Disk Doctor stalls at 43% every time

[KingoftheBungle]

Hi
I have a Maxtor 160GB 3.5" drive in a USB/Firewire external case
(chipset Prolific 3507). When I try to use Norton Disk Doctor on it,
the test stalls at 43% complete, every time. I tried Check Disk on it
and that also stalls, both in Windows and upon reboot before Windows
loads. It's exactly the same with Win2K on my desktop and WinXP Home
on my laptop.

I tried updating the Prolific controller firmware but that makes no
difference, as does going back to older firmware.


The disk seems to work fine. I downloaded Seatools for Windows and it
checks out OK with that. What's going on?

K

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi
I have a Maxtor 160GB 3.5" drive in a USB/Firewire external case
(chipset Prolific 3507). When I try to use Norton Disk Doctor on it,
the test stalls at 43% complete, every time. I tried Check Disk on it
and that also stalls, both in Windows and upon reboot before Windows
loads. It's exactly the same with Win2K on my desktop and WinXP Home
on my laptop.

I tried updating the Prolific controller firmware but that makes no
difference, as does going back to older firmware.

The disk seems to work fine. I downloaded Seatools for Windows and it
checks out OK with that. What's going on?

I would think the disk is defective. For a real analysis you have
to remove it from the enclosure, connect it via (S)ATA cable
and run a full SMART selftest on it.

Arno

 

[KingoftheBungle]

I would think the disk is defective. For a real analysis you have
to remove it from the enclosure, connect it via (S)ATA cable
and run a full SMART selftest on it.

Arno

I did exactly what you say - took the drive out of the casing and put
it in my PC on an ATA cable, then ran Seatools for DOS from a floppy.
The drive passed all the tests - Short and Long. SMART protection is
enabled but hasn't been triggered. As far as those test are concernned
the drive is fine.

But when I went into Windows with the drive still on the ATA cable and
ran Disk Doctor or Check Disk, the tests still stalled, stating
'unspecified error' reasons.

Is there another check I can run - perhaps a utility which will give a
more helpful answer/diagnosis? If it's the file structure that's
damaged (it's formatted as FAT32) can anything correct it? I'd hate to
lose all that data, but if I copy it all over to another drive, will
the errors simply be duplicated?

K

 

[KingoftheBungle]

OK, solved it. I booted the PC to a command prompt with an old Win98
disk and ran Scandisk on the suspect drive. It found a few cross-
linked and corrupted files and repaired the directory structure. Why
Windows Check Disk and Norton DD couldn't manage to do the same job, I
am at a loss to understand. Are we still reliant on DOS for this kind
of housekeeping?

K

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

OK, solved it. I booted the PC to a command prompt with an old Win98
disk and ran Scandisk on the suspect drive. It found a few cross-
linked and corrupted files and repaired the directory structure. Why
Windows Check Disk and Norton DD couldn't manage to do the same job,
I am at a loss to understand.

Are we still reliant on DOS for this kind of housekeeping?

The opposite happens too.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I did exactly what you say - took the drive out of the casing and put
it in my PC on an ATA cable, then ran Seatools for DOS from a floppy.
The drive passed all the tests - Short and Long. SMART protection is
enabled but hasn't been triggered. As far as those test are concernned
the drive is fine.

But when I went into Windows with the drive still on the ATA cable and
ran Disk Doctor or Check Disk, the tests still stalled, stating
'unspecified error' reasons.

Very strange. Maybe a bug in Disk Doctor?

Is there another check I can run - perhaps a utility which will give a
more helpful answer/diagnosis? If it's the file structure that's
damaged (it's formatted as FAT32) can anything correct it? I'd hate to
lose all that data, but if I copy it all over to another drive, will
the errors simply be duplicated?

If you copy by file, it should not. Unless Disk Doctor pokes around
inside files (which it should not do, I think).

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

OK, solved it. I booted the PC to a command prompt with an old Win98
disk and ran Scandisk on the suspect drive. It found a few cross-
linked and corrupted files and repaired the directory structure. Why
Windows Check Disk and Norton DD couldn't manage to do the same job, I
am at a loss to understand. Are we still reliant on DOS for this kind
of housekeeping?

First congrats on solving it.

As for the question, quite frankly I have given up completely
on Windows/DOS stuff for system administration. Stuff from
Microsoft is very often just broken. Commercial tools
often emulate the "Microsoft quality level".

I do backups, filesystem-checks and modifications all from Linux (for
fat32 as well), since it has turned out to be far less hassle.

Arno

 

[Svend Olaf Mikkelsen]

Hi
I have a Maxtor 160GB 3.5" drive in a USB/Firewire external case
(chipset Prolific 3507). When I try to use Norton Disk Doctor on it,
the test stalls at 43% complete, every time. I tried Check Disk on it
and that also stalls, both in Windows and upon reboot before Windows
loads. It's exactly the same with Win2K on my desktop and WinXP Home
on my laptop.

I tried updating the Prolific controller firmware but that makes no
difference, as does going back to older firmware.


The disk seems to work fine. I downloaded Seatools for Windows and it
checks out OK with that. What's going on?

K

It could be the Windows 2000/XP USB 128 GB problem.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Svend Olaf Mikkelsen wrote in message news:[email protected]

It could be the Windows 2000/XP USB 128 GB problem.

Or not.