Hard drive problem

I've got a 40GB Samsung spinpoint hd which originally had xp on it. I made several ghost backups before I decided to try Linux (Ubuntu). I had Ubuntu working perfectly & decided to put XP back on the drive.

The ghost images appear to restore ok but i get 'Error loading operating system' when trying to boot. I know the ghost image backups are ok. XP appears to install ok but I get the same error when xp restarts.

I compared the disc info to a 30GB hd & it looks like there are some discepancies

Make                        Cylinders        Heads     Sectors

WD 30GB                        3649            255           63

Samsung 40GB                  77622             16           63

XP ghost images & XP install work ok on the WD 30GB drive so it looks like its the cylinder & heads dimensions that are causing the problem.

I've tried Fdisk, gdisk, Partition Magic & Acronis Disk Director but neither made any difference.

Is there any way I can recover the Samsung?

Have you tried Samsungs diagnostic application for hard drives?

You can download app either for a floppy or an .iso to burn to CD. If you run the 'quick' test - only takes a few moments - it will give you an idea if anything major is wrong.

A full test takes longer but gives more detail. Depending on the nature of the problem, it is possible to 'rescue' the disk using this tool.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/u...

In all honesty with the price of hard drives being so cheap, I would not spend too much time with a very small - in todays terms - 'iffy' hard drive.

You could get a new 250 GB drive for around £40.

I'd guess that the identity of the XP partition(s) on re-install may not pass the booting tests.
If so, you might be able to fudge the ID stuff, but I'm not experienced enough to know exactly how.

Yes, Samsung's tools found nothing wrong, but I've just fixed it

I went into the bios & set the hd detection from Auto to LBA. Restored a ghost image & rebooted successfully. Reset the detection back to Auto & its still ok.

The cylinders now read 4870, heads 255 & sectors 63

So it seems that the Linux install upsets the bios hd detection for some reason.

.... but I've just fixed it

That's even cheaper.

In reply to a post by Als:

I went into the bios & set the hd detection from Auto to LBA. Restored a ghost image & rebooted successfully. Reset the detection back to Auto & its still ok.
The cylinders now read 4870, heads 255 & sectors 63
So it seems that the Linux install upsets the bios hd detection for some reason.

Try this for size:
When Windows is responsible for creating the partition table in the initial HDD block, along with other bits there is a record of the HDD parameters.
Linux, on the other hand, seems to get all its HDD info from the BIOS directly.
This can lead to different views of things - and I think your case was one in point.

I didn't know this when carrying out a somewhat similar operation (and had problems), but came across it later with, unfortunately, no records which to compare the successful setup, and the unsuccessful.