Reformating Problem

I just installed a new hard drive to repalce my old one. I fdisked the new drive and its set to active. Im getting the error "Invalid Media Type Reading Drive C" whenever i try to touch the c drive. I know this is a common occurence since i Fdisked it but have not formatted it yet. But when i go to format it from the A:\> prompt by sayin A:\>Format c: im getting the exact same error. Its a windows 98 system disk. Any ideas? Ive been hearing that the problem is just that it hasnt been formatted but if i cant format it for the same reason then im kinda screwed...

Sounds like you forgot to include <partition.h> and when linking to "fdisk.lib".

:eek:

> Sounds like you forgot to include <partition.h> and when linking to "fdisk.lib".
Excellent work. :)

OP:
Put this in general discussion.

yeah i was thinking the same? wut the did this have ot do w/ c++. a mod must move this to general

> wut the did this have ot do w/ c++.
Do you mean, "What did this thread have to do with C++?" ...?
If that's what you mean, unless otherwise informed, in my eyes, nothing at all.

> a mod must move this to general
Nah. The OP can delete his own thread, and then retype everything in GD as a lesson.

More than likely this thread is long gone along with the OP.

Did you tell your BIOS about the new hard disk before you tried to fdisk it?

Or at least have a BIOS which autodetects hard disks, and is set to "auto".

hahahaha nice one unknown person.

Original Poster = OP

Salem's right. Sounds like a hardware setup problem. You need to go into bios setup. With luck just enterring setup might trigger autodetect.

It is auto-detecting it you guys :p
Read what he wrote... He was able to fdisk it. If it wasn't auto-detecting it, fdisk would have said "No fixed disk found" or something to that extent.

I recently had the same problem about a week ago. Really odd. I would fdisk it, it would make it through 100% no errors, but it would show the sytem type as "UNKNOWN". I ignored that fact, rebooted it, tried to format, and I got the whole "Invalid Media Type Reading Drive C" error. So, I tried a different boot disk (I carry two win ME disks (one a CD, one a floppy) and a 98 bootable CD), destroyed the old partition, made a new one, and yet again UNKNOWN system type and "Invalid Media Type Reading Drive C" error. Finally, I tried one more time, still got UNKNOWN system type, but, by some luck, that time it formated :p

So, I guess just try it over and over... Not much of a professional hint, but it's the best I can offer. Oh, and maybe use a win 98 boot disk?

Oh yeah, while my brain is thinking... How large is the drive and what OS is going on it? I ask because FAT32 simply cannot handle a partition size of over 32 gigs. It will partition fully, fdisk will give no errors, but it will be un-formattable (to everything but NTFS).

a:> format c: /s

>>He was able to fdisk it. If it wasn't auto-detecting it, fdisk would have said "No fixed disk found" or something to that extent.

Actually, if you replaced a 20Gb HD with a 60Gb HD and did not tell the BIOS (or had autodetect on) then fdisk'ed it, the maximum partion available would be 20Gb.

>>I ask because FAT32 simply cannot handle a partition size of over 32 gigs.

News to me and a big shock to my 40Gb HD (with a single partion) on Win98SE.

Quote:

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Originally posted by novacain
>>He was able to fdisk it. If it wasn't auto-detecting it, fdisk would have said "No fixed disk found" or something to that extent.

Actually, if you replaced a 20Gb HD with a 60Gb HD and did not tell the BIOS (or had autodetect on) then fdisk'ed it, the maximum partion available would be 20Gb.

>>I ask because FAT32 simply cannot handle a partition size of over 32 gigs.

News to me and a big shock to my 40Gb HD (with a single partion) on Win98SE.

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FAT32 supports sizes up to 2TB (thats 2048GB), although certain implementations (win2k i believe) only support up to 32GB FAT32 partitions.

Hmm. Well, assuming that it was set up correctly in bios when he ran fdisk then here are a few other ideas.

Motherboard cmos battery needs replacing.

Was the drive brand new when you got it? This sort of thing can happen after using non MS partitioning. For example, if linux were installed and incorrectly removed.

Some WD hd's (and maybe other manufacturer's) do not set dma modes properly on some motherboards and will cause this error. WD has a mode set utility download for this.

My bad memory playing tricks again. It's Maxtor hd's that have that problem, and the download fix is on Maxtor's site.