Hard Disk Problems

Zascar · 08-06-2012 6:57pm #1

I have two hard drives in my pc, my small C drive which is just for XP, the other D drive has all my main files. The pc started acting strangely and sometimes when I started it the D drive did not show. It's back now but its giving errors and xp does a chkdsk every time it restarts. I'm terrified I might lose stuff.

Any idea what tools I could try to find and fix errors? Ideally I'll get a new hard drive and copy stuff across as this is a few years old - but is there anything I can do to try to fix it in the meantime?
Thanks

yoyo · 08-06-2012 7:25pm

Do not defrag (as it may cause further damage to the disk if its damaged), backup all important stuff immediately (to external hard drive, usb key etc) then run diagnostics on the hard disk, you can use something like Seatools or Vivard to do this (all available on ultimate Boot CD). If XP is invoking chkdsk on start up the usual reason is it believes the disk isn't operating normally

Nick

Sup08 · 08-06-2012 8:22pm

Sugarman, you may be looking for diskeeper

Zascar
What yoyo says is of sound advice.

Zascar · 10-06-2012 11:12pm

Thanks lads, I'll give that a try.

I need a new hard drive, any recommendations of what to buy? I need about 1.5tb to 2tb - want something decent - but good value.

This any good? http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/product/intern_3_5_/20070533/seagate_2tb_3_5_sata_600_5900rpm_64mb/details.aspx

yoyo · 10-06-2012 11:42pm

Zascar wrote: »

Thanks lads, I'll give that a try.

I need a new hard drive, any recommendations of what to buy? I need about 1.5tb to 2tb - want something decent - but good value.

This any good? http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/product/intern_3_5_/20070533/seagate_2tb_3_5_sata_600_5900rpm_64mb/details.aspx

If you're sure the drive is the issue that one will work fine (once the one you're replacing is a SATA hd)

Nick

Zascar · 23-06-2012 8:17pm

Heya lads, quick update and a question: I got a new hard drive Seagate 2TB, and I'm trying to copy all the data over to the new drive from the old one which is giving problems. When I put the new drive in, I went to disk management and it asked me to format the drive. It asked me if I wanted to set it up as a Dynamic drive instead of a simple drive. I said yes and it formatted and the disk worked fine, I copied a file onto it to test.

So now I added my old D drive with all my data, it did a chkdsk and now works ok, but the new F drive that I had formatted was not showing up. In disk management it shows up like this:

Any idea what I can do to get it formatted and working properly?
Thanks

RUCKING FETARD · 23-06-2012 9:28pm

You should have said no to creating dynamic disc, that's for a Raid set up as far as I know, can you not right click on (F)?

Should give you the option to delete the drive letter and convert back to a basic disc?

Edit:

How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk

Windows 7 - Partition or Volume - Create New

Pictures!!!:):)

Zascar · 24-06-2012 10:41pm

Thanks, I did that and converted back to Basic. Seems to work fine. I created a new partition and went to format it, but it was taking forever. Had barely moved after half an hour. So I cancelled it, and started again and tried a quick format. It would not work at all. Tried Formatting from my computer but it would not work either. All day yesterday and today I tried everything I could think of, nothing works. It seems to do a full format from within my computer, but when it was done, the drive did not show up. Tried a full format again in disk management but it did not work either. I even plugging out the other drive and tried installing xp on the disk using the format it does at the start, but it said it cannot format the drive - at the end after 3 hours of formatting.

No idea what to do now. Can anyone advise?
Thanks

[Deleted User] · 24-06-2012 11:20pm

Zascar wrote: »

Thanks, I did that and converted back to Basic. Seems to work fine. I created a new partition and went to format it, but it was taking forever. Had barely moved after half an hour. So I cancelled it, and started again and tried a quick format. It would not work at all. Tried Formatting from my computer but it would not work either. All day yesterday and today I tried everything I could think of, nothing works. It seems to do a full format from within my computer, but when it was done, the drive did not show up. Tried a full format again in disk management but it did not work either. I even plugging out the other drive and tried installing xp on the disk using the format it does at the start, but it said it cannot format the drive - at the end after 3 hours of formatting.

No idea what to do now. Can anyone advise?
Thanks

It might be an advanced format issue, although I thought Seagate drives took care of that using SmartAlign on the drive controller board.

If you're having no luck in XP then I would try something like Gparted (bootable ISO). Pull all the SATA cables from your other drives beforehand so you don't wipe them by mistake.

Also note that a full format (sector by sector) is supposed to take hours on a 2TB drive. Thats only logical, if the max write speed is say 80MB/s then it'll take 6-7hrs for 1860GB

Sup08 · 24-06-2012 11:29pm

Can you try connect to another computer?

Zascar · 25-06-2012 6:33pm

Unfortunately I do not have another computer to hand - but I could take it to a friends, would that make any difference. I'll have a look at the gparted disk. I don't mind what it does I'm happy to leave on overnight and do a full format if it works. I had a look on the site but I cannot work out how to get it to format a disk. I'll have another play but any assistance would be appreciated - or any other programs etc that can do a full format for me

Thanks for your help

RUCKING FETARD · 25-06-2012 10:01pm

Try this.

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

(speed is capped at 180 GB per hour which is 50 MB/s)

^^^It's gonna take a whole night.:(

Zascar · 26-06-2012 8:46am

Thanks, I tried that last night but it stalled at about 5%. I just bought the licence and trying again, working at 1.8mb/s so far.

Zascar · 26-06-2012 8:32pm

Finally!! I got it working!!

Ugh it was a pain. So I tried the low level format tool, left it on all night, came in the next morning and it was on 3%!! So I bought the full licence, left it on all day, and again, 3%! Was pulling my hair out. So I tried the Gparted livedisk. Had no idea what I was doing but I had a play around. Tried to format the disk, took about 30 seconds so I assumed it had not worked. I created a partition anyway, restarted, and there it was - working!

Thanks a mil for all your help lads, very much appreciated!
Z

ED E · 26-06-2012 8:50pm

Linux 1 Windows Nil :P

[Deleted User] · 26-06-2012 10:03pm

I would keep an eye on the drive because I am suspicious about the health of it. Certainly run at least one full diagnostic to break in the drive and make sure every sector is readable.

Seagate are quite unreliable lately so also in future make sure any important data is not stored just on the Seagate.

yoyo · 27-06-2012 12:00pm

I would certainly run a hard disk diagnostics on the drive (such as Vivard) to check if it has any bad sectors. I've never encountered any issues formatting drives from within Windows os, and I've done it quite a bit!

Nick

Zascar · 27-06-2012 7:47pm

Thanks - yes that does sounds like a good idea.

I just downloaded Vivard but it just says "No Floppy drives found" and nothing I do can get me past that screen. Any suggestions?

Going to give the Ultimate boot cd a go I think its on there.

[Deleted User] · 27-06-2012 8:39pm

If you ever need to RMA the drive then you'll need Seatools for Windows to give you the error code. So might as well install it now.

Its got some standard diagnostic tools, drive self-test etc. Just be aware that the long test will take hours for a 2TB drive.

Personally before running any diagnostics I would write 0s to the entire drive, if there are any problems it helps them to show up quicker.

You can do that from within Windows using something like CCleaner. If you've already copied some data on, then use the 'Free space only' option in CCleaner, it will write to every sector except the bits with data. Will take hours of course.

If everything is healthy, I would also check for firmware updates before copying data to the drive. Firmware updates should be relatively safe but on the off-chance it bricks the drive it'd be better to do it now rather than later when it's got a tonne of stuff on it.

yoyo · 28-06-2012 12:57am

Zascar wrote: »

Thanks - yes that does sounds like a good idea.

I just downloaded Vivard but it just says "No Floppy drives found" and nothing I do can get me past that screen. Any suggestions?

Going to give the Ultimate boot cd a go I think its on there.

Yeah I use it from UBCD, never ran it another way, Seatools for DOS is decent aswell (for any brand)

Nick

Zascar · 01-07-2012 10:49am

So, quick update, I did loads of scans but everything came up fine - but I was still getting loads and loads of problems. I got another small spare hard drive, installed Windows 7 - and all these problems have gone away. It's been perfect. Just in case, I formatted the new 2TB drive again, but I was able to copy everything over perfectly, no issues whatsoever. Not sure why but even on two different clean installs of xp it was hanging and begin weird, not liking drives etc. I'm going to stick with 7 for the moment. So so glad I have all these problems fixed now.

However, there is only one problem remaining. While copying over my many directories to my new hard drive, all but one copied fine. One of them had a subdirectory which was working a few days ago, but it gave a copy error, and now when I go into it, the directory seems to be there but none of the files. Hmmm

Is there any program that I can point to this directory that can try to get it to recover the files? Annoyingly they are some photos that are not that critical but sentimentally important and I'd love to get them back...

unkel · 02-07-2012 12:13am

Zascar wrote: »

Is there any program that I can point to this directory that can try to get it to recover the files? Annoyingly they are some photos that are not that critical but sentimentally important and I'd love to get them back...

Try PhotoRec

It's free, easy to use and it works out quite well some of the time...

Hard Disk Problems

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