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Partitioned external HD, now can't initialize

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Hi. I have Windows 7x64, and I tried repartitioning a functioning external 320G Maxtor HD for storage of True Image partition backups. When I created the new partitions, I was offered the choice of not assigning a drive letter, with no warning it might cause problems. I foolishly made this choice, thinking "the OS will assign drive letters as needs." Ha ha. Now the HD doesn't show in half my programs, and when I ran Disk Director again it shows the disk as uninitialized and unpartitioned. I have repeatedly tried initializing it, without success. I also tried GPartEd, and it gave me this error message

/dev/sdb contains GPT signatures [I selected MS-DOS, the default, NOT GPT when I partitioned and formatted the HD], indicating that it has a GPT table. However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table as it should. Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables. Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are not using an msdos partition table. Is this a GPT partition table?

Whether I click yes or no, it doesn't solve the problem.

Is there ANY way I can fix this error? Or is my HD trashed? (I do feel there should be a warning next to that choice in Disk Director.)

Thanks,

Stymied in Sacramento

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IF you use w7, I'd go ahead an partition as gpt rather than mbr. Only disadvantage of gpt layout is it can't be seen and read from/written to by xp-32bit.

IF you haven't don't anything mechanical to your disk; it's not trashed by layout or formatting. I you google "reinitialize gpt disk" you'll find lots of help on how to reinitialize, which is what I would do.

IF the hard disk can't be re-initialized or formatted, then there is likely some electromechanical probl with disk-- not do to initializing or formatting but just happened to show up when it did and I'd look for warranty replacement.

does the hard disk show up in w7 Disk Management? If so, try assigning a diff drive letter farther down the alpha -- although I suspec tthe prob is that you need to initialize again. I think you can try booting from the ati2012 bootcd as if going to do a full disk restore and initialize and set up the drive in ati -- I'm not sure if you can do this and not do the actual restore butyou could always delete what you don't want afterwards or reformat to quickly remove all content.

You could also use the Windows command line utlity Diskpart to clean the drive. Then using Windows Disk Management have Windows re-initialize, partition, and format the drive. You can choose to use either GPT or MBR. MBR is more compatible than GPT, but GPT is more reliable.

Scott,

Thanks for your suggestions! I'd prefer MBR, since my other computer is an older one with XP Pro. Disk Director says the external HD is "healthy," but I can't initialize it, reformat it, repartition it or write to it. I just tried Disk Management, and I can't initialize the HD.

James F,

Thanks for your suggestions as well! I tried Diskpart, selected the appropriate disk (disk 2, which showed up and which I recognized by the size), and tried to clean it. I got an error message, saying "the system cannot find the file specified."

Acronis customer,
Try attaching your drive to another computer and try running Diskpart again.