Thinkpads Forum

Hi guys,

I've just upgraded to a Seagate ST910021A (100GB, 7200rpm) form Hitachi 60GB 7200rpm. I partitioned the new drive using Partition Magic (PM) 8.05 and used V2i Protector to clone the the system to the new drive. Everything went ok. The system is running just fine on Seagate. The only problem is that when I try to run PM I get this weird error:

"Disk1 (95393MB 12921c 240h 63s) appears to have partitions created using a differrent drive geometry (255h 63s). This serious preoblem can lead data loss. No partition manipulations should be made to this disk using this product or the operating system's products. You should back up the data on this disk, delete all partitions, create new partitions under the new drive geometr, and then restore your data using the backup"
"Init failed: error 117. Partition's drive letter cannot be identfied"

Then the program shuts itself. Interestingly, when I have an external usb HD connected, I get the same error, but the program starts. It shows the external HD normally, and can do manipulations on it. However the 100 gig drive shows up as "bad partition"

Another interesting thing, if I connect the 100 gig seagate to another system which has the same version of PM via USB, PM gives same kind of errors, but says that it can fix it. When It fixes, the program starts and works fine. However when I put the drive back in to the laptop, PM gives the same error and won't start.

Does anybody have any idea about what's going on here? It seems like PM, a 4 year old software, is not compatible with this new Seagate HD, but it was PM that created the partitions at the first place, and now it says it has different geometry...

Total wild a** guess, but perhaps this is a bug with 8.05, that's resolved with 9?

See if the information in this thread answers your question.

Mysterious Problem, cloning laptops

DKB:

Thanks ever so much for posting the link to the explanation about whats behind that problem.

I purchased a couple of new, never-used 160 gb Seagate discs a few months ago, and used Partition Magic to set them up. I then did a clean Windows install and encountered exactly the same problems as the original poster (above). After a few days of fooling around, I just gave up on Partition Magic entirely, reformatted the drives using Windows, and used the Windows Disk Management application (Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management) to create partitions instead. The problem went away.

It is fascinating to see that someone else encountered exactly the same thing - what a great resource this forum is.

I've found it easier to let an OS install (that clean install you mentioned) create partitions, then after the fact use an external tool to repartition (after a good, hearty, healthy backup and nice meal). This way I have a backup if things go screwy, and the OS has installed in a nest it made itself. Of course, some OS' you can tell to use the whole drive, or only use x amount of drive space for the primary partition.

Wow, what a shame, I'm the OP and I don't remember how I got around the problem. Even GomJabbar's link doesn't ring a bell. I guess, I just switched to Acronis DiskDirector and it worked for me.

As Dan Goodell explained in that other forum, I used my TP and my old Toshiba to do the operations and that caused all the problems. And now I'm getting skeptic about if I still have that inconsistancy in the head geometry and the number of heads... Acronis DiskDirector reports 240 heads, so hopefully it's ok...