Hard drive problems.. any good freeware available ( diagnostic or recover)

G

george1234

Having hardware problems on my disk dirves, and wonder what free ware
tools are available. Is payware spinrtie still worth the cost (used
to be a long time ago) . Is there a utility that will "refresh teh
drive. I'm especially interested in something that will refresh the
data

--G
Spinrite does this
1) Examine the Surfaces
2) Recover Unreadable Data
3) Refresh the Surfaces
4) Locate Surface Errors - reads all data twice,
5) Restore Good Sectors

My problems are
~~~~Problem 1
On one drive the smart test fails
5 Reallocated Sector Count 584 FAIL

On this drive the WDC data lifegurad diagnostics won't even run...
this one is headed for the circular file

~~~~Problem 2

On another I'm getting checkdsk failure (running chkdsk /v after
running chkdsk /r)
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Deleting index entry tnet1130.sys in index $I30 of file 31.
....
Detected minor inconsistencies on the drive. This is not a
corruption.
Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.

~~~ system
athlon 64 w2k sp4
 
J

jmatt

Scandisk is called CHKDSK in XP
http://www.activewin.com/winxp/tips/basic/3.shtml
http://www.ultratech-llc.com/KB/ASP/FileView.asp?File=/KB/ScanDisk.TXT
Windows XP Tips
Where has Scan Disk gone?
Posted By: Byron Hinson

Scandisk is not a part of Windows XP - instead you get the improved
CHKDSK. You can use the Error-checking tool to check for file system
errors and bad sectors on your hard disk.

1: Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.

2: On the File menu, click Properties.

3: On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.

4: Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery
of bad sectors check box.

All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is
currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate
whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next
time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your
system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to
perform other tasks while this process is running.
If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all
file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key
information for all files on the NTFS volume.

====================================

Go to the Hard Drive manufacturers site & download the free utility
that most have, to help you get your HD the way you want ( Including
ghosting, writing to 0's, overlay, low level format, test if drive is
OK, etc )

Sometimes if a drive has been setup with Partition Magic or similar it
takes a write 0's to fix it.

Maxtor's is called Powermax
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

Seagate's are DiscWizard, DiscWizard Starter Edition & DiscWizard
Online
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

Quantum's is DiskManager, now owned by Maxtor
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

IBM have a selection, such as Drive Fitness Test
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Fujitsu's is OnTrack DiskGo
http://www.fcpa.com/cgi-bin/goFrames.cgi/support/su_drivers.html

Western Digital's is Data Lifeguard Tools
http://support.wdc.com/download/

Samsung's is ClearHDD Program
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/support/hdd/utilities/utilities_03.html
 
A

Al Klein

Having hardware problems on my disk dirves, and wonder what free ware
tools are available. Is payware spinrtie still worth the cost (used
to be a long time ago) . Is there a utility that will "refresh teh
drive. I'm especially interested in something that will refresh the
data

1) Your drives are failing. Back up anything you can NOW!

If the lifegurad diagnostics won't handle the drive, I wouldn't waste
time on it. You might fix it, but it'll probably fail again right
away.

2) Stay away from WD. From the best consumer grade drives on the
market, they've become the worst. Seagate seems to be half decent
these days.
 
J

jona

Scandisk is called CHKDSK in XP
http://www.activewin.com/winxp/tips/basic/3.shtml
http://www.ultratech-llc.com/KB/ASP/FileView.asp?File=/KB/ScanDisk.TXT
Windows XP Tips
Where has Scan Disk gone?
Posted By: Byron Hinson

Scandisk is not a part of Windows XP - instead you get the improved
CHKDSK. You can use the Error-checking tool to check for file system
errors and bad sectors on your hard disk.

1: Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.

2: On the File menu, click Properties.

3: On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now.

4: Under Check disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery
of bad sectors check box.

All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is
currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate
whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next
time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your
system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to
perform other tasks while this process is running.
If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all
file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key
information for all files on the NTFS volume.

W98 (scandisk) reports at the end of it's run - used sectors, free sectors,
bad sectors etc, etc, whether bad sectors have been found or not.
What bothers me is that CHKDSK reports nothing of the kind. Can one
then safely assume the drive is OK then ?
 
M

me

Al said:
1) Your drives are failing. Back up anything you can NOW!

If the lifegurad diagnostics won't handle the drive, I wouldn't waste
time on it. You might fix it, but it'll probably fail again right
away.

2) Stay away from WD. From the best consumer grade drives on the
market, they've become the worst. Seagate seems to be half decent
these days.

I would also stay away from Maxtor. HP uses them in some of their
desktops; and, I've had a number of customers whose HP/Maxtor drives
have failed inside of a year and a half.

LS
 
H

HillBillyBuddhist

| W98 (scandisk) reports at the end of it's run - used sectors, free
sectors,
| bad sectors etc, etc, whether bad sectors have been found or not.
| What bothers me is that CHKDSK reports nothing of the kind. Can one
| then safely assume the drive is OK then ?


CHKDSK writes a log (with the same information as scandisk used to show at
end of run) which can be viewed in the Application section of Event Viewer.
(eventvwr.msc) The Source type will be listed as "Winlogon."
 
M

ms

Al said:
1) Your drives are failing. Back up anything you can NOW!

If the lifegurad diagnostics won't handle the drive, I wouldn't waste
time on it. You might fix it, but it'll probably fail again right
away.

2) Stay away from WD. From the best consumer grade drives on the
market, they've become the worst. Seagate seems to be half decent
these days.

Al, what is your source for your comment on WD?

I have a brand new WD waiting for the build of my new W98SE computer.

I am running in my P166 a 15 GB WD, 5 years old and still OK, slave in that
machine is a 2.5 GB WD that has run every day since 1997 and is still OK.

Mike Sa
 
J

jona

HillBillyBuddhist said:
| W98 (scandisk) reports at the end of it's run - used sectors, free
sectors,
| bad sectors etc, etc, whether bad sectors have been found or not.
| What bothers me is that CHKDSK reports nothing of the kind. Can one
| then safely assume the drive is OK then ?


CHKDSK writes a log (with the same information as scandisk used to show at
end of run) which can be viewed in the Application section of Event
Viewer.
(eventvwr.msc) The Source type will be listed as "Winlogon."

A bit of a schlepp, don't you think. Thanks anyway, there's also
a lot of 'other' info sitting way back in that dark corner.
 
A

Al Klein

Al, what is your source for your comment on WD?

Hard-won experience.
I have a brand new WD waiting for the build of my new W98SE computer.
I am running in my P166 a 15 GB WD, 5 years old and still OK

I'm talking about new ones - the last 18-24 months. Their quality
seems to have an inverse relationship to drive size or something. Or
maybe everyone is just making cheaper and less reliable things these
days.
 
G

george1234

Thanks one, thanks all

Chkcdsk /r c; cleaned up the problems on the disk with chkdsk errors

WD diagnostic tools confirmed the smart error on the disk going bad.
Surprize surpisze, WD warrantied the disk by serial number

--G.
 

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