CHKDSK....

  • Thread starter William B. Lurie
  • Start date
W

William B. Lurie

Hard drive developed bad sectors. Copied master partition
to new 80GB drive. Set Master partition to 13GB size.
Full system occupying 8GB, leaving 5 GB.

Ran Seagate SeaTools diagnostics, and it failed "File Structure Test"
Their recommendation: do Defrag and Chkdsk.....which I did,
including chkdsk/r.

At end of chkdsk, after it deleted 5 corrupt attribute records,
and inserted 5 news ones, and replaced bad clusters in
\windows\regist~2\{etcetera, chkdsk finished with a message which
flashed by, faster than I could record, something about
"insufficient space ----+?+x bitmap" and then rebooted.

I don't mind it having found things to fix (although I'm not all
that enthusiastic about bad clusters on a fresh-from-stock WD drive),
but what's this "insufficient space" business, and what do I do next?

Bill Lurie
 
W

William B. Lurie

William said:
Hard drive developed bad sectors. Copied master partition
to new 80GB drive. Set Master partition to 13GB size.
Full system occupying 8GB, leaving 5 GB.

Ran Seagate SeaTools diagnostics, and it failed "File Structure Test"
Their recommendation: do Defrag and Chkdsk.....which I did,
including chkdsk/r.

At end of chkdsk, after it deleted 5 corrupt attribute records,
and inserted 5 news ones, and replaced bad clusters in
\windows\regist~2\{etcetera, chkdsk finished with a message which
flashed by, faster than I could record, something about
"insufficient space ----+?+x bitmap" and then rebooted.

I don't mind it having found things to fix (although I'm not all
that enthusiastic about bad clusters on a fresh-from-stock WD drive),
but what's this "insufficient space" business, and what do I do next?

Bill Lurie
Continuing on with the same problem, I made the entire 80GB drive
just one partition, containing the OS. Running chkdsk/r, it
found on corrupted attribute, which it deleted, and then in a
later stage, inserted it......no bad clusters, but after running
all 5 stages of chkdsk, it closed with the message "Insufficient
disk space to correct bitmap". Partition Magic shows the drive
to be 78GB, used 8GB, unallocated 68GB, and I'd appreciate
knowing what it means be "Insufficient Disk Space". Thank you.
Bill
 
R

Richard Urban

Bet you that the drive in question is formatted as fat32, which has a 4 gig
limit for a single file.

The repairs may be trying to create a larger file, hence the error message.
The O/S seems to treat a single oversize file the same as an actual lack of
drive space. At least as far as I have seen, it throws up a similar/same
error message for both!

NTFS is ALWAYS better!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :)

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
W

William B. Lurie

Richard said:
Bet you that the drive in question is formatted as fat32, which has a 4 gig
limit for a single file.

The repairs may be trying to create a larger file, hence the error message.
The O/S seems to treat a single oversize file the same as an actual lack of
drive space. At least as far as I have seen, it throws up a similar/same
error message for both!

NTFS is ALWAYS better!
Nope, you lose that bet, Richard. It's XP Pro, has been
NTFS since it was created. I'll do some more sperimenting.
Bill
 
S

Sharon F

(although I'm not all
that enthusiastic about bad clusters on a fresh-from-stock WD drive),

Bill, I think this is a concern that deserves a closer look. Problem drives
can do very weird things. Better to get a "good" drive than to try
troubleshooting problems that are due to a drive in poor condition. That
kind of troubleshooting is always a lose/lose proposition. Replace the
drive. If the problem continues, then troubleshoot.

I am not a hardware expert. The terminology below may be wrong as may be my
understanding of how hard drives work. It's the general "gist" from what
I've read and what I've been taught.

A small number of bad clusters is considered normal.

With older hardware, one wasn't concerned unless this number started to
grow steadily over time. Bad clusters were flagged as they occurred and
life moved on. Again, no concern unless that number of bad clusters
continued to grow.

On the other hand, "newer" hard drives have a built in "slush fund" of
spare clusters. (Quotes around "newer" since this has been around for
several years now.) These are intended to be used behind the scenes for
replacing an occasional bad cluster. In most cases the allotment is
sufficient for the life of the drive and the end user doesn't even realize
that slush fund existed.

However, when the end user sees bad clusters in disk tools results that
indicates there already has been an accumulation of bad clusters. The slush
fund is used up. This is why ,nowadays, you so often see the quick advice
to "replace the drive" when bad clusters are mentioned.

Another point: You're using Seagate tools on a Western Digital drive.
Shouldn't be a problem but be aware that they may misreport specialty areas
of the drive that were created by a different drive manufacturer (such as a
slush area). Chkdsk is not as refined of a tool as these manufacturer
utilities. When it is seeing bad clusters, it is most likely the regular
old fashioned kind - those located in the area of the drive that the
average user would be concerned about.

So if just Seagate is reporting a bad cluster - it may be looking in areas
that normally aren't a concern for everyday use. If Seagate *and* chkdsk
are reporting a bad cluster, contact the manufacturer for a replacement.
Since it's fresh from stock, it is still under warranty.

Hard drives are "cheap" right now. Lemons and less than perfect drives seem
to make it out the door and onto the shelf more often than they used to.
One has to stay more on guard for bad units but luckily most manufacturers
are quick to replace them with usable drives.
 
R

Ron Martell

William B. Lurie said:
Hard drive developed bad sectors. Copied master partition
to new 80GB drive. Set Master partition to 13GB size.
Full system occupying 8GB, leaving 5 GB.

Ran Seagate SeaTools diagnostics, and it failed "File Structure Test"
Their recommendation: do Defrag and Chkdsk.....which I did,
including chkdsk/r.

At end of chkdsk, after it deleted 5 corrupt attribute records,
and inserted 5 news ones, and replaced bad clusters in
\windows\regist~2\{etcetera, chkdsk finished with a message which
flashed by, faster than I could record, something about
"insufficient space ----+?+x bitmap" and then rebooted.

I don't mind it having found things to fix (although I'm not all
that enthusiastic about bad clusters on a fresh-from-stock WD drive),
but what's this "insufficient space" business, and what do I do next?

Bill Lurie

Western Digital drive? You should be using Western Digital's
diagnostic utilities and not Seagate's.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
W

William B. Lurie

Ron said:
Western Digital drive? You should be using Western Digital's
diagnostic utilities and not Seagate's.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
You're right, Ron, but the WD Data Lifeguard Tools that came with their
drives doesn't seem to give me any way to check the drives. So I use
what I have until they answer my request. It says it has Diagnostics but
I haven't found them.
 
D

D.Currie

William B. Lurie said:
Continuing on with the same problem, I made the entire 80GB drive
just one partition, containing the OS. Running chkdsk/r, it
found on corrupted attribute, which it deleted, and then in a
later stage, inserted it......no bad clusters, but after running
all 5 stages of chkdsk, it closed with the message "Insufficient
disk space to correct bitmap". Partition Magic shows the drive
to be 78GB, used 8GB, unallocated 68GB, and I'd appreciate
knowing what it means be "Insufficient Disk Space". Thank you.
Bill

Seems that you've answered you space question right here. You have an 8 Gb
partition that you're using, which you said was the amount the system was
filling before. So there's no room for anything more. And you've got 68Gb
that's unallocated, which means there's no partition created there.

You need to expand your 8 Gb partition to whatever size you want, then
partition the rest as you see fit.
 
W

William B. Lurie

D.Currie said:
Seems that you've answered you space question right here. You have an 8 Gb
partition that you're using, which you said was the amount the system was
filling before. So there's no room for anything more. And you've got 68Gb
that's unallocated, which means there's no partition created there.

You need to expand your 8 Gb partition to whatever size you want, then
partition the rest as you see fit.
No, that's not it, Mr. C...... I might not have expressed it right.
I have no situation where I have an 8 GB partition filled with
8 GB of info and no unused portion. I got that error message when
I had a 13GB partition with 8 GB of info, 5 GB unused, and it was
telling me there was insufficient space to correct the bitmap.

I'm taking steps to run Western Digital diagnostics on WD drives as
suggested.
WBL
 
W

William B. Lurie

Sharon, as usual, you hit the nail on th head, and pointed
me toward what I believe is a happy solution to my faulty
hard drive problems. There is still one small anomaly.

Despite their incomplete explanation as to how to us their
Data Lifeguard Tools, which had inhibited me from testing
W-D drives with W-D software, I managed to add what was
needed and now I have tested all my drives with quite happy
results. A drive which showed 10 contiguous bad sectors
when tested with Seagate's SeaTools.......showed *none*
when tested with W-D's tools, and none when subsequently
checked with chkdsk/r .

The mystery, which I'm willing to remain as such, is whether
W-D's Tools fixed (or marked as unusable) the sectors which
Seagate reported, or whether Seagate's SeaTools just will not
give believable results for W-D drives.

Thanks for the sage advice, and thanks for forcing me to use
the right tools for the task. I hope other readers will keep
these things in mind as well.

Bill Lurie
 
G

Guest

Running Seatools on a W.D. drive is like running a G.M. diagnostic program on
a Ford.

In 20 years you haven't really learned anything - have you?

I suggest you go back to a shoe box and 3x5 index cards, as a computer is
too complicated for you to handle!

Maybe you will be wanting to change the statement you made a few months ago
about how you have 20 years experience with computers. As a plain user,
maybe. As a computer enthusiast - NO WAY!
 
S

Sharon F

The mystery, which I'm willing to remain as such, is whether
W-D's Tools fixed (or marked as unusable) the sectors which
Seagate reported, or whether Seagate's SeaTools just will not
give believable results for W-D drives.

Hi, Bill. It's possible that the Seagate tools are reporting the bad
sectors in the "slush fund." An accurate report but one that is not telling
the whole story. I would expect that the WD tools will speak up when that
special allowance is used up and it's time to alert the user.
 
W

William B. Lurie

Sharon said:
Hi, Bill. It's possible that the Seagate tools are reporting the bad
sectors in the "slush fund." An accurate report but one that is not telling
the whole story. I would expect that the WD tools will speak up when that
special allowance is used up and it's time to alert the user.
Right. And except for the useless and boring kibitzers,
I've enjoyed the help I always get here. Thanks again,
Sharon.

Bill Lurie
 
D

D.Currie

William B. Lurie said:
No, that's not it, Mr. C...... I might not have expressed it right.
I have no situation where I have an 8 GB partition filled with
8 GB of info and no unused portion. I got that error message when
I had a 13GB partition with 8 GB of info, 5 GB unused, and it was
telling me there was insufficient space to correct the bitmap.

I'm taking steps to run Western Digital diagnostics on WD drives as
suggested.
WBL


In that case, Partition Magic is reporting it incorrectly, unless you
somehow mistyped the 68 unallocated and 8 used as you wrote above. Does
Windows report it differently? If so, there's something amiss, as they
should be reading the drive the same way.

If it was me, I'd be a bit wary of the drive as it is. Might be best off
copying the data off, removing the partitions, creating partitions and
formatting from within Windows and then copying your data back again.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top