Weird Problem!!!

[PleaseHelpMe]

I am experiencing some weirdness with partitioning a new disk with FDisk, which is driving me nuts, I hope you can help. The machine came with a single 10Gb disk formatted as two partitions: C: 2.1Gb FAT16 D: 7.9Gb FAT32 I have just bought a Maxtor 40Gb drive to install as a second disk. I installed the new disk as a slave and created a primary 29Gb partition and an extended partition, with two logical drives on the extended partition. When I realised that having a primary partition on the second disk was going to scramble my drive letters, I went to repartition the new disk and hit some problems: 1) The last logical drive on the new disk is invisible. Neither FDisk or the OS can see it. 2) More importantly, FDisk will not repartition this drive! If I run Fdisk from DOS mode or floppy with the drive installed, it dies immediately saying 'Error reading fixed disk'. I'm pretty sure the disk is OK. Fdisk /status runs OK (but only shows two logical drives), and in fact I can format and install Windows on the primary partition. Now I'm stuck with 10Gb of disk space inaccessible, and no way to repartition the drive.

I'm new here at the forums please help me .... thanks in advance :D

[agentLX]

Suggested steps to follow.....

1. Remove the Master Disk, concentrate on the New Disk.
2. Check the status of the New Disk with Fdisk drive status.
3. Repartition the New Disk by first deleting all its partition, primary, extended, logical...then proceed to partitioning the disk again. Be careful not to set an active partition on the New Disk
4. Format all the partitions made.
5. Return the Master Drive, check everything.

Suspected cause of trouble....
1. Only one active partition per system is required, maybe you had set the primary partition on the NEW DISK as active.

[PleaseHelpMe]

Thanks I'll try that :D

[PleaseHelpMe]

agentLX,

Thank you for your suggestion, I've successfully partitioned my HDD, it works. :)

[Sylvander]

For background information:
Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263044)
Get the latest version of fdisk [WinME includes the latest].

Also, if you formatted and partitioned using "MaxBlast" by Maxtor, be aware that it will automatically install "Dynamic Drive Overlay" if it detects that your BIOS is incapable of addressing the full capacity of the drive.
This DDO overcomes the addressing limitation, but you would need to be aware that it had been installed.

Are you seeing a blue DDO banner at startup?

[Paul Komski]

Be careful not to set an active partition on the New Disk
Each disk can have one active partition at all times. It only comes into the booting equation if that disk is set as the boot disk in the BIOS setup or by a boot manager.

Note however that creating more than one primary msdos partition per disk (active or not) can cause all sorts of problems and "invisibility".