Can anyone suggest utilities that could be helpful ?
What I need to do, is basically a fdisk followed by a quick format (LBA,FAT32), but without wiping the FAT or touching any precious data.
I put an old 34GB and a newer 80GB drive on the same IDE channel on an old BX board. Both drives are Maxtors. I have found out that while the BIOS was updated enough to handle the 34GB drive, it couldn't handle the 80GB IDE133 drive.
I have experienced this before, and upgrading the BIOS has always solved any such issues.
I have never tried these two particular drives together on the same channel. Now it seems the BIOS has f*cked both drives in exactly the same way.
The drives suddenly appear "virgin", that is, newly bought and ready for fdisk.
I have tried using fdisk on the 34GB drive, with the exact same settings as I originally used - a single partition. Now of course, windows want me to format it.
Instead I have looked at it with a file recovery tool - the files are there.
The problem is now the 80GB drive. There are 3 partitions - approximately "the rest"+32760MB+32760MB.
With trial and error, I'm pretty confident I can figure the exact sizes in less than 15 minutes.
So, how does one fix sectors 0-63 on a HD ?
What I need to do, is basically a fdisk followed by a quick format (LBA,FAT32), but without wiping the FAT or touching any precious data.
I put an old 34GB and a newer 80GB drive on the same IDE channel on an old BX board. Both drives are Maxtors. I have found out that while the BIOS was updated enough to handle the 34GB drive, it couldn't handle the 80GB IDE133 drive.
I have experienced this before, and upgrading the BIOS has always solved any such issues.
I have never tried these two particular drives together on the same channel. Now it seems the BIOS has f*cked both drives in exactly the same way.
The drives suddenly appear "virgin", that is, newly bought and ready for fdisk.
I have tried using fdisk on the 34GB drive, with the exact same settings as I originally used - a single partition. Now of course, windows want me to format it.
Instead I have looked at it with a file recovery tool - the files are there.
The problem is now the 80GB drive. There are 3 partitions - approximately "the rest"+32760MB+32760MB.
With trial and error, I'm pretty confident I can figure the exact sizes in less than 15 minutes.
So, how does one fix sectors 0-63 on a HD ?
