Big partition problem (not 4Gb barrier!) with 50GB partitions...

[Piru]

Solved the previous HD size/parameter recognition problems by installing BB2, wich gave me around 111GB( strange as it's a 120 one)

120*1000*1000*1000/1024/1024/1024

These are called "marketing gigabytes".

After rebooting I got the checkmark screen and after booting with the emergency disk the partitions were all gone

Is this a known problem ?

Well, your RDB got wiped, which means you don't really have the >4GB access working, or you used some format without quick option for example.

Anyway, you should try check4gb.

[Piru]

Frankly I don't see much point in doing regular format these days. It really doesn't serve any purpose, at least if the HDD is new.

If you suspect the HDD is faulty and want to diagnose it, grab the diagnosis program for the particular HDD (seagate, samsung, hitachi or whatever), and do a full diagnosis run using a x86 boxen. In fact, many many manufacturers have this step in their RMA procedure (I guess they want to avoid perfectly working HDDs being sent for RMA).

[Piru]

BTW, why is it that format doesn't serve any purpose ?

Formatting the partition is useless. Initializing the filesystem is not, and quickformat does just that.

Quickformat takes seconds, regular format - depending on the partition size and the controller speed - can take hours.