Hard Drive Needs to be Checked for Errors everytime WindowsXP Boot

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Guest

I have a 250GB SATA hard drive and just lately, everytime I boot up windows
it says that the drive needs to be checked for errors. This is not the main
harddrive where windows is stored... it's just an additional storage drive
and I've had it for quite some time with no problems.

I had a problem just last week where this particular drive was no longer
showing up in WindowsXP and I reset the CMOS settings (by clearing the memory
on the motherboard) and then everything was ok again. However, everytime
windows starts now it wants to check this drive for errors even if windows
shut down correctly with no problems. Any suggestions or advice is
appreciated. Thanks!
 
First, it is rarely necessary or wise to change CMOS (aka BIOS) settings to
get something to work that was already working, unless you have been the
victim of a virus, or some electrical problem, or were tweaking the BIOS
just prior to the hardware failing to work.

However, as a person with SATA drives, I can say that the SATA cables do not
seem to engage as securely as the old fashioned IDE cables. Thus, it is
possible for the cable to become loose if the PC is moved, even a little.
Power off and check the cables, especially at the hard drive end of things.
If they are loose, push them in gently.

Since the disk is larger than 128 Gig, you must be running XP with SP-1 (or
higher) and with 48-bit LBA enabled. Otherwise, XP may see only the first
128 Gig or so. Worse, it is possible that it could get confused about data
beyond that point on the disk.

Do you have the latest SATA drivers for the disk controller (usually part of
the motherboard, unless you installed a separate PCI board). Since this is
not the drive with XP, you should be able to update the drivers without
doing a repair install of XP.

Next, try running CHKDSK on one of the partition(s) on the SATA disk. Do
not use the /F nor the /R option and XP should just check, not fix. If it
reports errors, then run with the /F option, reboot, and re-test without
options. If the problem is still there, try the /R option, which may run
for hours during the reboot process. Re-test without any options. If the
error still persists, try downloading diagnostic tools from the disk maker
and run some NON-destructive tests. It is possible that the disk is bad,
although that is not likely.
 
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