Well I'm trying to partition my Hitachi 500GB Serial ATA hard drive, but I've encountered some problems.

I have tried numerous partitioning programs, all with great failure. I've tried Gparted, Paragon, Ubuntun's live CD utility, even windows vista and xp.

They all do not work... XP says the partition is "BAD", gparted just won't do anything, Ubuntu says i have to create a new partition table. Vista says pretty much the same thing, and paragon says that the disk already has four primary partitions, which can't be true.

So I think it's a Partition Table problem, but i am unsure how to fix it. I am trying to dualboot vista x86, and x64. I recently had to format the HDD after a Mac OSx86 went wrong, and I reverted to Vista (x86). I fear that may have caused some damage but I don't know how to go about fixing it. I'm looking to triple boot like i have in the past (vista, ubuntu, OSx86 or x64 vista)

Any suggestions?

Also a format is out of the question, I do not want to have to re-do everything for the 4th time If it can be avoided of course...

Ok... Did you are in SATA or IDE mode cause the story is slightly different from one to other.. And I don't trust Hitachi anymore. I owned one and now in my garbage and my friend got an Allienware and his stripped RAID wouldn't work anymore.. that's bad. Use Hiren boot CD and make a test in hard drive tool. Should be bad sectors or your MBR is gone. Give a try to Hiren

Ill give hiren ago thanks.

Well there is nothing wrong with the harddrive i did all the tests took a very long time

I tried using the partition managers on the boot cd but none would load, they say loading then freeze and need a force restart.

I think it is the partition table tho.