Repair SSD drive with Windows 98 installation \ VOGONS

Repair SSD drive with Windows 98 installation

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First post, by red_avatar

Posted on 2021-12-29, 00:09

red_avatar Offline

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I have a Pentium 233 MMX that runs Windows 98 SE using a SSD drive with a 32GB partition. This has worked well for the past two years but while trying to get my Voodoo2 cards to work in SLI, it locked up during installation and now on reboot, it hangs on SCANDISK. SCANDISK seems to be stuck trying to read the Media Descriptor. I've popped out the disk, put it in my modern PC but that PC says there are no found errors.

Does anyone have an idea of a tool I might try to fix the drive? If need be I'll reinstall the whole drive but I'd rather not if it can be helped since that will take a day easily to get it back to how it was all set up.

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Reply 1 of 4, by kixs

Posted on 2021-12-29, 00:13

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If a modern PC can read the SSD, then just copy all the files to another drive. Reformat the SSD, make it bootable with Win98SE and copy all the files back - it should work fine.

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Reply 2 of 4, by red_avatar

Posted on 2021-12-29, 00:19

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kixs wrote on 2021-12-29, 00:13:

If a modern PC can read the SSD, then just copy all the files to another drive. Reformat the SSD, make it bootable with Win98SE and copy all the files back - it should work fine.

Yeah that's one option I've considered but from what I read, a damaged Media Descriptor is NOT fixed by a format. I'll likely need to completely remove the partition and I recall making that 32GB partition was a pain in the butt because FDISK only allows for 8GB by default. I think I manually had to expand the partition using Partition Manager in Windows 10.

Reply 3 of 4, by Repo Man11

Posted on 2021-12-29, 00:56

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Use Super Fdisk and it'll be done in the blink of an eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ivV5tyfRs

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Reply 4 of 4, by red_avatar

Posted on 2021-12-29, 11:25

red_avatar Offline

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-12-29, 00:56:

Use Super Fdisk and it'll be done in the blink of an eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ivV5tyfRs

Thanks I'll give it a look! I love bootable CD based tools - means I don't need to take out the drive from the PC.

EDIT: nope, while the tool works, it only sees 8GB as well so I'll need to connect the drive to my PC anyway and enlarge the partition this way. It's a BIOS limitation I believe although it does work with 32GB in Windows 98.

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