Hello all,

Do you have any general advice based on experience for formatting hard drives? What do you look out for?

I have a 2T drive. I use partitions, formatting FAT32 & NTFS for Redmond compatibility XP -> 10. I also use AOMEI 3rd party tools and GParted in Ubuntu-based Linux.

What I do doesn't work or produces errors. I make a Redmond boot and tend to use an extended & logicals.

My current drive is giving me I/O errors. I suspect partition formatting.

Should I use Disk Management or GParted?

How do versions matter?

Should I not make a boot partition?

Can FAT32 & NTFS mix thoroughout the drive?

Advice appreciated.

I typically use either multiple drives for the varied purposes, such as one containing my boot and root partitions and then use another for my data (/home). But that also can be partitions on the same drive. I don't give terabytes to root, more like 32Gig.I'd check the drive and use tools available to get a report on it. Mind you no drive is flawless, even brand new ones, there are always some bad sectors, the question is if there is growth of that soon after first use, which would be bad.Both are fine, I use GParted or also the command line.Versions of what?That's personal preference, I've never done something like a boot partition only on say a USB stick, but I have segregated boot+root from user data, as mentioned above.Yes they can. It all depends on your needs. For instance some have neither those at all.

Does compatibility XP -> 10 actually mean your installing XP? Are you dual/triple booting? If so, that makes it a bit more difficult since XP does not support SATA out of the box, GPT, UEFI, secure boot and whatever newer hardware exists since it went EOL. Do you really need XP and if possible it would be easier from a hardware prospective to run it as a virtual machine IMHO if you do not need to connect directly with hardware.

What I/O errors are you seeing and what were you doing at the time this happened? How is the BIOS/UEFI configured?

If you think the drive has errors you can boot a live CD/USB with smartmontools and check its status.
https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/LiveCDs

Parted, yes a good program.

I've come across compatiblity problems, not with the file systems but with the device working at all, or kind of chugging like a cough - not mechanically but in software.

On this disk for example, 14 (Ubuntu) era GParted doesn't like it as much as 16.

Is that because I started in XP?

Because I made the first partition an XP boot?

I need to learn the things to avoid to not have these errors.

I meant versions of GParted or Disk Management.

Congratulations if you do not run into these compatibility problems.

I tend to dual-boot. I'll either boot Linux via USB or Redmond with it removed, or I'll put Linux on the Redmond boot partition even though I know how to give it its own which is probably wiser on newer/biggers drives. I am not trying to boot multiple versions of Windows.

My first attempt was to copy multiple Windows installations to multiple partitions as backup.

Second I just put XP on the boot partition, added two partitions for Linux, then created an extended for logicals. That's when the drive failed. Recovery took hours.

Now I got rid of the logical and extended and it kind of works but not really, I/O errors.

Most simply, if I reformatted the disk with one partition for one os, it would probably work normally, but I'm testing limits to get more practical use out of it.

I don't really need one big 2T HD. I need backup and boot media.

The drive is reformatted MBR so GPT & UEFI should not be a problem. I use old 32-bit machines and have a new one.

I am not an expert, but I think the drive would work if I adhered to a foolproof partitioning protocol.

There's just no obvious sign of what to avoid or how finicky a drive can be.


BIOS is fine for other drives, it's just this one.

Thumbnails are three GParted errors:

Attached Thumbnails

     

This kind of looks like a drive problem.

I would check its SMART status.

My recommendation: it doesn't matter much which partitioning tool you choose, as long as you understand what you and it are doing, and as soon as practical, you pick one, and going forward use it only. Once you've picked, always partition in advance of installation, and use the installer's partitioner only for choosing what to mount where, and optionally, format. This way, incompatibility among partitioners and schemes, which isn't terribly uncommon, is avoided. I've been using the same non-FOSS, non-free partitioner exclusively for over two decades, DFSee, which logs everything it does. I use the logs for OS and partition inventory management of my many multiboot PCs.

those I/O errors are not related to any kind of partitioning. It is not a compatibility issue, but [most probably] your hdd is over. Died. I would try another one. (that can be a MOBO error or power supply related, or just a damaged cable - anyway it is not a partitioning or software error).

It's an unused Hitachi. I'm going to start over and see if it behaves differently, maybe partition in Windows 7, if not Ubuntu 16.

Different systems behave differently, and if the drive itself were the problem, it seems like it would be completely broken in all of them.

It got better after I deleted the extended & logical partitions. When I tried to delete them in XP Disk Managment, a dialog popped up explaining that XP knew the partitions were not created in Windows. That reads like proprietary formatting and a high potential for incompatibility.

Many files copied over to a primary partition, but then I started receiving i/o copy errors in Ubuntu 16. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if I created the partitions in Linux?

If I had a single partition/os and it still produces these errors on all systems, it is broken.

I have not had a dual boot system in vary long time but this should still be valid.

Windows XP and 7 prefer to be on the 1st partition. You should be able to either partition before or during the install for the desired size versus having it automatically use the entire drive.

linux can be either a primary or a logical and the default would be to have grub write to the MBR. Many installers have a install along side where it will resize the windows partition or you can manually create partitions using available drive space.

If you are also installing 8 or 10 then I would install 10 first and then 7 to primary partitions and linux to an extended/logical partitions.

It would depend on what is wrong with the drive. The first clue would be to look at its SMART data.

again, I/O errors cannot be related to partitions, but the physical location on that drive.
Partitions which tried to use damaged part [of the disk] will be corrupted and most probably useless, other partitions probably still will be ok. It does not depend on any OS or partitioning software.
As it was suggested, try to check SMART data.