Disk Partition Nightmare

Got a Systemax machine in for hdd problems.Error message says can't write to drive c.This problem is intermitent and windows 98 boots and runs OK most of the time.However if you boot on a floppy and run fdisk the only partition on the drive is non dos(all 19gig).If I use Partiton Commander to view the partitions it says the partition is Unix and shows no dos partition.There is no dual boot inviroment with Linux or Unix on this machine either.How can this be?anybody got any ideas?Virus maybe? none found in a system scan using Norton.

Sounds like drive overlay software is installed on the drive. What brand is the drive, and when you boot, before windows, does anything on the screen suggest drive overlay?

The Drive is a Maxtor 20.4 gig Has no drive overlay as far as we can tell.There is nothing in the boot sequence to suggest that there is either.We checked the disk with Micro2000 and it tells us there is no overlay just that the partition type is unknown,however most of the drive information matches a fat 32 partition,we checked the media discripter and it didn't match what was in the boot sector so we rebuilt the master boot record and now the disk is not accessable,this has got us stumpted.

I have seen instances where drives are partitioned with the manufacturer's software such as MaxBlast software. Occasionally, it will show this as a non dos partition and it will need a complete repartition/format/install to be correctly recognized as a valid fat partition. That partitioning software that you are using may just not know what else to call it and labels it as a Linux partition. If you can get your hands on Partition Magic Pro, I would suggest doing so. I have had a few (mind you not many) partitions that show as not valid dos partitions that I have successfully converted to a Fat32 partition without losing any information. But, before doing anything BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.

Well we were able to hook the drive up to one of our Win2000 machines and it could read the drive so we copied all the important data and did an fdisk remove non dos partition and then created a primary dos partion,formated,and the drive seems to work ok.Still not sure what was up with it tho.Thanks for the input.

Glad to hear that you got it fixed.

I wonder if it would have been ok to just try to change the partition using a non-destructive partition program like PM7?

Oh well I guess i have to wait for a SysteMax to come to my bench.

In my experience, an error where the hard drive can't be written to is indicative of imminent drive failure. Often it's a circuitboard problem, dry solder joint or corroded power connector.
In general I will recommend hard drive replacement, although it sounds like you have the problem sorted now.