Drive Geometry

[oracleslave]

IT support have told me that my Drive Geometry is set to Bit-Shift which is apparently inefficient for these types of drives and it should be set to LBA. Apparently this cannot be changed without reformatting.

Anyone know what this means in English and is the problem serious enough to warrant addressing?

[DaveB]

Depnds on the bios I think, most BIOS's should give you the option to change the geometry on the fly without reformatting.

Why do you need to change it?

[oracleslave]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Depnds on the bios I think, most BIOS's should give you the option to change the geometry on the fly without reformatting.

Why do you need to change it?

Laptop crashed, had blue screen of death, would no longer boot etc. I think it just had loads of corrupt/bad sectors so the support guy suggests a reformat and a change of the geometry.

[pmeswani]

Originally Posted by oracleslave

Laptop crashed, had blue screen of death, would no longer boot etc. I think it just had loads of corrupt/bad sectors so the support guy suggests a reformat and a change of the geometry.

I personally would suggest a new hard drive. Bad sectors has an annoying habbit of growing by numbers.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by oracleslave

Laptop crashed, had blue screen of death, would no longer boot etc. I think it just had loads of corrupt/bad sectors so the support guy suggests a reformat and a change of the geometry.

Probably needs a reformat anyway by the sound of it.

Otherwise boot from a windows CD, select the repair option and use chkdsk /f and see if that sorts it out. Can make it any worse by the sounds of things.

[oracleslave]

Thanks folks. I think I'll just get what data I can off it and stick a new harddrive in.

[DaveB]

Originally Posted by oracleslave

Thanks folks. I think I'll just get what data I can off it and stick a new harddrive in.

Do the chkdsk thing first, it takes a while but it should stabalise the drive long enough to make sure you can get everything off in one go.

[oracleslave]

Originally Posted by DaveB

Do the chkdsk thing first, it takes a while but it should stabalise the drive long enough to make sure you can get everything off in one go.

The support chap has already got all my data off it that he can. I think i'll just cut my losses and move on. What I don't get is why HP would have shipped the machine with a geometry that the support folk are telling me is invalid for the drive type?

[Moscow Mule]

Originally Posted by oracleslave

The support chap has already got all my data off it that he can. I think i'll just cut my losses and move on. What I don't get is why HP would have shipped the machine with a geometry that the support folk are telling me is invalid for the drive type?

Because HP are a bunch of useless c-nuts that couldn't put together a functioning laptop if they paid Dell to do it for them?

Their laptops have never been anything better than utter tulipe (IMO/E).

[oracleslave]

Originally Posted by Moscow Mule

Because HP are a bunch of useless c-nuts that couldn't put together a functioning laptop if they paid Dell to do it for them?

Their laptops have never been anything better than utter tulipe (IMO/E).

Actually I was quite happy with it until it went tits up. I take it your rant above is based on some not so good experiences?