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General discussion

Hard Drive Problems

Feb 2, 2004 12:26AM PST

2 Days Ago on one of my systems when I turned on my computer my drive letters were reasigned. I had a partition drive with c drive and D drives assigened . I reformated my drive and then reinstalled a clone of my drive (Cloneing Drives with Nortons Software) Anyway when my system boots up it is very slow doing so in the boot process What has happened? Do I need to reformat and load all software over again ? and not use my Clone disk? If so how do i keep the drives from being reassigned.... I have Disk Partioning Software.... What Do you recommend?


Thanks

Boomer

Discussion is locked

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Re:Hard Drive Problems or maybe not. First up on the hit parade is "What OS?"
Feb 2, 2004 1:03AM PST

If you had mentioned Windows, many of those versions will disable DMA at the first hint of hard disk or CD/DVD problems.

Its up to you to always fit 80 conductor IDE cables on troublesome drives, set the jumpers to CS and then proceed to getting DMA turned back on.

What seems to confuse many is the Microsoft'ism where a control panel will show it enabled, but its really not. Microsoft shows that you still turn it off and back on to be sure at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

That article seems clear to me, but people seem to not be able to read that it really means to set it to PIO, OK and then go back in and set it to DMA. Let's not repeat this mistake?
Bob

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Re:Re:Hard Drive Problems or maybe not. First up on the hit parade is
Feb 3, 2004 4:26AM PST

I reviewed what you said and everything was okay ....do i still need to fdisk the drive and reformat and repartion ..or what...and how do i keep my drive letters from changing again....the OS is Windows XP Home Edition.


Thanks again
John