final" disk report from 7. Yes it found/had different results than other programs, pros and cons about the reports in the differences... so i dont know really who is telling me the truth.

jimbo45 said:

Incidentally if you are Dual Booting XP and W7 DO NOT USE THE OLD POWERQUEST (SYMANTEC) PARTITION MANAGER on the XP system to re-partition. This will probably break your W7 system (and hence your XP system as well).

Cheers
jimbo

Wont necessarily mess up the XP system boot, but it using it to format a partition for a 7 install does currupt the table somehow. This was how this thread all got started i believe, and how i found (after 3rd install) that this was the likely of all culprits, besides a failing drive.