Hard Drive Questions.

[Chuck]

I have Windows XP Home on twin, partitioned maxtor Hard drives. On drive in
80GB (C:, E:, F:, G:,) and one 20GB (D:, and H. All partitions are devided
up equally. These are all in FAT32 mode.

I am recently getting numerous boot problems. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME,
Repeated auto-chkdsk on startup, and the rare system error/freeze-up. I have
been running chkdsk at a dos prompt and there are NEW bad sectors on C:
drive (currently at 720kb in bad sectors).

Questions:
Is it possible to convert this C: drive to NTFS without destroying the data?
Is the any benefit in this conversion?
Could it stop the errors and bad sectors?

I am OMW to the Maxtor Web Site to find a Disk testing utility...

Thanks
Chuck

 

[Alvin Brown]

Hello

Best adice back-up your important data and reformat
and also do you really need that many partions' what
about just having 2 or 3 partitions and yes NTFS is much
better than fat32

alvin

 

[Jim Macklin]

It is possible to convert without data loss, the tool is
built-in to XP. Just do a search for "convert" in Windows
Explorer Help.

But you may have a physical problem with the C: drive if the
number of bad sectors is increasing. You should consider a
replacement hared drive. Are you getting problems on the
other partitions on the same physical drive?

I have 4 partitions on my drive and find it is very useful,
because I can keep OS and applications on C:, data on E: and
that helps prevent data loss.



| I have Windows XP Home on twin, partitioned maxtor Hard
drives. On drive in
| 80GB (C:, E:, F:, G:,) and one 20GB (D:, and H. All
partitions are devided
| up equally. These are all in FAT32 mode.
|
| I am recently getting numerous boot problems.
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME,
| Repeated auto-chkdsk on startup, and the rare system
error/freeze-up. I have
| been running chkdsk at a dos prompt and there are NEW bad
sectors on C:
| drive (currently at 720kb in bad sectors).
|
| Questions:
| Is it possible to convert this C: drive to NTFS without
destroying the data?
| Is the any benefit in this conversion?
| Could it stop the errors and bad sectors?
|
| I am OMW to the Maxtor Web Site to find a Disk testing
utility...
|
| Thanks
| Chuck
|

 

[Bob Harris]

I agree with the reply by Jim, when you see the number of bad sectors
increasing, it is time to think about saving data and getting anew hard
drive. NTFS is somewhat better than FAT32 with respect to being able to
recover things, but no software can fix a physically bad drive. I would NOT
convert to NTFS untill you are sure the drive is OK.

However, be warned that most DOS-based prorams will NOT be able to access an
NTFS partition. This may be of little concern to you, but think about it.
For example, GHOST 2002 and older will not be able to save images to or
resotre them form an NTFS parition. But, they can save an NTFS parition
image to a FAT 32 partition.

 

[Chuck]

Thank you all for your input.
I may chose to not convert to NTFS, due to incompatibility with DOS
programs.
I downloaded Maxtors "Powermax" ver 4.06, and it confirmed failures on my
"C" drive. No other partitions on that drive are showing flaws.

The great news is that I bought that drive in May of 2003, so it should
still be under warrantee. Maxtor should replace it free.

Now all I need is references for a good drive copy program..(
Any opinions anyone (like nobody is gonna have one...)


Thanks again
Chuck

 

[Frank]

I have Windows XP Home on twin, partitioned maxtor Hard drives. On drive in
80GB (C:, E:, F:, G:,) and one 20GB (D:, and H. All partitions are devided
up equally. These are all in FAT32 mode.

I am recently getting numerous boot problems. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME,
Repeated auto-chkdsk on startup, and the rare system error/freeze-up. I have
been running chkdsk at a dos prompt and there are NEW bad sectors on C:
drive (currently at 720kb in bad sectors).

Questions:
Is it possible to convert this C: drive to NTFS without destroying the data?
Is the any benefit in this conversion?
Could it stop the errors and bad sectors?

I am OMW to the Maxtor Web Site to find a Disk testing utility...

Thanks
Chuck

--BACKUP--BACKUP--
Run maxblast diagnostics.