Hard Drive Failing -- Not Sure What to Do

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G

Guest

Hi,

I have two drives, C: for system drive, D: for data. C: was part of
original PC and is 3 years old, D: is my add-on and is less than a year old.
Today, my wife tried to save a file to D: and the computer did not
"recognize" that a D: drive even existed. Then, the machine froze. Upon
reboot, I get to the desktop, but the machine freezes again.

So, I booted from the Windows CD and went into the Recover utility. If I
try to do a DIR of D: I get the msg, "An error occurred during the directory
enumeration." I ran a chkdsk /p on D: and at 25% complete I got the error,
"The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverabe problems."

I am not that savvy at this stuff. What do I do next? Is there any chance
of recovery? Should I "cash it in" and figure that all my data is lost? If
I continue to poke around, am I going to further damage the drive? Is it
time to find a PC guru to help me?

Any advice would be helpful and appreciated.
 
Bill said:
Hi,

I have two drives, C: for system drive, D: for data. C: was part of
original PC and is 3 years old, D: is my add-on and is less than a year old.
Today, my wife tried to save a file to D: and the computer did not
"recognize" that a D: drive even existed. Then, the machine froze. Upon
reboot, I get to the desktop, but the machine freezes again.

So, I booted from the Windows CD and went into the Recover utility. If I
try to do a DIR of D: I get the msg, "An error occurred during the directory
enumeration." I ran a chkdsk /p on D: and at 25% complete I got the error,
"The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverabe problems."

I am not that savvy at this stuff. What do I do next? Is there any chance
of recovery? Should I "cash it in" and figure that all my data is lost? If
I continue to poke around, am I going to further damage the drive? Is it
time to find a PC guru to help me?

Any advice would be helpful and appreciated.
Click to expand...

There are proffessionals that are sometimes able to recover data from
failing hard drives, but I would imagine their services are expensive.
This is on of those ocasions for regreting the lack of a backup. Many
people think any use of the drive would lead to further deterioration.
 
I was able to get the machine to boot and looked in the event viewer. It
shows a long list of error msgs starting this AM. The errors start with
probably 50 entries with the following error

Event ID 7: device as a bad block

Then the following error msgs began popping up at 8am and are sprinked
throughout the day (as we tried to get the machine to boot):

Event ID 15: device is not ready for access yet
Event ID 11: device detected a controller error
Event ID 57: system failed to flush data to the transaction og. Corruption
may occur
Event ID 51: error was detected on device during a paging operation

Does this change anyone's opinion of my situation?

Bill
 
Bill G said:
Hi,

I have two drives, C: for system drive, D: for data. C: was part of
original PC and is 3 years old, D: is my add-on and is less than a year old.
Today, my wife tried to save a file to D: and the computer did not
"recognize" that a D: drive even existed. Then, the machine froze. Upon
reboot, I get to the desktop, but the machine freezes again.

So, I booted from the Windows CD and went into the Recover utility. If I
try to do a DIR of D: I get the msg, "An error occurred during the directory
enumeration." I ran a chkdsk /p on D: and at 25% complete I got the error,
"The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverabe problems."

I am not that savvy at this stuff. What do I do next? Is there any chance
of recovery? Should I "cash it in" and figure that all my data is lost? If
I continue to poke around, am I going to further damage the drive? Is it
time to find a PC guru to help me?

Any advice would be helpful and appreciated.
Click to expand...

How valuable is the data on this drive?

The best available tool for this type of work is Spinrite from Gibson
Research (http://www.grc.com). The new version 6 of Spinrite will
work on NTFS drives as well as FAT32 and FAT16.

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."
 
Hello Bill
This is just a shot and has worked in the past, take the drive and put it in
the freezer for about a hour and then install it and sometimes they will
work long enough to retrieve the data.

Data recovery is very expensive and is no guarantee it will work.

--
Good Day
River Rat




Hi,

I have two drives, C: for system drive, D: for data. C: was part of
original PC and is 3 years old, D: is my add-on and is less than a year old.
Today, my wife tried to save a file to D: and the computer did not
"recognize" that a D: drive even existed. Then, the machine froze. Upon
reboot, I get to the desktop, but the machine freezes again.

So, I booted from the Windows CD and went into the Recover utility. If I
try to do a DIR of D: I get the msg, "An error occurred during the directory
enumeration." I ran a chkdsk /p on D: and at 25% complete I got the error,
"The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverabe problems."

I am not that savvy at this stuff. What do I do next? Is there any chance
of recovery? Should I "cash it in" and figure that all my data is lost? If
I continue to poke around, am I going to further damage the drive? Is it
time to find a PC guru to help me?

Any advice would be helpful and appreciated.
 
To quote others:

"...put the drive in a sealed ziplock bag and remove as much air as
possible. Plan ahead and proceed as quickly as possible."

Condensation from the room air on the cold drive could permanently damage
the drive and/or your PC.

r.
 
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