A
Angelfood MacSpade
Now that this has happened to two consecutive hard drives, I'm
becoming really paranoid...
Short story version: I use XP (SP2) Disk Management to format a WD
180GB ATA drive as a single NTFS partition using 64K clusters (for
video recordings). I copy some data onto the drive and all appears
fine until I power off/on. Then XP sees the drive as 100% empty with
NO file system. I repeat the process several more times. Sometimes the
drive survives one or two power on/off cycles. I've done full and
quick formats. Then I try the drive in another computer running XP and
this time it can't even be formatted. I've used this drive for over a
year without problems (originally formatted using default clusters).
Now it's a dead drive.
So now I install a new replacement drive, a Seagate 120GB SATA drive.
Note this is an SATA, not an ATA drive, using an entirely different
controller. I do a full format with 64K clusters and the exact same
scenario as before happens - XP thinks there's no file system! I try
it again with 32K clusters and the same thing happens. I have yet to
try it with any other cluster size.
Note that Partition Magic and other disc utilities don't see any
problem with the drive at all (i.e. see it as having an NTFS file
system). Any ideas what's going on here?
becoming really paranoid...
Short story version: I use XP (SP2) Disk Management to format a WD
180GB ATA drive as a single NTFS partition using 64K clusters (for
video recordings). I copy some data onto the drive and all appears
fine until I power off/on. Then XP sees the drive as 100% empty with
NO file system. I repeat the process several more times. Sometimes the
drive survives one or two power on/off cycles. I've done full and
quick formats. Then I try the drive in another computer running XP and
this time it can't even be formatted. I've used this drive for over a
year without problems (originally formatted using default clusters).
Now it's a dead drive.
So now I install a new replacement drive, a Seagate 120GB SATA drive.
Note this is an SATA, not an ATA drive, using an entirely different
controller. I do a full format with 64K clusters and the exact same
scenario as before happens - XP thinks there's no file system! I try
it again with 32K clusters and the same thing happens. I have yet to
try it with any other cluster size.
Note that Partition Magic and other disc utilities don't see any
problem with the drive at all (i.e. see it as having an NTFS file
system). Any ideas what's going on here?