What do do with a bad partition?

I put a Seagate 500GB 7200 RPM drive in my Lenovo s10e netbook a couple years ago.

There are four partitions on the drive. Two of them are OS partitions, as I have the computer set up as dual boot, XP and Win 7.

Lately I have not been able to boot up in XP. It starts booting into XP (when I choose that from the boot menu), but at a certain point stops, no further messages, just won't boot any further.

In doing chkdsk /f /r on that partition (from win 7, also from various boot disks, such as msdart), a lot of bad clusters show up. I have it set up to repair them, yet each time I try many more show up. I tried various boot-time HDD utilities to fix it, even HDD Regenerator and Spinrite, which give messages that it is repaired, but bad sectors still show up, and it will still not boot into XP.

When I run chkdsk and other disk utilities on the other partitions however, they test fine, no bad sectors at all.

I know I probably should replace the HDD (how long is the warranty on Seagate drives, by the way?), but on the other hand, the computer still boots fine into Win7, it is an old netbook that I may not use much longer anyhow, etc.

I already used Easy BCD to remove the option of booting into XP.

That XP partition is still on the drive though, taking up more than 30 GB of space. I thought of removing the partition, putting a new one there, doing a full format of it, run HDD Regenerator on that blank partition, whatever other utilities, etc., see if that space can be fixed, then perhaps remove that blank partition and increase the size of one or more of the other partitions.

However, it may be a problem that I think that XP partition is the first one on the disk. In Disk Management from Windows 7, the XP partition appears first. I tried to delete it from there, no such option.

I booted into a Gparted disc, and deleted the XP partition from there,. Then when I tried booting into Win 7, the computer would not boot at all (without a boot disc), "no OS found". Using an msdart disc, I was able to get the computer to boot into Win7 again, but that seems to have completely restored the XP partition, even able to read the files on it from File Explorer in Win7.

Is it that the boot info for the whole drive is on that first partition, so deleting it will make it impossible to boot into any OS, even though Win7 is intact on another partition?

Any suggestions?

Are there any other ways to try to revive that XP partition so it works? (My guess--probably not, just asking?)

Otherwise, any way to reclaim that space (after testing it of course, to see if I can get rid of the bad sectors when it is blank)?

Or impossible to do either? Just use as is in Win7, and forget about that first screwed partition?

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

You had a Windows dual boot loader (with XP and 7) that was tied in with the disk's MBR; and you screwed it up by deleting the XP partition.

Your running "msdart disc" perhaps rebuilt a new boot loader?

1st do a clone backup to an external temp USB 2.5" 500GB HDD, booting from Acronis True Image CD. Basically something like choosing: > clone > manual > as is

Be SURE that you boot Acronis from the CD. I have zero experience with running Acronis from within Windows and have seen many user reviews on Amazon of many unhappy results.

Also be sure that you use an external device that permits you to put in and take out a 2.5" 500GB HDD. The super small external HDD units you can buy may not have normal SATA connectors, and even if it does the enclosure is likely to get destroyed by you when you take the 2.5" HDD out of it.

This assumes that all 4 partitions are primary partitions and are all NTFS (which they likely all are). Meaning Acronis True Image only works with partitions that are NTFS and/or FAT32/16.

Don't worry about the old HDD.

Clone it to a new HDD while you still can.

BTW deleting the XP partition was a dumb move, but then you now know that.

Hard to say if your comment of "but that seems to have completely restored the XP partition" is or isn't really true.

Odds are that trying to redo a fresh install of WinXP (trying for a dual boot with 7) may not work since XP is the older O/S.

Good luck with it.

 

When I wrote about the C partition having been restored, I don't mean back to normal. I still cannot boot to XP. But now I can boot to Win7 again, and in Win 7, I can look t the XP drive in File Explorer, and it looks normal, with all the files as before.

So is the boot information for the whole drive, with multiple OSes, always contained in the first partition? I guess that boot sector is not where the bad sectors are?

I also use Acronis from the CD. It will not backup that XP partition, error messages from the bad sectors. Or would "Clone drive work"? I did backup the other partitions. I also copied some files on the XP partitition to another drive, using File Explorer in Win7.

You are right that I should get another drive. But also there are other problems with this netbook, not likely to use it at all much longer, so probably won't. So just wondering how best to use it while I still can... (So far no bad sectors on the other partitions.)

 

Exactly.

Exactly.

Meaning that I (or others) could spend an hour, or more, writing out suggestions, and you'll likely turn around with "not likely to use it at all much longer" as your response.

Since you can still boot into Win7, copy what data is of value to you to another computer.

 

AFAIK every drive (HDD and SSD) has a single (and very small) "boot record".

If the boot record of a HDD is bad, you'll need professional help (read that as expensive) to recover data from the HDD.

Also see:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-setup-bootup-error-help-3.html#post9075884

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-setup-bootup-error-help-5.html#post9088733

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...ashes-my-laptop-error-report.html#post9098136

 

There are some sub-OS level command line options and repair utilities for fixing the MBR, but they are hit or miss depending on the extent of the damage.

And yeah, cost of lab work on drives is akin to simple repairs for a BMW.

 

Given the serious nature of the issue, your response (which I admittedly snipped to the essence) is way beyond too funny! LOL!!