A possible danger in repartitioning the hard drive

[mgb2020]

I'm hoping somebody knows more about this --

My s10 classic, bios 94, seems to be saving something to the last sector of the hard disk.

If that data gets corrupted, the computer will not boot, even from a bootable usb device, as long as the drive is present.

If the last sector is restored or zeroed out it will boot.

This might be associated with hibernation. (I also discovered the Bios isn't happy if you hibernate, pull the drive, and then attempt to boot from a USB device).

If that is all that's going on the workaround is trivial - leave a little unallocated space at the end when you repartition.

That seems to have solved my problem.

[pseudo]

(I also discovered the Bios isn't happy if you hibernate, pull the drive, and then attempt to boot from a USB device).

I imagine this is your issue. When a computer hibernates it saves it's currect status to the HDD (suspend is the same but to RAM, hence slightly higher power draw). Whenever you turn your computer on it is now trying to boot from non-existant settings that it thinks are saved to your drive... possibly

Did you have the battery in when you pulled the drive? You could try resetting the BIOS by powering off, pulling the power plug & battery, holding the power button down for 10 seconds and then rebooting.

[mgb2020]

The hibernation situation is not the main issue. It was something I encountered while trying to reproduce the original problem. Its cause and solution are exactly as you describe.
I'm thinking it is probably a completely unrelated problem, but there might be a connection between hibernation and the data in the last sector.

The main problem, as experienced by others here
http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745
and here
http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4044

is when the computer will not boot under any circumstances as long as the hard drive is installed.

This seems to be due to the bios expecting either valid data (about what I don't know) or zeroes in the last sector of the hard drive.

Pulling the hard drive, zeroing the last sector, and reinstalling the hard drive seems to fix the problem, with no loss of data.
Leaving some unallocated space at the end of the drive seems to have prevented a re-occurrence.

I'm surprised the problem took so long to appear.
My best guess is that even though I first repartitioned my hard drive a year ago, I didn't actually write anything to the last sector until my most recent repartitioning -- or at least I didn't write anything that the bios would try unsuccessfully to interpret, cause it to hang at boot time.

[pseudo]

hmmm, you've got me there.

One last attempt (at guessing) though: Is your "quickboot" function enabled in the BIOS? Is it looking for that maybe?

EDIT: yes, I did mean Quickstart / Splashtop!

[mgb2020]

Do you mean "Quickstart" aka Splashtop?

Hmmm ... you may have something there ...

This machine never had it - 'classic' S10 4231

But - the bios option for it was enabled! (by default I guess, when I upgraded to bios 94 -- I'd never before bothered to drill down and look at that setting - just ignored it)

I suppose it's possible the bios might use the last sector if Quickstart is enabled (in the bios), but I don't know why it would if Quickstart wasn't installed.

Or -- here's a wild scenario -- if Quickstart is enabled in the bios, it looks at the last sector - if it zeroes or contains data indicating Quickstart isn't installed - no problem, but if it contains data the bios attempts to interpret - it hangs.

Meanwhile, I think I'd strongly encourage anyone who repartitions to leave a little unallocated space at the end of the drive. It's a painless precaution.

Doing so the first time would certainly have saved me a lot of grief.