Fdisk sees the ntfs disks (fdisk /status).
On my computer it sees my three disks , and indicates my E: fat32 drive 3rd disk and as C: drive , same as Norton Ghost boot floppy does .
disk - drv - mbytes -free - usage
1 17500
2 17500
3 17500
c : 17500
I wonder, if it sees the disks , why shouldn\'t it be able to change or repair the bootsector , or partition them and format them . I suppose fdisk sees only the bootsector and don\'t has to read the disk so it doesn\'t matter if it\'s ntfs or not .The bootsector must contain the necessary info . That\'s what I suppose .
I know if you install the recovery consoll you can use fixboot , fixmbr a.s.o , but if your cdrom isn\'t bootable it\'s senseless, so the only way to do something must be fdisk (sorry but I never used partition magic , because I only make one partition on my hdisks ). I have made a floppy with boot.ini ntldr and ntdetect.com on it so if my harddisk doesn\'t boot anymore I still have the floppy .I also need the floppy to start win2k because if I start it the normal way it gives me corrupt or absent system file , but I can start winxp with the floppy too .I also have an option of starting the recovery console(cmdcons on ntfs drive c:) in my boot.ini .
Your \"disk read error \" could be a bootrecord read error as all the info of the disk must be on the bootsector .
At least that\'s a possible explanation .
You can allways detach all the good hdisks before using fdisk on a defective hdisk , so you don\'t have to pay attention to the numbers of the disks you want to handle .