TeraByte Unlimited

I have swapped in a new hard disk as the previous one was failing. This is a slave data disk, the OS's were on the primary master, both IDE, jumpers set accordingly. In BIBM I created the partitions (primaries not limited) and formatted them the same as for the previous disk, set up the appropriate entries in boot edit and booted Windows. It sees the new volumes (2 - one is NTFS the other is FAT32). When I try to write to them it says the volumes are write protected.

I also use Linux Mint 11. This has no problem with writing to the FAT32 partition.

I haven't seen this before. Maybe it's more a Windows problem but googling didn't reveal anything useful. I wonder if some of you have seen this before and/or can suggest what is wrong and how to fix.

Was the drive ever previously formatted as GPT? I've run into this problem before in that situation. The GUID happened to have be on the drive at the location used for the "lock" and happened to have the correct bit set to enable it.

You could try converting the drive to GPT and then back to EMBR and see if that helps. Otherwise, if you have a disk editor you can wipe track 0 (or at least the first 3-4 sectors) and then set back to EMBR and recreate the partitions.

I didn't test if using DISKPART (Windows 7 version) to unlock the drive would result in causing EMBR corruption. I think I just wiped the start of the drive and started over to make sure it was clean.

This happened to me when I unplugged an SSD a few years ago.

If it is the same sort of thing, you might be able to fix it with chkdsk (I think), also check UltraDMA is on as well, as windows XP disk drivers turn this off if they encounter an error.

Check you have the latest drive controller drivers and matching firmware for your motherboard.

google SSD locked readonly chkdsk

Thanks PP - switching to GPT and then back to EMBR fixed it.

Thanks to fileant for advice. Re UDMA, for some reason my bios refuses to run DMA access and reverts to fast PIO mode even though the BIOS settings for the drive say it's UDMA5 (Steve Gibson's Spinrite confirms this so it's not just Windows). I may try flashing the latest firmware to see if that fixes it, although normally this is something I prefer to avoid in case it bricks the mobo.

Rustleg,

> I may try flashing the latest firmware to see if that fixes it, although normally this is something I prefer to avoid in case it bricks the mobo.

See if these are still available.
I used to use BIOS Savior units alot on Abit MoBo's back when I OC'd them alot.
{Still got one a an old PC, 8 years old & going strong}

Http://www.ioss.com.tw/web/English/RD1BIOSSavior.html
--

Jim L.
Using - Virtual Access(OLR)
http://www.virtual-access.org
6.3.0.5 Windows Vista Service Pack 2 build 6002

a1pcfixer wrote: See if these are still available.
I used to use BIOS Savior units alot on Abit MoBo's back when I OC'd them alot.
Http://www.ioss.com.tw/web/English/RD1BIOSSavior.html

Interesting - never seen these before.

Looking at the motherboard manual it talks about "Crash free BIOS auto recovery tool" implying that a bad BIOS update can be rescued. If a bad BIOS is detected it comes up with
Bad BIOS checksum. Starting BIOS recovery ... Checking for floppy...

But what's a bit disconcerting is a warning later on in this section which says "DO NOT shutdown or reset the system while updating the BIOS! Doing so may cause system boot failure". I'm not sure if this means that the "Crash free BIOS auto recovery tool" might not boot.

Anyway I've taken the plunge and updated to the latest stable BIOS but it still doesn't use DMA and I've given up wasting any more time on it. It's only an old second desktop and will do what I need it for. Thanks anyway for your post.

Rustleg,

> But what's a bit disconcerting is a warning later on in this section which says "DO NOT shutdown or reset the system while updating the BIOS! Doing so may cause system boot failure". I'm not sure if this means that the "Crash free BIOS auto recovery tool" might not boot.

Tha first part is just common sense NOT to interrupt the BIOS update, but the latter part seems to indicate it's a bad BIOS update fixer tool.

> I've given up wasting any more time on it. It's only an old second desktop and will do what I need it for. Thanks anyway for your post.

Understandable & your welcome!
--

Jim L.
Using - Virtual Access(OLR)
http://www.virtual-access.org
6.3.0.5 Windows Vista Service Pack 2 build 6002