hey all, i just registered hoping someone can help my weird hard drive problem. well first of all this is the configuration :

p3 600 mhz laptop (hp omnibook)
no floppy drive , no cdrom drive, no option in bios for usb boot
hd 2.5" 6.4 gb ibm travelstar

as you can see theres nothing to boot from if the the hard drive's been wiped out. now to make my drive bootable + copy 98 or ME onto the drive i purchased a usb 2.5" laptop hard drive enclosure.

The enclosure works perfectly, i plugged it in my win98 laptop and proceeded to partition + format using fdisk. Then i made the primary drive bootable (format /s command) or the "copy system files" check in the format drive properties tab. after which i copied win98 files over for installation.

I then marked the primary partition active using one of my xp desktops.
unplugged the drive from the enclosure, installed it into the laptop, booted it the system booted (dos) then i ran the win98 setup program it completed the first stage of install (copying files), on reboot i get "invalid disk", the same thing happened trying to install nt4.0 wks i get a "cannot install bootloader" error.

im guessing there maybe a bad sector on my drives mbr or bootsector? well i need some help figuring this out appreciate any recommendations. thanks all in advance.

jakes

Welcome to PCHF

Have you thought about using a third party program to check your drive.. something like this: Click ?

hey thanks, i just checked out the site it states that the app can only run in msdos not in a windows environment thats a problem since my drive is in a usb enclosure.

jakes

Ok, I take it you have tried this:

1. Double-click on My Computer to open the My Computer window. 2. Select the disk that you want to diagnose and repair. 3. Choose Properties from the File menu. You should see the Properties window for the drive that you selected. 4. Choose the Tools tab. 5. Click the Check Now button under Error Checking Status. 6. Depending on your version of Windows, choose either "Thorough" or "Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors." 7. Click on Start.

If you have the money, then this is supposed to actually work: http://grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

What is the make and model number of the drive you think has the bad sectors?

hey thanks for help, but i figured out the problem, it seemed something to do with the usb enclosure! i got a second hd same brand (new 40gigs) installed it went through the process (making it bootable and all that) but i still had the same problem 98 couldint install a bootloader, so as a last ditch effort i hooked it up to another laptop running 98 used the sys command, and voila! it worked the system booted and 98 was up and running. the older hard drives is fine no bad sectors , so only possiblilty is that making it bootable from the usb enclosure had to cause some kinda conflict anyways. take care

jakes

You're welcome Jakes!
Glad to hear your problem has been fixed!
If you got any questions or problems in the future, feel free to post it in the forums!

Marked as fixed.

Bluefish