Drive Bad - Backup and Replace

[Terry Smythe]

A friend's hard drive crashed. I've reinstalled WinXP Home, and it seems
to be running OK, but a front-end error message comes up every time on boot:

Drive Bad - Backup and Replace.

Is there a utility out there somewhere that will examine the hard drive and
report what might be causing this error?

His motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-ES, socket 478, Intel 3.2ghz, 1 gig
memory.

Thoughts of others?

Regards,

Terry Smythe
Winnipeg, Canada
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Brian A.]

A friend's hard drive crashed. I've reinstalled WinXP Home, and it seems to be
running OK, but a front-end error message comes up every time on boot:

Drive Bad - Backup and Replace.

Is there a utility out there somewhere that will examine the hard drive and report
what might be causing this error?

His motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-ES, socket 478, Intel 3.2ghz, 1 gig memory.

Thoughts of others?

Regards,

Terry Smythe
Winnipeg, Canada
(e-mail address removed)

Check the hard drive manufacturer support site for their diagnostic utility.
However, I suggest you back up any important data/files you can't afford to lose
first before doing anything further, it appears the drive is going South.

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Patrick Keenan]

A friend's hard drive crashed. I've reinstalled WinXP Home, and it seems
to be running OK, but a front-end error message comes up every time on
boot:

Drive Bad - Backup and Replace.

Is there a utility out there somewhere that will examine the hard drive
and report what might be causing this error?

You've already done that and got that data - the drive is failing. Trust
it. That message comes ultimately from within the drive.

Poking further would be less than helpful, because failing drives have
limited time. You won't fix it, and instead may get to a situation where
you've used up its time and it can only be sent to a recovery service to get
the data off.

Remove that drive from the system - stop using it now.

His motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-ES, socket 478, Intel 3.2ghz, 1 gig
memory.

Thoughts of others?

Get another drive and install to it. Large drives are cheap. Then,
re-attach the old drive and get the data off it.

Making an image of it (using something like the Acronis True Image trial) is
a great way to do this, because it does the job *quickly* and speed matters
here. Raw file copying may take hours and hours. Imaging can take
minutes. When done, disconnect the old drive, mount the image, and
extract the files you want.


HTH
-pk

 

[DL]

You allready have the utility, thats were the msg origonates

 

[Terry Smythe]

Check the hard drive manufacturer support site for their diagnostic
utility.

Thank you, I should have thought of that. It's a Maxtor, now Seagate, went
to their site, downloaded SeaTools, and verified the drive developed some
bad sectors, failed all tests. Went further into their site and discovered
that his hard drive is still under warranty. That will be exercised next
week.

In the meantime, he does not want to do without, so he bought a new drive
locally. As I was transferring files across, his Maxtor drive began to
have ever more files "unable to copy". Got about 98% of his ~98,000 files
safely across. Hopefully, his DVD burner will be exercised a little more
frequently in the future.

Many thanks for the advice, appreciated.

Regards,

Terry Smythe

 

[Brian A.]

Thank you, I should have thought of that. It's a Maxtor, now Seagate, went to
their site, downloaded SeaTools, and verified the drive developed some bad sectors,
failed all tests. Went further into their site and discovered that his hard drive
is still under warranty. That will be exercised next week.

Good deal, it's not to often you find it's still under warrant. For me it would be
the day after it ended.

In the meantime, he does not want to do without, so he bought a new drive locally.
As I was transferring files across, his Maxtor drive began to have ever more files
"unable to copy". Got about 98% of his ~98,000 files safely across.
Hopefully, his DVD burner will be exercised a little more frequently in the future.

That's a great percentage, another day or two and it may have been much worse.

With the new drive and if the one is being replaced, might want to think about using
one as a clone or at the least keep an i,age saved to one of them.

Many thanks for the advice, appreciated.

You're quite welcome, have fun.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375