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Subject:
From:
Peter Wennersten <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 22 May 2003 14:44:10 +0200
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Hello List,

I'd be very grateful if someone could give me a few ideas as to the following:

When checking the properties for my c:\windows folder it reported several
thousands of files totalling 505 MB but taking up 710 MB space.
The same for check on d:\program files resulted in 530 MB and 830MB
respectively.
If I understand harddrives correctly this is a case of wasted cluster space
and my reaction was to try to reclaim it.
C: = FAT16 (size ca 2 GB) ,  D: = FAT32 (size ca 2 GB)

I downloaded a trial version of Partition Magic 8 from Powerquest that
would not carry out changes but I figured I would let me see if I could do
something about these clusters.

But, when starting the program (PM8) it reported the following:
"Partition Magic has detected an error 110 on the partition starting at
sector 63 on disk 1.
The length of the partition in the partition table is incorrect.
The CHS length is 4193217, the LBA length is 4192902, and the File System
length is 40193217. Partition Magic has determined that the length can be
changed to the correct value of 4193217. Would you like PM8 to carry out
this change?"

I answered "no" and saw a second message:

"Init failed: error 117. Partition's drive letter cannot be identified"

I then started writing this mail.

I knew this error 110 existed since about 6 months but has chosen not to do
anything about it since my system has been working fine and I didn't want
to go through the hassle of reinstalling everything. But now I am thinking
that maybe I should do something about it.

So, to the questions:
Can I trust Partitition Magic to correct the error without causing harm to
my system?
Or do I need to reformat and repartition my hard drive completely? What is
the procedure in that case?

Important:
I once let DriveImage correct a similar problem and later that day after
rebooting a few times I had a complete system failure when I was running
Norton Disk Doctor with memoryresident Antivirus protection active and
(stupidly) listening to a RealPlayer file from the harddrive. The system
just sounded wierd and locked with different colours on the screen and
after that I could not even boot into DOS anymore. "System not found" it
said when trying to boot. After lots of problems recovering files I then
proceeded to reinstall the system. I reformated and Fdisked (maybe in the
wrong order, I don't know which be done first) but I never repartitioned.
And lo and behold, trying to run DriveImage it again reported the same
error 110 but since I was soo tired of reinstalling etc I decided to try
and see if I could use the system as it was. And so far it has been fine to
my knowledge. For at least 6 months, and god knows that I download,
install, delete files on an almost daily basis, and regularly defragment my
harddrive or move around files from C to D or vice versa etc. So I thought
I could maybe live with this thing. But now second thoughts are coming into
mind again....

I would be very grateful if anyone could give me advice on this please!

Thanks!

Peter Wennersten

My system is an IBM Thinkpad 570 from 1999
Win98 Swedish, 2nd edition I think
PII 300, 64 RAM

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