HDD failed, Looking for partitioner

Davius · Post by **Davius** » November 24th, 2009, 19:28

First off, 'ning bummers.

My WD raptor has decided to punch me in the knackers and fail to function,

Which leaves me with a slight dilemma as i wait for the new one, warranty has a 30 day turnround, at best and i dont want to buy another HDD when i new one is on the way.

I have another 500gb drive installed in my PC (sata) with over 300gb of space, currently formatted as 'primary' use, i'm pretty sure I can take some of that free space and assign it to as 'system' partition on which to install windows 7 keeping all of the old data on the disk and so i have a working pc again.

Only i cant remember the software that I used before to do this, I know it exists as I used some shareware to do it for the installation of the windows 7 RC, made a new partition to dual boot from and kept the old xp partition.

Helps plx, anyone know the name of it? or similar software to the same end? Done from Cpromt or bootable cd as I currently have no OS. Waaa.

Many Tanks

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » November 24th, 2009, 19:39

Well, I use Partition Magic when I need to fettle the drives.

Boots from cd.

amblin · Post by **amblin** » November 24th, 2009, 19:41

Davius · Post by **Davius** » November 24th, 2009, 19:43

buzzmong wrote:Well, I use Partition Magic when I need to fettle the drives.

Boots from cd.

would that be nortons? as i dont want to have to spend any money, yes i'm a pikey but $69.95 seems a little steep lol

Davius · Post by **Davius** » November 24th, 2009, 19:47

amblin wrote:There's also GParted, a linux jobby which runs from the CD. All these things can totally fuck your drive up, but I've used GParted a couple of times with some success.

Thats the jobby i used last time!!!! D-loading, results later!

Post by **deject** » November 24th, 2009, 20:12

I have also used GParted with success. It's not the easiest interface ever, but it works and it's free.

Davius · Post by **Davius** » November 24th, 2009, 20:32

Right now i'm at the stage i have g-parted but as i'm on a netbook i dont have a useable cd burner in the house, anyone up to speed with making usb bootable drives?

seems theres three options
- USB FDD
-USB ZIP
-USB CD-ROM

I followed the destructions Here but i'm having

Code: Select all

boot from cd:
      DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

when i do as the tutorial goes, i'll try leaving it as a zip see how i get on, unless anyone has any ideas?

Davius · Post by **Davius** » November 24th, 2009, 22:37

for anyone that is interested, above error was due to a dodgy usb pen drive and conflicts with a floppy drive (yes i have one of those) and a multi card reader, just yanked em out of the mobo andd it booted from pen drive (a working one) fine.

Partition was straight forward, w7 installed.

Then out of curiosity i plugged the raptor back into a sata port booted on the new os and managed to recover all wanted files woop. Now getting RMA'd ta berk wouldn't have known/bothered with that otherswise.

Including the full install of wow which was on there, thank fuck, downloading 17gb of patches would be enough to kill this hdd. :D

Cheers all