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Yay my hard drive - Printable Version

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Yay my hard drive - Lord Caedus - 08-20-2014

So my OS killed itself. Attempted to reinstall my OS, and my HDD isnt formatted corectly, plus I personally cant format it for some reason, so I wont be around till I get my HDD reformatted. Once that happens I'll be back. Fortunately I had my accounts on a flash drive.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Bootsiuv - 08-20-2014

Are you using a Windows. Disk or a rescue disk. If it's a rescue disk unplug everything from the computer except the keyboard, monitor, and maybe mouse. This includes your broadband cable. If the disk dtects anything that wasn't there when u purchased.the computer, the rescue will fail.

If it's an actual Windows disk, it's almost certainly toast. There is no reason a Windows disk wouldn't reformat the drive when run from statup.

Remember to change ur start-up in BIOS to start off your cd-rom/dvd drive, and not your hard drive, or it won't boot from the disk at all.

If you already knew all this, sorru. Some don't.

Good luck.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Lord Caedus - 08-20-2014

According to my attempted install, the problem is that my HDD is formatted in MBT instead of GBU. I am using a standard Windows CD. As far as I can tell, I either need to have an external drive with the correct formatting on it, or I should be able to hook the drive up to a computer already running Windows and be able to format it there. Any advice would be appreciated.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Bootsiuv - 08-20-2014

That's MBR actually. It stands for Master Boot Record. It is an older format going back to DOS 3.1 days i.e. before u were alive. Windows XP is the last version able to utilize that format.

GPT (GUID partition table) is required for Windows Vista or later, or HDDs larger than 2.2 tb. If either of those apply then yes that's a problem.

I've never encountered this problem personally. Is this an old HDD?

After thinking about it..the only way i know of converting MBR to GPT requires an OS.

EDIT: After looking into it, u need to delete all partitions.

You'll need to download and burn a partition tool to a bootable disk to see and delete the partitions. U can find free ones online.

Then, put in your Windows disk and u should be able to reformat in GPT.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Luke. - 08-20-2014

You mean the accounts you never log? )))))))


RE: Yay my hard drive - Mímir - 08-20-2014

Whenever I mess up stuff like this, I use a pendrive-sized linux distribution to fix it. You can just boot up from the USB pen and use the tools provide with your chosen Linux distro to backup data and nuke the main hdd.


RE: Yay my hard drive - dirmaster0 - 08-20-2014

As long as your HD isnt showing up in RAW format youre good (if it does chances are its toast)


RE: Yay my hard drive - utrack - 08-20-2014

MBR is ok, check if you can force install. I have MBR on my system harddrive (Linux and Win8.1) and it works fine.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Lord Caedus - 08-20-2014

Fortunately I still have my old PC, so I should be able to download anything I need through there. Not sure on the actual age of the drive, I bought it just under a year ago, but who knows how long it was sitting in some warehouse in China.


RE: Yay my hard drive - Bootsiuv - 08-20-2014

(08-20-2014, 03:22 PM)utrack Wrote: MBR is ok, check if you can force install. I have MBR on my system harddrive (Linux and Win8.1) and it works fine.

Force installing Windows 8.1 appears possible. Your dvd is booting up in the wrong disk format, likely UEFI. You have to go into BIOS and change the boot mode from UEFI (or Legacy- IDE), to AHCI.


DISCLAIMER: Screwing with BIOS when you don't know what your doing could cause a whole range of other issues. You CAN essentially break your computer.

Be careful is all I can say. Go to Tom's Hardware and do some research first if you decide to start changing BIOS.

How much is HDD worth? If it's a small 7500 SATA, consider replacing it instead. 10500 SATA are pretty cheap these days. If it's some 4 tb SSD, fixing it is probably a better bet.

Remember, you don't know why your OS died. HDD going bad is possible. You've got some choices. Any one of them could bite u in the ass though. Be careful.