1 (edited by kyo7763 2011-01-13 07:24:16)

Topic: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

I initially would like to start this thread off with a couple of acknowledgments. First off I have done an enormous amount of searching(by my standards..) for how to fix this problem until I eventually stumbled upon, of course, the forums of the program I was using: GParted. Upon my long search I came across this particular thread:
http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=13277
To be clear, there are some similarities, but moreover, lots of confusions.. So if it's okay.. I'll start with a background story of the day..

I was initially planning to split my Terabyte drive to 900 and roughly 100 gigs. I was then going to take a windows 7 installer from my 900 gig XP profile, run it, and install the windows 7 on my 100 gig partition to be able to duel boot. The plan was going well, I came across GParted after backing up all my files and was well on my way to partitioning my drives. To be succinct I ended up splitting my drive into:

                          Size             used          unused      flags
/dev/sda1 ntsf   831.9GiB     185.52GiB  646.37GiB  boot
/dev/sda2 ntsf   97.65GiB      67.5MiB(?) 97.59GiB
The above became my partitioned drive (sda2 that is)

This is what is directly shown from my flash drive that I mounted GParted onto, and which I am booting from.
After the partition I was happy and immeditely exited and restarted. However, upon restart, like the previous user, I encountered the
A Disk read Error Occurrred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
And of course, this being the error, restarting did not fix the problem!

Before I came across this website I attempted
/FIXBOOT
/FIXMBR
/CHKDSK /R /P
Through my windows XP cd in a frantic attempt to fix the problem.
-I also noted on some sites setting unallocated memory may have fixed the problem I first tried 10MiB as I saw that was most noted in the previous thread, however, other people on other sites said they had set aside 2GiB and it worked fine as well. So I eventually ended up with
                       Size
Unallocated    1.96GiB

So clarifying, unlike the previous post, the two partitions were done perfectly and there was not an extra amount of memory set aside initially, I'm not quite sure if setting that extra unallocated memory was a bad idea now..However, I don't want to continue with the solution given to the other user in case I need to do something different.

As for the solution I think I need a little more help or in depth walk through...Unfortunately, I'm only 18 and all of my Bios/PC knowledge has very sadly come through various failures and struggles I had to learn on my own...Sadly, this kind of thing happens to me quite often and this time I'm completely distraught at the fact that something I was preparing for for quite some time may be missed because of this problem. However, I did see the previous thread and the high amount of solved threads here and was hoping I would be able to get enough help to restore my larger partition, and continue my plan to duel boot with windows 7 because of the seemingly great support here!

Any and all help at this point is greatly appreciated... I was looking forward to a fully operational duel booting PC by Monday but at this rate I just want my old, large partitioned drive to work again..(I have ordered extra 4 pin connectors as I actually have an extra hard drive in my computer that is not being used.. I could easily install Windows 7 on there from my larger partition once I get this problem fixed..)

-I'm sorry for the length of this, and maybe write up ability because of age.. but I'm completely frustrated with this problem and I don't understand why this kind of thing always happens to me, or really even where to go from here other than this forum.

I sincerely thank you for reading!
-Luke

( Awake now and ready to work on this problem whenever help may arise! )


edit: So now I had a friend attempt to help me, and have deleted the 100gig as well as the small 2gig partition and restored it to the main 900gig partition. So now my drives look like:

                           size    used    unused
dev/sda1  ntfs 931.51 185.53  745.98      boot
unallocated      4.71MiB

However, the problem is still here and I still need help.
edit2: still monitoring this thread for 2 days now desperately awaiting help as I cannot use my desktop computer at all... sad

2

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

In your mail post you mentioned that you have a complete backup of your system.  This is good since you should be able to restore to your original working system prior to resizing your partitions.  This is an option you might wish to pursue if that is what you desire.

Otherwise, boot into GParted and select the partition.  Then choose "Partition --> Information" and post what you see in this window.

3 (edited by kyo7763 2011-01-11 22:23:26)

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

Thanks for the reply gedakc! I'm really getting worried about my computer being down. I went ahead and went to the Information from my partition and got:

File system: ntfs
Size: 931.51GiB
Used: 185.53GiB (20%)
Unused: 745.98GiB (80%)
Flags: Boot

Path: /dev/sda1
status: Not Mounted
Label:
UUID: 46CCA798CCA78133

First Sector: 63
Last Sector: 1953515519
Total Sectors: 1953515457

I hope we can resolve the problem soon! Thanks for the help smile

And yes, I decided I just want to get my Windows XP working again and not mess with partitioning etc. This situation really has frustrated me.
edit: Does it by chance have to do with the Status: Not Mounted? Sounds wrong haha.

4

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

The information you mention in post #3 indicates that the NTFS file system appears to be okay.   Hence the problem is likely in the Windows boot area.

You mentioned that you tried the Windows XP disk and some recovery commands.  Would you be able to retry the fixmbr command?

5 (edited by kyo7763 2011-01-12 04:25:46)

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

gedakc wrote:

The information you mention in post #3 indicates that the NTFS file system appears to be okay.   Hence the problem is likely in the Windows boot area.

You mentioned that you tried the Windows XP disk and some recovery commands.  Would you be able to retry the fixmbr command?


Attempting now, once again thank you for the help smile!

edit: No, fixmbr did not fix the problem.
Does this imply I'll have to reformat? Or is there another way to fix this problem/access my current files. While I /did/ back up most important files there are some other documents/songs that I had that were not saved and reformatting would have these files erased.

As I noted above I have 4-pin connectors on the way so I can attach my old HDD. Would it be possible to install XP on the old HDD, access the files(Copy/move), mount and run windows 7 and install it on the terabyte drive?
I just don't want to reformat my drive and lose some extra documents, and moreover, I'm scared the problem will persist even if I reformat.

6

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

You should be able to mount the NTFS partition from within GNU/Linux.  Then you can copy your files to another location for safe keeping.

To mount /dev/sda1 on /mnt/myntfs use the following steps:

1)  sudo mkdir /mnt/myntfs

2)  sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/myntfs

7 (edited by kyo7763 2011-01-13 07:26:46)

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

Thank you again, gedakc.
I'll be mounting, saving, and then reformatting at around 8PM EST so I'll be sure to post the results. I'm really hoping a simple reformat solves the problem!


reformating now

And XP is starting up fine.... I don't understand this at all! Windows sucks so much!..

So I'm just going to install XP so I can mount and run my windows 7. After that, this ordeal will be finished and I'll just be reinstalling things..

Hopefully all will work from there.

Thank you for your continual help gedakc, and your knowing sense of knowing it was indeed XP!

edit again: I would like to note, though, that i did actually try to repair XP about 5 different times in a couple of different ways through the installation CD and none of them worked; yet a full wipe did. I really don't understand why Windows is so unreliable for me, but hopefully once I manage to get windows 7 installed everything will be fine for another couple of years~..

ㅎㅎ ㅈㅈ ^^ Thank you!

8

Re: [Solved]Error Shrinking XP Partition - A Disk Error Occurred

'Glad to hear that you were able to work through this problem.  smile