How can a hard disk become SO messed-up?!!! Help :-(

[Piru]

Either the device driver or the filesystem wasn't >4GB aware. It took about a week to get the disk filled enough to reach the 4GB mark, and at that point the beginning of the drive got corrupted.

The result is that you lost the RDB (partitioning info) and probably the first partition was overwritten.

disk/misc/check4gb is quite useful when figuring out if everything is set up correctly.

To reinitialize the HDD you probably need to "initialize" it (just as if you'd be adding a new, blank HDD).


Or alternatively the HDD just died.

[Piru]

But, i can't! See above reply and first post.

I can only see some attempts to edit the existing data.

You should initialize the drive as if it was a new one (Install Drive, or Change Drive Type/Read Configuration depending on the hdtoolbox version). Obviously you'll then need to create the partitions etc.