CHKDSK reports unrecoverable problems

[Kevin]

My 5-month-old Maxtor One-Touch external HD (200GB USB
and Firewire capable) has become unreadable. Windows
Explorer reports it as "Local Drive E:\" and as
unformatted. It's obviously formatted since I've been
using it for 5 months! Disk Management and the "Safely
Remove Hardware" button identify the drive as the Maxtor
One-Touch. This ID comes up the same after plugging it
into two different laptops; both Win XP, one SP2, the
other SP1, so it's not an SP2 problem. I've run
CHKDSK /F under Recovery Console. Almost 48 hours later
CHKDSK /F quit at 75% and reports "one or more
unrecoverable problems."

The only thing done with the Maxtor between the last
successful use and the problem is that I tried defragging
it with Norton's Speed Disk. That went over 15 hours
without getting 60% of the drive defragged and then
locked up. Could Speed Disk have mangled a critical file?

Any ideas what to try next? Maxtor and laptop drives are
all NTFS

 

[Steve N.]

My 5-month-old Maxtor One-Touch external HD (200GB USB
and Firewire capable) has become unreadable. Windows
Explorer reports it as "Local Drive E:\" and as
unformatted. It's obviously formatted since I've been
using it for 5 months! Disk Management and the "Safely
Remove Hardware" button identify the drive as the Maxtor
One-Touch. This ID comes up the same after plugging it
into two different laptops; both Win XP, one SP2, the
other SP1, so it's not an SP2 problem. I've run
CHKDSK /F under Recovery Console. Almost 48 hours later
CHKDSK /F quit at 75% and reports "one or more
unrecoverable problems."

The only thing done with the Maxtor between the last
successful use and the problem is that I tried defragging
it with Norton's Speed Disk. That went over 15 hours
without getting 60% of the drive defragged and then
locked up. Could Speed Disk have mangled a critical file?

Any ideas what to try next? Maxtor and laptop drives are
all NTFS

Could be a bad sector, run CHKDSK /R and the MaxBlast utilities to do a
surface scan.

Steve

 

[Peter]

I've found most Norton sucks. Try Diskeeper Professional, works a treat.
(It's really the upgraded version of Windows own native defrag)

 

[Jon]

Have a closer look at the specific error messages that occur when you run
chkdsk. eg error messages that precede the aborting.

May be entries in event viewer to help at the time you ran chkdsk

Jon

 

[Kevin]

Thanks to those who replied.

The only message that CHKDSK has reported under either /F
or /R is "The volume appears to contain one or more
unrecoverable problems."

I don't believe there's anything wrong with the data
itself; it's just that Windows can't see the data on it.
I'm showing my ignorance here, but could this be an MBR
problem or something similar that FIXMBR et.al. could
address?

 

[Kevin]

My apologies! I've meant to refer to CHKDSK /P and /R,
not /F!

 

[Steve N.]

My apologies! I've meant to refer to CHKDSK /P and /R,
not /F!

That's ok. The /F is valid when executing from a command prompt window,
the /P is essencially the same thing but executed from Recovery Console.

Can you read data off the disk if it is slaved to another computer?

Steve

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

Are you using it through USB or Firewire?

Unfortunately, some IDE->USB2 bridges are not BigLBA compatible and cannot
be used with drives>137GB. Strangely, IDE->FireWire bridge in the same
enclosure may work OK.