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HarleyD

11-15-06, 4:38pm

I have a couple of drives hooked to a Promise Ultra 100 IDE controller.
One of the drive acts real sluggish at times. A check disk of the drive is below.
It took the chkdsk about an hour to run. I think the drive is going.

QUOTE

C:\>chkdsk r: /F/R/V
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is R-Disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
Index verification completed.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3
Cleaning up 2 unused index entries from index $SI
Cleaning up 2 unused index entries from index $SD
Cleaning up 2 unused security descriptors.
Fixing mirror copy of the security descriptors da
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 2254
of name \Backups\Quicken\SIE6A5~1.QDF.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

117210208 KB total disk space.
51456672 KB in 9002 files.
4368 KB in 689 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
81536 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
65667628 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
29302552 total allocation units on disk.
16416907 allocation units available on disk.

Alan

11-15-06, 4:54pm

What brand hard drive? Download and run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool. It will tell you if there are physical drive errors.

HarleyD

11-15-06, 4:56pm

It's a Western Digital. I'll go look for the diag program.

Alan

11-15-06, 5:09pm

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

I think you want Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows

HarleyD

11-15-06, 5:10pm

I ran the other one and it gave me this on the Quick scan:

Krunk

11-15-06, 5:28pm

you might want to run the diagnostics test when the hdd is not connected to the controller.

by that i mean, connect it directly to another ide controller (either one on your current motherboard) or another system. if you think the problem is either your controller or hdd, running the diag test with the hdd still connected to that controller will just let you know if there's a problem. won't really tell you which device is causing the problem.

//krunk (^_^x)

HarleyD

11-16-06, 8:50am

Well, I ran the extended diag on the drive for 2.5 hours and it came back with fixing 1 cluster. I ran the quick scan again and it ran clean. I rebooted and I noticed the Promise controller did not find the drive. The system would hang on the starting windows logo screen. I tried booting a couple of times and then went to bed. This morning it was still on the logo screen. I reset it again and this time the system booted.
I took the covers off and the drive was whinning a little bit. I went to take it out and it was too hot to touch. I had to let it cool down for 10 minutes before I could pick it up.

I replaced with one of my external drives and the system seems fine now.

Of course...

QUOTE

Model No Status Exp Date
HD1200JR Out of Limited Warranty 7/26/2006†

Alan

11-16-06, 9:08am

QUOTE(HarleyD @ 11-16-06, 11:49am)

....I took the covers off and the drive was whinning a little bit. I went to take it out and it was too hot to touch. I had to let it cool down for 10 minutes before I could pick it up.

Yupp. I like to use the anology to an engine siezing. You'll be lucky if you can read any data from the drive if you reconnect it. The old freezer trick may help - put the drive in the freezer for a few hours (in a plastic freezer bag) then try connecting it to the PC when it's nice and cold. You might be able to retrieve data off of it that way. I like to connect the drive with an external USB (or firewire) adapter when I do this.

HarleyD

11-16-06, 9:10am

The drive I replaced it with was a mirror of the bad one.

HarleyD

11-17-06, 9:01am

The drive that was sitting below the hot drive lost it's partition table.

I've got FindNTFS running now and copying the files from the lost partition.

Alan

11-17-06, 11:46am

QUOTE(HarleyD @ 11-17-06, 12:01pm)

The drive that was sitting below the hot drive lost it's partition table.

I've got FindNTFS running now and copying the files from the lost partition.

I've seen that before with certain Point of Sale systems. They have a power supply that overheats and gets so hot that sometimes it starts to affect the hard drive. The power supply sits right above the hard drive in these systems.

HarleyD

11-19-06, 3:30pm

The freezer trick didn't work. I tried to bring it up in a USB enclosure and you nearly needed ear plugs. It would sound like a jet engine for 15 seconds and then shut down.

Alan

11-19-06, 4:09pm

200 ways to revive a hard drive
The main three are:
1 - Freeze it
2 - Drop it
3 - Hit it
Very scientific

qwex

11-19-06, 8:24pm

heh, I recently had the "smart" system report an error on a WD drive, also out of warranty. I can't get the WD diagnostic tool to boot up, so I might as well try installing the drive in another machine and try running it from windows. I haven't tried freezing it though - why bother when I can pick up a bigger drive for $20 on BF this week?

JDMnAR

11-21-06, 5:53am

QUOTE(qwex @ 11-19-06, 10:24pm)

I haven't tried freezing it though - why bother when I can pick up a bigger drive for $20 on BF this week?

The freezer trick is just so you can try to retrieve data off of the bad drive. It isn't a permanent fix, and you wouldn't want to continue using the drive. Even if it does work, you would still want to pick up a drive on BF.

Krunk

11-23-06, 3:10am

i've been told spinrite ( http://www.grc.com/default.htm ) is the best utility to recover data from a dying hdd. however, it's not free.

//krunk (^_^x)

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