I made a crack at Microsoft the other day. I get frustrated with their software at times. The problem is, I rely on them. Everything I have works on Windows and it would take far too long and possibly too expensive to get things running the way I want on another OS.

I said something along the lines that their technologies are too old. They are, but for a decent reason. Microsoft makes sure they have backwards compatibility. While this is good, how far back should we be talking if it is hindering forward progress? Something needs to be adjusted here. Just a thought.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I turned to Microsoft Windows Vista today because it seemed to be the only piece of software to do what I need. I have a couple old 500GB hard drives sitting on my desk. They came out of my old file server when one of them became corrupt. Since then, I have been looking for a way to repair this one so the 500GB of space doesn’t become trash. I tried GParted but it ran into errors formatting. I tried Seagate DiskUtility but it doesn’t format and repair. I tried an old copy of MaxBlast 3 but it is too old to load the USB drivers that I needed for it to recognize my external with the 500GB and instead I nearly lost everything on my laptop.

However, I continued to look. I found a post where someone directed me to diskmgmt.msc. This is Windows built-in disk management software. I had no idea that it existed. Currently, it seems to be doing precisely what I need it to do. It is 31% done with a reformat of the drive. Microsoft pulled through when no one else could. Does this worry me? A little. Does it matter right now? No.

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I was able to successfully repair my hard drive with diskmgmt.msc. Thought I would let you know.