From: "Al Thompson" <[log in to unmask]>
> Thanks Rick, (and Randy) but this one won't let me make a bootable disk
unless I buy it.

Put it on the "old pentium" (below) and run it against the drive there(???)

> I ran Maxtor's PowerMax 4.09 and it reports both drives as "failing".

Is S.M.A.R.T. reporting "ON" in the BIOS?  I recently did a data recovery
on a Maxtor (circa 2002 -- 6L080L4) that was reporting S.M.A.R.T. errors
and the BIOS suggested replacement...

> As they are both pretty new drives I doubt these results.

I sent back a Maxtor drive that I was SURE was good because
their utility said to and they gave me a free new drive...

> However, although FDISK lets me create pri-dos, ext-dos and logical
partitions,
> they all disappearupon reboot - before I can format them.
> I'm going to try one of the drives in my old pentium - if I can partition
it there, perhaps
> this unit's bios is messed up?

I use Acronis PartitionExpert for this sort of thing and switch partition
sizes around all the time, WITH and with-out data on them...
I don't do this on my "production" machine though...  (I'm only a little
crazy...)

> What fools me the most is that the boot drive was fully operational, and I
wasn't partitioning
> it, so what could I have done to mess up the mbr?

Are you sure the drive is Virus free?  I bought a drive on EBay once
that the guy tested and formatted and thought was perfectly clean,
but when hooked into my system I was instantly warned...  (Turns out he
tested them in a system by themselves with no AV, or other drives
attached...)

> Even with Maxtor's extensive database, there's little about this kind of
problem.

It is an "odd-ball" type of problem...

> I've partitioned several multiple-drive systems and have never seen
anything like
this - I'm really at a loss here.

I wish you well...                          Rick Glazier

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