HDD Partitions question.

[SE14man]

Bit confused here.

I mainly use my 1 TB SATA hard disks for storage and usually when i fromat them they, by default set to a basic partition. For some reason this drive ive just added which is a brand new 1TB has set itself to a dynamic (simple) partition and was w0ondering if theres any harm in this? Shall i stick with it or should i be having a Basic partition?

Thanks ppl.

[Bjs]

If you have never dealt with dynamic disk structure before I suggest reading this link from theeldergeek ... Basic is pre-allocated or defined space ... dynamic allows on the fly expansion ... so to speak.

Not as friendly to recover but tools exist now such as Easeus Partition Master.

[SE14man]

Thanks for your quick reply!

So what would you recommed personally?

Maybe sticking to Primary partition basic?

cheers m8.

[willmington]

If you have never dealt with dynamic disk structure before I suggest reading this link from theeldergeek ... Basic is pre-allocated or defined space ... dynamic allows on the fly expansion ... so to speak.

Not as friendly to recover but tools exist now such as Easeus Partition Master.

Interesting link.

No MBR which is not a good idea if problems occur.

OP, you can use either a Primary paritition or instead create an Extended partition and this in case you want to have several logical partitions. I usually, just create Extended partitions on my externals.

Good Luck

[SE14man]

Hi,

Why would having no MBR not be good if problems occur?

I have just had my drive fail It was so bad even disk manager didnt see it it took 'Get Data Back For NTFS' to finally see the hard drive. What can i do if i keep getting 'delayed write failed' messages coming up as little popup balloons? What action should be taken?

Thank you.

[redwudz]

What can i do if i keep getting 'delayed write failed' messages coming up as little popup balloons? What action should be taken?

The first thing I would probably do is change your data cable and check that both ends are plugged in firmly. 'Delayed write' is more often seen with USB drives and often means a poor connection or something is hogging the USB bus and cutting off the data flow temporarily.

You risk disc/data corruption if that happens often. It's not that common for SATA or PATA connected drives, though you might see it occasionally with eSATA drives.

[SE14man]

Hi there,

Thanks for your reponse!

Well what happened was i was watching something on the hard disk (funny tv series) and it started stopping for long amounts of time. So i then eventually managed to minimise it only to find a load of 'Delay Write Failed' balloon popups on the bottom right. I was actually downloading to the hard disk aswell at the times so this was probably why it said delayed write.

So what i did was immediately run chkdsk /f and it did fix a fair few problems.
Completely froze up the PC so i turned off the PC. Disconnected it form inside (It is a Sata 2 TB WD Hard disk Caviar Green)
Put it in the other coputer next to me using a different SATA cable only to find the drive was undetected by windows. So paniced and put it back into the original PC only to find that windows also did not detect it!
Tried computer management>disk management and even there it was not being seen.
The drive was spinning as i put my ear to it i could hear it running.
Anyway i have just used Get Data Back For NTFS and have chosen the 'FDisk For sudden partition Loss' option and in the view pane of 'Get Data Back For NTFS' i can see all of my hard disk therel ike all my files. Am re copying them back to my PC as i speak but was wondering if there is anything else i should have done and Should do? It came as quite a shock! I had it filled up so much that there was 23% space free. Windows still doesnt detect the hard disk which is bizarre and was wondering what i would do in order to get windows to detect it?

Thanks mate.

[willmington]

Also just confirm that that the HDD is detected by the bios (if you are using as internal drive).

Does this HDD have normal partitions?

[SE14man]

Hi there,
Unfortunately the drive isnt detected in the BIOS but then none are which doesnt make a great deal of sense as the computer still boots windows up lol.
It is just one big partition mate which is about 1.8 TB. I think it was a dynamic partition though i could be wrong. Is it ok to have 1 big partition as 1.8 TB?

Thanks very much

[Bjs]

If its ntfs format then yes, a single partition upto 16 terabytes ... although if one had one of these fail ... well things happen.

Your bios should have some settings related to sata / scsi boot devices.

With the error "delayed write failed" you need a program that can keep retrying to pull data from the drive a number of times before it decides to move on to the next ... only a few recovery programs are smart enough ... quite a few quit at the first sign of trouble.

A number of issues can cause the windows system not to recognize the drive even if the bios can detect it ... in your case Id say there was an issue where registry events failed to be written when you turned the frozen system off ... and swapping a dynamic disc to another system works but you need to create a special disk to be able to use and see the data on the other system.

As to what else you might do ... well as hard drives are so cheap you should invest in sets ... those wd green drives are at the low end and they have had some serious issues in past models ... which is why I use samsung's primarily in a mirrored array.

Whether you reformat that drive is up to you ... but don't put anything on it you cannot afford to lose ... that write error is a serious warning the drives failing.

[SE14man]

Thank you very much for your response.
In order to go with the mirroring option would i need certain software to do this and if so which would you recommend?
Am i right in thinking that mirroring the drives is similar to cloning but instead it basically updates the other drives at the same time (if data is copied or removed from the source drive?)
Also i was always told Western Digital were the best but thats probably changed now.. So Samsung you would recommend?
I have today bought a brand new 2 TB Western Digital but the black edition and was wondering what your thoughs were on that?

and swapping a dynamic disc to another system works but you need to create a special disk to be able to use and see the data on the other system.

How would i create the special disk?

Thanks very much for your help!

[Nelson37]

IMO the WD Caviar black drives are the best ones currently available.

The combination of the error msg and the drive not being recognized in two different PC's, with two different cables, is not a good sign. However your statement about no drives at all showing up in the BIOS throws this into question. There most certainly should be SOMETHING listed there.

I NEVER, EVER use dynamic partitions.

[willmington]

If the drive is not recognised by the bios then it is unlikely to be detected by the o/s (assuming windows).

Although the NTFS file system can handle enormous size, the limitation to my understanding and as far as normal volumes are concerned, is that the size of the volume will be limited by the MBR itself and as such the limit is 2TB (unless you convert to GPT).

I am guessing that your system has a boot drive and a data drive (the problematic one) is that correct?

Look again in the bios or on the POST screen when the pc boots.

Just for clarity windows disk management correctly detects the boot drive.

Nelson37 said:
I NEVER, EVER use dynamic partitions.

Seems too dangerous from my readings also.

As regards protecting data, you could either mirror or use an external back up drive for the data. This has the advantage that the data will be held away from the pc ie in case of say lighting strikes or other issues

[TBoneit]

For the next step after data recovery on that drive run the Western Digital Diagnostics on it before trying to use it again. It may be going bad.

The Bios will only show drives connected to the motherboard chip set controller.
If it is on a add on card or the motherboard has extra controllers for SATA or raid then the Bios won't show them direct. They may show when the add on card or extra controller bios runs. That is my suspicion of why the Bios does not show them.