Hard drive shows up empty on reboot

[JediSpork]

Had a problem with my first wd green drive. Using the replacement now.
Sometimes when I reboot the drive will show up as empty in windows
ready to be formatted. Now it stays this way and the only way to
access is through a linux cd. I've tried wiping the drive and
creating a brand new partition but after reboot the problem is back.
Also tried doing a full scan for errors and bad sectors and everything
shows up fine.

Does this sound like another faulty drive?

thanks

 

[Flasherly]

Had a problem with my first wd green drive. Using the replacement now.
Sometimes when I reboot the drive will show up as empty in windows
ready to be formatted. Now it stays this way and the only way to
access is through a linux cd. I've tried wiping the drive and
creating a brand new partition but after reboot the problem is back.
Also tried doing a full scan for errors and bad sectors and everything
shows up fine.

Does this sound like another faulty drive?

thanks

Probably formatted it out NTFS. Good 'ol NTFS and scrambled eggs.
Lost one not long ago, and unless you cook with working on secondary
drive FAT and backup transferals of a drive's NTFS, it can be messy.
1T Samsung here that recently took a glitch. Twitched and a second
later say bye-bye to everything. Took me some heavy duty utilities to
straighten the mess out -- thankfully able to do it at max USB 2.0
speeds, but only within the program's environment and ability to do
restorative copies. Add to that my MB's drive support limit of around
750G, hence USB transfers (until SATA3 PCI controllers get off their
$40 perch).

After all that restorative work, I upgraded Windows' NTFS to various
(almost entirely) FAT32 denominations with EASEUS Partition Master.
Very weird seeing EASEUS being able to get like 500G-1T logical FAT32
partitions, although I do keep a small 'un for NTFS and downsizing any
larger-sized files that FAT32 won't natively handle. [Yep, I think we
should blast off and nuke it]. . .it's the only way to be sure. -Alien
II

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)]

access is through a linux cd. I've tried wiping the drive and

creating a brand new partition but after reboot the problem is back.
Also tried doing a full scan for errors and bad sectors and everything
shows up fine.

Better list ALL the stuff in your PC first.


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[John Doe]

Sounds like a faulty system. Try it in a different computer.

Probably formatted it out NTFS. Good 'ol NTFS and scrambled
eggs. Lost one not long ago, and unless you cook with working on
secondary drive FAT and backup transferals of a drive's NTFS, it
can be messy.

Another translation is in order.

I have no trouble with NTFS even while doing serious disk
gymnastics. In many years of making backup copies of Windows,
here, the NTFS file system has never been a suspect for a problem.
I cannot even recall anyone here complaining about the NTFS file
system.

 

[Don Phillipson]

Had a problem with my first wd green drive. Using the replacement now.
Sometimes when I reboot the drive will show up as empty in windows
ready to be formatted. Now it stays this way and the only way to
access is through a linux cd. I've tried wiping the drive and
creating a brand new partition but after reboot the problem is back.
Also tried doing a full scan for errors and bad sectors and everything
shows up fine. Does this sound like another faulty drive?

These intermittent errors suggest the user should find out
whether the fault is in the Master Boot Region or elsewhere
on the drive. Tools for the MBR are (early) FDISK /MBR
or (late) FIXMBR. Either seems worth a try.

 

[Flasherly]

Sounds like a faulty system. Try it in a different computer.


Another translation is in order.

I have no trouble with NTFS even while doing serious disk
gymnastics. In many years of making backup copies of Windows,
here, the NTFS file system has never been a suspect for a problem.
I cannot even recall anyone here complaining about the NTFS file
system.

There aren't as many approaches to disk utilities as once there were
with FAT16/20/32, and I realize many do find NTFS convenient, as well
secure, self-optimizing, and etc. I've lost NTFS drives/partitions a
few times, (not so many), although tentatively I may be doing more
serious gymnastics. In every case, in my experience, it was
disastrously the worst possible case scenario. To define such a hell
on disk drives -- that would be, once the NTFS's file allocation table
is corrupted, kiss it off. There aren't "easy pickings" for getting
into a disk crash to remedy the problem, once Windows comes back up
and refuses to recognize drive partitioning -- ascribing the error in
Microsoft terms to a UNIX variant. However, I did surmount the
problem and got near 800+G back, as new, pristine, without any data
corruption -- but we *would* have to talk serious gymnastics to go
through the procedure (took me near a week of copying to do).

What it boils down to, in a nutshell -- is if I crash this computer
while writing to HDs formatted in FAT32, what I expect to subsequently
find -- are the last entries being written to are hosed and pretty
much the extent of the damage done. Not the whole goddamn HD. Like I
said, I've been burnt before with NTFS -- so I've come to the
realization about how to be careful with NTFS. Care #1 being, I
flatout don't trust it in a critical sense.

 

[JediSpork]

I'm mostly sure its the hard drive and will be calling wd for another
replacement. Actually the disc itself seems to be fine when it works
except for this funky glitch. It will come up as 32 mb RAW in windows.
It also shows the same amount of space in the bios yet when I use wd
tools it shows the full capacity.

I've already wrote 0's to the drive before I send it back. The backup
drive works fine on the same sata connector.

As for the bad comments about ntfs. I've never had a issue with ntfs
either but I know they exist. I've heard that you can loose a entire
drive due to a crash, power interruption, etc. I've heard that even
Microsoft recognizes that ntfs has problems and we need a new file
system. IMO win 7 should of had a new one. I'm no linux pro but ex3/4
is said to be vastly better. Faster, less bugs, and not as many
problems with fragmentation.

 

[Flasherly]

I'm mostly sure its the hard drive and will be calling wd for another
replacement. Actually the disc itself seems to be fine when it works
except for this funky glitch. It will come up as 32 mb RAW in windows.
It also shows the same amount of space in the bios yet when I use wd
tools it shows the full capacity.

I've already wrote 0's to the drive before I send it back. The backup
drive works fine on the same sata connector.

As for the bad comments about ntfs. I've never had a issue with ntfs
either but I know they exist. I've heard that you can loose a entire
drive due to a crash, power interruption, etc. I've heard that even
Microsoft recognizes that ntfs has problems and we need a new file
system. IMO win 7 should of had a new one. I'm no linux pro but ex3/4
is said to be vastly better. Faster, less bugs, and not as many
problems with fragmentation.

Sound like you know what you're doing if you're working with WD's
utilities and able to compare results. I'm not the point where I can
actually use the biggest drives I have properly, (my BIOS is too old
and exceeded by limitations), so it's back to the translation thing
via a USB drive "station's" electronics (free w/ a drive purchase
makes it kinda nifty). Formatting, I want 3rd party utilities before
going back to Windows, then the manufacturer's diagnostics/utilities,
but only if problems surface, to be sure I know what I'm talking about
before calling their techsupport hotline for a RMA (and start raising
hell).

You've got a "green" drive (laptop ported technology), so it's
probably going to be big at a 3.5" interface -- could assume a minimum
of 1T. RAW results - now, that I don't like (lazy Winderz man, though
I get around good, very, in DOS and Unix is feasibly a pain if in
need). You're also saying a Linux CD. Skip that unless you need and
run Linux. Stay in the Windows environment start to finish. EASEUS
is showing up freeware (limited?) version with some really highly-
regarded reviews -- not sure, but they also may provide a boot ISO.
Way I ran it, straight thru Windows and am impressed -- it was high
time for me to force my mind to update from Partition Magic. Might
try that for a second-opinion in the way of a 3rd party formatter.
Suspect or problematic drives I wouldn't go near for active primaries,
either, not until they started feeling stable.

NTFS, whatever floats your boat. Times I'm do maintenance out of DOS,
I'd as soon FAT32 transparent drives for
various HD utilities that work with FAT, and don't bother with messing
with programs such as off HIREMS to get into NTFS structures. When
push comes to shove and I fall off Windows and onto my butt, like I
said, it's second nature to me getting around in DOS. Might try
EASEUS and FAT32 for funs&grins, anyway...

Hm...think that docking station I got came with a 640MEG WD (non-green
7200) that worked in my old socket 754 AMD BIOS, and effectively saved
my butt harder work when transferring off what I needed on the crashed
1T NTFS via USB (migrated the 640G WD into the box's HD cage,
displacing one of my 200M old Seagates for backup medium). When I
bought the 1T Samsung, it was after looking over NewEgg's WD reviews
-- seemed to me Samsung, then Hitachi, had a definite edge on WD in
the failure-rate dept. Drop a line back if you try EASEUS.

 

[John Doe]

I'm mostly sure its the hard drive

You need to test it in another computer.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

I'm mostly sure its the hard drive and will be calling wd for another
replacement. Actually the disc itself seems to be fine when it works
except for this funky glitch. It will come up as 32 mb RAW in windows.
It also shows the same amount of space in the bios yet when I use wd
tools it shows the full capacity.

I'm betting that you have a Gigabyte motherboard with an Xpress
Recovery BIOS, and that your drive has a native capacity of 1TB.

If so, then your BIOS has a bug that is truncating your drive. What
happens is that the BIOS writes a copy of itself to the uppermost LBAs
of the drive, and then hides this image by reducing the capacity of
the drive by a corresponding amount.

This thread has more information:
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15662

The above bug causes 1TB drives to be reduced to 32MB, 1.5TB drives
become 500GB, and 2TB drives shrink to 1TB.

The solution is to remove the HPA (Host Protected Area) using a tool
such as HDAT2.

- Franc Zabkar