Latest Vista Update - OK TO CLOSE

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 5 Mar 2011 11:32 am

Well, I gave up and just came to the conclusion that a format would be best. It won't even do that. Even though the computer sees the drive in the disk management screen above, when I select that drive, select "More Tasks", I get an option to initialize the disk. I select format and get an error that says something like "date error redunancy check failed" (not necessarily the exact verbage, but close). If I go back to "More Tasks, I can get to a "format" option, which errors out with a message that I have to initialize the disk first. Round and round we go.

It looks as if the drive is toast. It is still under warranty according to Iomega. If I can find the receipt in storage, I will get a new one. In the mean time, I will use the External USB drive that was on my Desktop. I should be able to rebuild most of what I had, and I don't think I will lose anything critical (I back that stuff up on SD cards and flash drives).

Although it is probably coincidence that it failed IMMEDIATELY after a Vista upgrade, I can't help but think it had something to do with it, but can't think of what. I just HATE Microsoft, with their constant updates and problems with their software. You pay a lot for their software and they never get it right. Enough of my MS rant for now.

It's probably OK to close this now.

Thanks to all for taking the time to help troubleshoot this.

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 5 Mar 2011 11:59 am

Could you read & write your USB drive when you plugged it into someone else's computer?
How about when you booted your computer from a Linux Live CD or Linux flash drive?

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 5 Mar 2011 3:41 pm

Nope.

Didn't get to the other methods of booting. I may try again later on down the road, but right now I have to get back up and running, and the time would be better spent doing that right now. I had just finished making a website for a friend's band (I play in his band also) and luckily got it done and uploaded before this setback. I had all my Adobe Creative Suite software install on that drive (not enough room on the internal drive, but I am uninstalling some seldom used programs there to reinstall Dreamweaver, Flash and the other 14 or so programs in the suite on my internal drive). I need to do some editing to the pages. I would have normally saved the website files and any supporting files to an SD card for backup, but this all happened about the same time and I hadn't saved the files yet. Once I install Dreamweaver, I can download the files from the web server, actually I could probably use any FTP program. I will only lose some original photos (actually, I still have these on a CD the photographer gave us), and some WMV movie files I made with photos to use in making flv files to embed in the web pages. Unless I need to edit these movies, which with MS Movie Maker, it is probably just as easy to start from scratch, I don't really need them. My friend has also offered to pay a service to try and extract what is on the drive, and we may do that later if needed. Since the drive is under warranty, I should probably get it back to Iomega for them to fix or replace before it does go out of warranty.

This won't be as big of a disaster as it sounds, unless I have stuff on there I don't know about - but I don't think so.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 13 Mar 2011 9:31 am

Last update and then you can close this.

I hope Earnest Bovine sees this. First thanks for all the time you graciously spent helping me.

Just for informations sake, you were wondering about the drive designations in the photos, particularly the assignment of D drive to the USB drive and E to the second partition on the internal hard drive.

Even with this different USB drive attached, it still assigns D to the USB drive and E to the recovery partition on the internal drive. Whats really interesting is, if I remove the USB drive from the computer, the recovery partition still stays marked as the E drive and doesn't assume the name of D drive. Dell must have a way to assign that E drive name to the partition no matter what other drives exist or are added to the system.

Again, thanks to all. I am currently back in business.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 13 Mar 2011 9:50 am

Richard;
You are able to reassign the drive letter for the recovery partition, using the Disk Management Console. First Stop and unplug the USB drive, leaving letter D available. Then navigate the following path to open the Computer Management Console to the Disk Management part:

To open Disk Management, follow these steps

Choose Start–>Control Panel to open Control Panel.

Click the System Maintenance link, and then click Administrative Tools to open the Administrative ools folder.

Click Computer Management to open the Computer Management window.

In the Computer Management pane, expand Storage, and then click Disk Management.

On the right-hand side of the screen, locate and right-click on the drive that you wish to change the drive letter of and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

In the Change Drive Letter and Paths window, click on the Change... button.

The Change Drive Letter or Path dialog box will appear. Choose the drive letter you wish to assign to this partition.

Click OK.

The Confirm window that appears advises you that "Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue?".

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 13 Mar 2011 10:10 am

I think with my run of bad luck lately, I will leave well enough alone. If I reassign drives now, I might have some paths no longer be valid. There must be a reason Dell assigned E to the recovery partition.