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    Fujitsu laptop hard drive format / fdisk problem

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by photogizmo, Feb 3, 2006.

  1. photogizmo

    photogizmo Newbie

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    Hello!
    I've recently purchased a used Fujitsu B-series laptop. The hard drive is empty, except for a "virtual" MS-Ramdrive partition on it (2MB) created under Windows 98.
    I am totally unable to format this drive, even when I took it out and plugged into another laptop (external USB) and yeah ... FDISK says there are no hard drives present.
    Anyone knows if this problem can be solved (I've seen multiple RAMDrive help pages but nothing seems to work).
    How do I "unlock" the hard drive to make it partitionable and formattable? Even outside of the laptop itself, the drive seems to be "protected" in some way and invisible to many standard HDD tools.
    On the laptop, if I boot from floppy into anything other than Windows 98, it does not even see the C hard drive at all!
    Should I install Norton System Works or something? I don't want to do a low-level format, either. :)
    Very cryptic.
    Thanks.
     
    photogizmo, Feb 3, 2006
    #1
  2. Shampoo

    Shampoo Notebook Deity

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    Could you give a little more information?

    Like were you using the harddrive as your main drive before?

    What OS was installed on it, was it the primary boot device, etc etc etc.
     
    Shampoo, Feb 5, 2006
    #2
  3. vassil_98

    vassil_98 Notebook Deity

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    Are you sure you cannot boot from a WindowsXP disk? If it can boot to win98 it will boot to XP if not else then as an upgrade from Win98 itself.
    Can you actually enter Win98? If yes, do try Partition Magic.
     
    vassil_98, Feb 6, 2006
    #3
  4. photogizmo

    photogizmo Newbie

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    Wow, guys, thanks!
    An update - this seems to be a *Fujitsu* problem. The laptop was purchased without any OS (Win 98 boot files, 5 or 6) - that's the catch! The laptop does not have: FDD and CD. I bought an external floppy.
    Now, I connected it to my other laptop through USB, partitioned and formatted. Everything is fine, when I put it into Fujitsu, the hard drive "is not partitioned", does not exist. (Note that BIOS perfectly recognizes it). Now I plugged the drive into my desktop, partitioned and made bootable ... Fujitsu says the drive is not partitioned and refuses to work with it.
    I inserted ANOTHER hard drive in it - Fujitsu says it's not partitioned (it is formatted and has some files on it!)
    It's just that Fujitsu does not recognize ANY drive, which is partitioned with Fdisk and/or outside. Should I use some magic Fujitsu utility to introduce the drive to the laptop? :)
    I know that this model ships with some hidden non-Windows partitions where all installation files are kept, but they are long gone, the drive has been reformatted a few times.
    Quite frustrating.
     
    photogizmo, Feb 6, 2006
    #4