Solved Disk Initialization crashes Windows 7 to BSOD

[toolman59]

My system has three internal HDDs, I tried to install Linux Ubuntu 11.10 on the 500GB disk 1 and messed up.
When I open Disc Management it tells me that disk 1 is now 7GB and needs initialization, if I press OK the system crashes.
I tried the following from this post: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...l-not-initialize-disk-management-crashes.html

1. Diskpart and hit enter
2. List Disk and hit enter
3. Select Disk n where n is the number shown for your problem drive and hit enter
4. Create Partition Primary and hit enter
5. Format fs=ntfs quick and hit enter
6. Assign and hit enter
7. Exit and hit enter

At step 4 the system crashes to BSOD.

The details of Disk 1 are shown below in the screenshot.

I would be grateful for any suggestions to return Disk 1 to a normal NTFS 500GB disk, if that is still possible.

Windows 7 Ultimate, AMD FX 4_core, 8GB RAM, HDD Hitachi 500GB PATA on PCI Promise SCSI expansion board.

 

[TVeblen]

Hello toolman59. Welcome to the forum.

Could you post a screen shot of your Disk Management? I think we are going to need to see that to start.

 

[toolman59]

Hello TVeblen

Thank you for the reply, herewith Disk management screen shots

 

[TVeblen]

Mmm. Other then your stated problem I don't see anything unusual there.

My first suggestion is to download a copy of PartitionWizard (the bootable CD) and use that to clean, initialize, and format the drive. The program runs on Linux so it does not need your OS. So you could disconnect every drive except the problem one to avoid any issue regarding drive name/number differences.

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly to manage partition.

Hope that works for you.

 

[theog]

PCI Promise SCSI expansion board.

Have you installed the drivers for the card?

 

[toolman59]

I have tried the Partition Wizard, still no luck.

Disk 2 also connected to the PCI SCSI card and that is working OK so not a missing driver problem.

Looking at Disk 1 and 2 in Diskpart is that Disk 1 does not have the correct name and does not have an ID

Edited content of the Cmd window

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

Hipa`hh HDP705050GHA SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: 00000000

There are no volumes.

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

Hitachi HDT725032VLA SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: AA2CAA2C


Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 5 L Page File NTFS Partition 29 GB Healthy Pagefile
Volume 6 N D2_N Work NTFS Partition 155 GB Healthy

DISKPART>

 

[TVeblen]

It's beginning to sound like your drive died.

Try checking in the BIOS settings to see if the drive is recognized there.

And if possible, try the drive in another PC. See if it can be recognized on anther system.

EDIT: the drive may not show up as a hard drive in BIOS because it is on the PCI adapter. I've never used one so I don't know what you'll find. Best to try the drive on another computer.

 

[essenbe]

I agree with TVeblen, it looks like your disk is dead. In disk management is shows 7.01GB.

 

[Corazon]

toolman59: try the steps in your first post again - but between steps 3 and 4, add the following DiskPart commands:

• (step 3) select the disk
• type clean
• type rescan
• (step 4) create a primary partition

Does this work? If not, then maybe it's time to look into the drive's firmware settings, especially its reported LBA size and DCO (drive configuration overlay) settings.
For that, you'll probably need a DOS-only tool provided by the drive's manufacturer.

 

[toolman59]

Thanks everyone found the problem, loose connection on HDD to cable. It would have been better to have no connection at all.

Full drive capacity available as unallocated.

 

[Corazon]

Now who'd have thought of that! Glad you figured out the problem and solved it. Happy computing and well done

 

[TVeblen]

Very surprised.
Why was it reporting 7GB? Why not nothing at all?
Just connected enough to get something but not everything? Yikes!

Learn something new everyday we do.

 

[Corazon]

I think it's well possible that's exactly what happened, especially with an SCSI connection which uses many parallel data wires. If most of them made contact and some didn't - wham, corruption and false readouts.