Windows 7 Never let Win7 manage your freshly formatted Hard Drives.

[epk1950]

Well Well, Let me explain my experience of Disk Management in Windows 7!

To start off I ordered a brand new hard drive, installed it into my pc. I booted up win7 "at the time with the current hard drive I was using for win7" , at first windows 7 recognized the new drive but asking for "Win7" to manage it , I had 3 options, First win7 recommended to use the hard drive as a MBR HDD, Second convert to Dynamic , Third after Dynamic to convert to Basic. Well not thinking I went with MBR, so that screwed up the MBR in Win7 , I had to boot into Win7 Repair Disk "Win7 Install Disk" Selected Repair then selecting CMD Prompt, So I enter

 bootsect /nt60 ALL /MBR

. That fixed my boot problem, but another problem arrived , that new hdd was useless after that, I could partition that hdd into 2 3 or 4 partitions or even 5 with extended under gparted, But! when I booted back into win7, win7 recognized only the first partition only and w/e size it was "the 1st partition", so I try format it with win7 blah blah go back to gparted to partition the hdd, Guess what I see in the flag area? Yup MSFTRES , I am like wth flag is that, "i never heard of this ever" so I go through formatting it over and over with gparted and win7, DAMN that msftres would not leave my hdd, So here I was just dumbfounded for hours trying my best. So I said screw it ima dban the hdd, I formatted the hdd with dban "11hrs it took, I knew how dreading long it would be anyhow", once it was finished I booted into win7, went to Disk management, same thing the three options, so I try the dynamic option, booted gparted to finally partition the hdd, What do I see? msftres flag "damn that msftres" so I knew it, something was wrong, I recalled that I have install Western Digital Data Lifeguard a while back, so I went started the software up, did a analyze on the hdd, what do I see ohhh! a quick write zero's option, so I used it, "took 2 mins" finally after the format where I said nah im go straght to gparted and make the partitions then, so lahdy dahdy gparted is up, I right click on the unallocated partition to create a ntfs partition, what does gparted ask me to do? It asks if I like to make this hdd msdos, :O I was like "flash before my eyes a couple years when I dban'd and had to us win98 boot disk to make the disk msdos", so I let gparted make it msdos and partitioned it like how I wanted it, booted into win7, Whats this? All the partitions I created are Showing . It was my fault in a way letting msdos slip my mind, well that was my headache of yesterday, N today is a much better day, I got my Freshly installed win7 on partition one, all my storage on partition two making it a delightful day.

In terms this was my fault & not, windows 7 fails to ask to make the hdd msdos ready, win98 Boot Disk or Gparted works fine making a freshly formatted "a real true zeros Format" hdd msdos ready. Well I lived and learned.
That's my Conclusion of Windows 7 Disk Management.

 

[ChatGPT]

It sounds like you had quite the adventure with disk management in Windows 7! Dealing with partitioning and formatting can sometimes lead to unexpected issues, especially when transitioning between different partition styles like MBR and GPT. Here's a breakdown of your experience and the actions you took: 1. Installation of New Hard Drive: - Installed a new hard drive and encountered options in Windows 7 to manage it, including choosing between MBR, Dynamic, and Basic. 2. Choosing MBR Partitioning: - Opted for MBR partitioning and had to repair the MBR using the bootsect /nt60 ALL /MBR command from the Win7 Repair Disk due to boot problems. 3. Partitioning Difficulties: - Encountered issues where only the first partition on the new hard drive was recognized by Windows 7. - Discovered a flag labeled "MSFTRES" in the partition, causing confusion and difficulty in formatting and partitioning the drive successfully. 4. DBAN Formatting: - Formatted the hard drive using DBAN to wipe it completely, which took a significant amount of time. - After formatting, encountered the same "MSFTRES" flag issue when trying to partition the drive again. 5. Using Western Digital Data Lifeguard: - Ran an analysis using Western Digital Data Lifeguard software, found a quick write zero's option, and used it to prepare the hard drive. 6. Partitioning with GParted: - Finally managed to successfully partition the hard drive using GParted after ensuring that the drive was set to MBR, allowing Windows 7 to recognize all the partitions correctly. 7. Learning Experience: - Realized the importance of ensuring that the hard drive is set up correctly as "msdos ready" to avoid issues with partitioning and recognition by the operating system. It seems like the key takeaway from your experience is the significance of properly preparing and formatting the hard drive to ensure smooth partitioning and usability within Windows 7. Learning from these experiences is valuable, and it's great to hear that you were able to resolve the issues and end up with a working system in the end!