Hard drive gone kaputt

oeNeo · 25-01-2004 4:30am #1

I was on the PC on Friday, not doing anything out of the ordinary, just on irc at the time I think, when my pc suddenly got really laggy and then completely froze. Tried to boot it up again but just when the WinXP logo comes up I get a blue screen saying 'unmountable_disk_volume' or something similar.

I'm guessing that this means my HD is fucked. Luckily I have an old 3 gig which I'm using now though. What I was wondering though is, is it possible to recover all my stuff from it? Do I just need to get a program to do it, or is lost forever? Never happened to me before so I'm rather clueless.

Thanks.

leeroybrown · 25-01-2004 4:55am

It might be a corrupted NTFS partition. Try booting off your XP CD to the recovery console. It's ages since I went through the options but SCANDISK or some similar option should be there to repair partitions.

You could also create a DFT boot floppy on another PC and run that on the disk. Alternatively you could use a inux boot CD and run badblocks. (skip option 2 unless you know something about linux).

DFT: http://www.disk-utility.com/drive-fitness-hard-test.html

pheelay · 25-01-2004 6:56am

Yep - the fact that you get a blue screen indicates the harddrive isn't completely dead - its found your windows drive.

Hard to know what the damage is tho but go
leeroybrown and try the XP Install/recovery CD. Even better would be to stick the harddrive in a working system to see if you can rescue your files first.

If its a NTFS partition, Linux probably wont be much use as it can't write reliably to NTFS. Might be able to read it tho.

phil

Mac daddy · 25-01-2004 10:39pm

Get yourself a copy of knoppix;)

Capt'n Midnight · 25-01-2004 11:10pm

If the drive makes sounds ending in "K" it's not looking good. Softer "g" sounds are better. Ball bearing dropping sounds indicate a head crash and double plus ungood.

Klunk
Chugg

Try the recover CD

Knoppix will be able to read files from your HDD if XP is corrupt - and has CD burning SW etc/

oeNeo · 25-01-2004 11:52pm

It is an NTFS partition I'm afraid. Luckily I have an old 3 gig hd which I'm using now. I'm going to reinstall the HD once I get a new on and try to recover files manually, just copy/pasting them over.

ronanp · 26-01-2004 1:58pm

OK, this is gonna sound a little stupid, but bear with me - if (and only if) its already dead (completely dead!) you've got nothing to lose :-)

Stick it in a freezer bag and put it in your freezer for about half an hour. The plates will contract just enough to give the heads a little room. Then very quickly plug it back in and you hopefully should have just enough time to transfer your important data.

Not kidding!

DivX · 27-01-2004 12:51am

oeNeo
Had a simular problem a few days ago on a p.c i was looking at for a friend. He had Windows XP home installed(FAT32).

He thought the disk was corrupt/bad and asked me to replace it, but turned out to be a problem with the mbr was corrupt, write behind cache is enabled by default in windows xp, the p.c must have been powered off just as it was writing to the mbr(master boot records)

Error was unmountable_boot_volume stop 0x000000ED

The following Microsoft Knowledge base article describes the procedure in detail.

If it comes up with errors while doing the repair, then you know for definite that the disk is dead.

Took about 30 minutes for a 40GB disk to be repaired, using the chkdsk /r command from the recovery console.

Hope this helps.

DivX · 27-01-2004 12:53am

Originally posted by ronanp
OK, this is gonna sound a little stupid, but bear with me - if (and only if) its already dead (completely dead!) you've got nothing to lose :-)

Stick it in a freezer bag and put it in your freezer for about half an hour. The plates will contract just enough to give the heads a little room. Then very quickly plug it back in and you hopefully should have just enough time to transfer your important data.

Not kidding!

I tried something like this before and it worked!

oeNeo · 27-01-2004 6:26pm

I'll try all of these and let you know if it works. Thanks for the help.

mobby · 27-01-2004 6:33pm

Originally posted by ronanp
OK, this is gonna sound a little stupid, but bear with me - if (and only if) its already dead (completely dead!) you've got nothing to lose :-)

Stick it in a freezer bag and put it in your freezer for about half an hour. The plates will contract just enough to give the heads a little room. Then very quickly plug it back in and you hopefully should have just enough time to transfer your important data.

Not kidding!

I tried something like this before and it worked!]

Can vouch for this also..

oeNeo · 13-03-2004 1:17pm

Well I got a new 160 GB HD a few weeks ago and the same thing just happened to it yesterday!

I booted up with XP and ran the recovery yadda yadda and it's working fine now, although it's making this strange noise.. sort of like a bass guitar.

Anyway I'm guessing that this isnt a coincidence as it's the exact same problem with a brand new HD. Might it have something to do with the fact that I can usually not shut down my PC properly? I get a blue screen an error, says some piece of hardware is causing the problem and then some numbers, can't remember exactly.

Help is appreciated.

Mac daddy · 13-03-2004 1:35pm

Originally posted by oeNeo
Might it have something to do with the fact that I can usually not shut down my PC properly? I get a blue screen an error, says some piece of hardware is causing the problem and then some numbers, can't remember exactly.

What are these numbers you speak off might help if you know what they are enter them in a google next time you see them or post them here

BoB_BoT · 13-03-2004 3:17pm

hold up a minuite. the same thing has being happening to my slave drive over the past few days. it completely locks up the whole machine and i have to reboot. Humm will have to give the chkdsk /r option a try. Just wondering if it could possably be an obscure virus? doubt it though.

oeNeo · 13-03-2004 4:55pm

I'd post them up here but that problem seems to have stopped. I went to Computer Management and found that it was my DVD-ROM fucking up all the time, hasn't happened yet though.

I've yet another problem now. I can't have my DVD, CDRW and HD all plugged in at the same time. I had my dvd as secondary master, cdrw as slave and the HD as primary master. They're all detected on start-up but when the XP screen comes up it just hangs there and doesn't get any further than that.

Safe mode works, as far as I remember. I've tried making the CDRW master and DVD slave and the HD slave and the DVD master and so on and so fourth. Any ideas welcome.

Dr Bolouswki · 13-03-2004 5:28pm

If safe mode is working but not normal mode it looks like its driver related rather than the BIOS - if it was jumper settings you would not get your drives detected correctly in safe mode...

oeNeo · 13-03-2004 5:33pm

Boots up fine and detects the CDRW drive in safe mode. Tried to reboot in normal mode but didnt get past the logo screen again.

Dr Bolouswki · 13-03-2004 5:58pm

Can it see the DVD ROM in safe mode?

If it sees all three devices in safe mode its safe to say it is not a jumper / BIOS issue...

If it does see all 3 devices in safe mode try removing or disabling either optical device in device manager and working from there... windows will then be forced to reinstall it's driver on reboot and may set it correctly?

oeNeo · 14-03-2004 4:19pm

Yeps it can see everything in safe mode. I'll try disabling one and working from there. Danke.

Sir Random · 14-03-2004 4:43pm

What sort of mobo have you?
Did you install the mobo drivers on the new drive?

oeNeo · 14-03-2004 6:57pm

MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD. MS-6382

VIA Technologies Inc. VT8366/A

No I havent installed any drivers for the mobo.

oeNeo · 15-03-2004 12:18am

I disabled the CDRW in safe mode and then XP booted up fine. When I went to enable it Device Manager froze. I ctrl-alt-del and close it, go back in and it says it's enabled. I put in a cd but it isn't working. Things like My Computer and Device Manager are all slow and chuggy until I disable it again.

Sir Random · 15-03-2004 12:27am

I presume it's an oem PC (HP?) so it should have come with a driver installation CD for the mobo/audio/video/modem/lan etc. It might have some drivers on floppy, but the chipset (mobo) drivers are usually on a CD.
You could try installing those drivers or download the latest 4in1 drivers for your chipset.

I think VT8366/A is your southbridge chipset. The Northbridge will have a heatsink on it so you can't easily check it out. You should be able to find the exact chipset details by googling for your PC model.

About Via chipset drivers:
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=300

oeNeo · 15-03-2004 7:19pm

I'll try and get the drivers so. Thanks

Hard drive gone kaputt

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