New Maxtor HD formatted itself?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob H
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob H

I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it incarse the same thing happens.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
 
Bob H said:
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and downloaded
stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the partitions were
available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only 25Gb
available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into Windows and
all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe to
put anything on it incarse the same thing happens.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of the
ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
Click to expand...

Hard drives don't format themselves, but viruses format them. -Dave
 
Dave said:
Hard drives don't format themselves, but viruses format them. -Dave
Click to expand...
Well, yes I agree that could be a possibility, but I wonder why my other
drives were not affected, especially the one with my OS's on???

I ran a spyware/malware check last night and my AV program runs every
morning.

Thanks anyway
 
If the answers here are not satisfactory to you, try the more
appropriate storage group.

comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
 
seabat said:
You say you partitioned it, but did you format each of the partitions?
Click to expand...
Yes I did format all the partitions, and I put files on them, which I
have now lost!
 
As you have top posted, so will I.
No I didn't say or mean that the answers were not satisfactory to me,
just that I am puzzled as to why, but thanks for the other NG link
 
I think most of us are puzzled about why and how your name brand
hard disk drive formatted itself. Please report back when you find
the answer.
 
I know it sounds stupid and in reality it couldn't happen, but after I
partitioned it last weekned, and then put some files on it (data and
media), this weekend it just went to 'unallocated space' in PM8. So I
take that to me unformatted. So in reality all the partitions were lost
and it became just one 160Gb disk again

I don't suppose I will find an answer, but I will report back if I do

Thanks
 
Bob said:
I know it sounds stupid and in reality it couldn't happen, but after I
partitioned it last weekned, and then put some files on it (data and
media), this weekend it just went to 'unallocated space' in PM8. So I
take that to me unformatted. So in reality all the partitions were lost
and it became just one 160Gb disk again

I don't suppose I will find an answer, but I will report back if I do
Click to expand...

One thing I forgot to mention was when I was burning about 350mb to a
CDR from that new drive, I heard some ticking sounds, and I thought it
was coming from my CDRWriter, because when the burning stopped so did
the ticking.
 
Bob H said:
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Click to expand...

You didn't turn on 48-bit LBA, and when a data write was made at the
137GB boundary, it "wrapped around" and scribbled over the beginning of
the disk, which contains the boot sector, partition tables, and (if
running FAT32), the FATs.

See www.48bitlba.com
 
| Bob H wrote:
| > I know it sounds stupid and in reality it couldn't happen, but after I
| > partitioned it last weekned, and then put some files on it (data and
| > media), this weekend it just went to 'unallocated space' in PM8. So I
| > take that to me unformatted. So in reality all the partitions were lost
| > and it became just one 160Gb disk again
| >
| > I don't suppose I will find an answer, but I will report back if I do
|
| One thing I forgot to mention was when I was burning about 350mb to a
| CDR from that new drive, I heard some ticking sounds, and I thought it
| was coming from my CDRWriter, because when the burning stopped so did
| the ticking.

Ticking or clicking coming from a hard drive is often a sure sign of
impending failure. I'd run Maxtor's diagnostic program to check the
hard drive out if I were you.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§
 
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it incarse the same thing happens.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
Click to expand...

If you happen to be running an older version of Intel Application
Accelerator (older than v2.3), it is capable of corrupting partitions.
Of course, I found this out after it wiped out my operating system.
Documentation for the later version mentioned that Intel had fixed
an associated addressing problem.

Unfortunately, it may also be that the drive is bad. If you haven't
already run a scandisk/chkdsk with a full surface scan, you should
probably do that.

....Scott
 
Scott said:
If you happen to be running an older version of Intel Application
Accelerator (older than v2.3), it is capable of corrupting partitions.
Of course, I found this out after it wiped out my operating system.
Documentation for the later version mentioned that Intel had fixed
an associated addressing problem.

Unfortunately, it may also be that the drive is bad. If you haven't
already run a scandisk/chkdsk with a full surface scan, you should
probably do that.

...Scott
Click to expand...

I don't run any Intel stuff at all here, so that's out.

After I re partitioned the disk back to what I had before, I ran a disk
check on all of it and no problems were found.

mmm, strange as to why it happened in the first place
 
Mike said:
You didn't turn on 48-bit LBA, and when a data write was made at the
137GB boundary, it "wrapped around" and scribbled over the beginning of
the disk, which contains the boot sector, partition tables, and (if
running FAT32), the FATs.

See www.48bitlba.com
Click to expand...

Well you are right there I suppose!
No, I didn't turn on 48-bit LBA; I didn't think I had to. doh!
I upgraded the BIOS to the latest for my mobo, and have the latest sp4
for win2k, so I thought that would be enough. Not so it seems.
I have now enabled big lba in the registry.

Just out of interest, someone in another NG suggested it could be
software rather than a bad disk.
I was writing/burning a CDR from that drive at the time of the clicking.

cheers
 
I've seen exactly the same thing about 2 weeks ago.
Professors computer blue screened, and would not
recover. OS was W2k. I booted the computer with
a WinXP install disk, and ran chkdsk from it. That
recovered the W2k disk. He had 2 disks, and both
were whistling like the dickens, so I recommended
that he let me ghost his primary drive to a new drive,
and then copy his 2nd drive to another new drive.
That worked fine, except he said he was missing one
of the partitions ??? I went back and looked on the
2nd old drive, and sure enough there was the missing
partition. So I copied it over to the new drive. While
I was doing that, it suddenly occurred to me that
the missing partition was the only one on the drive,
when I had previously copied 2 other partitions from
that drive ????? Also, the missing partition was now
80 gig .. the full size of the 80 gig drive. I know there
are two other partitions on that drive, because I have
them copied over to the new drive. I have not a clue
why this happened. Interesting that the same thing
happened to you. Sounds a lot like a new virus. I
handed the Prof a stack of blank cdrs, and told him
to get started.

johns
 
johns said:
I've seen exactly the same thing about 2 weeks ago.
Professors computer blue screened, and would not
recover. OS was W2k. I booted the computer with
a WinXP install disk, and ran chkdsk from it. That
recovered the W2k disk. He had 2 disks, and both
were whistling like the dickens, so I recommended
that he let me ghost his primary drive to a new drive,
and then copy his 2nd drive to another new drive.
That worked fine, except he said he was missing one
of the partitions ??? I went back and looked on the
2nd old drive, and sure enough there was the missing
partition. So I copied it over to the new drive. While
I was doing that, it suddenly occurred to me that
the missing partition was the only one on the drive,
when I had previously copied 2 other partitions from
that drive ????? Also, the missing partition was now
80 gig .. the full size of the 80 gig drive. I know there
are two other partitions on that drive, because I have
them copied over to the new drive. I have not a clue
why this happened. Interesting that the same thing
happened to you. Sounds a lot like a new virus. I
handed the Prof a stack of blank cdrs, and told him
to get started.

johns
Click to expand...
Well in my case it seems that I did not enable big lba in the win2k
registry or more so it was caused by the 48 bit lba thing. That being
windows did not recognise my 160Gb disk as that.
But I know what you mean about using blank cdrs!
 
johns said:
I've seen exactly the same thing about 2 weeks ago.
Professors computer blue screened, and would not
recover. OS was W2k. I booted the computer with
a WinXP install disk, and ran chkdsk from it. That
recovered the W2k disk. He had 2 disks, and both
were whistling like the dickens, so I recommended
that he let me ghost his primary drive to a new drive,
and then copy his 2nd drive to another new drive.
That worked fine, except he said he was missing one
of the partitions ??? I went back and looked on the
2nd old drive, and sure enough there was the missing
partition. So I copied it over to the new drive. While
I was doing that, it suddenly occurred to me that
the missing partition was the only one on the drive,
when I had previously copied 2 other partitions from
that drive ????? Also, the missing partition was now
80 gig .. the full size of the 80 gig drive. I know there
are two other partitions on that drive, because I have
them copied over to the new drive. I have not a clue
why this happened. Interesting that the same thing
happened to you. Sounds a lot like a new virus. I
handed the Prof a stack of blank cdrs, and told him
to get started.

johns
Click to expand...
Well in my case it seems that I did not enable big lba in the win2k
registry or more so it was caused by the 48 bit lba thing. That being
windows did not recognise my 160Gb disk as that.
But I know what you mean about using blank cdrs!

Bob H
Leeds UK
 
Bob said:
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it incarse the same thing happens.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
Click to expand...

After posting this message (above) to the storage NG, the consensus of
opinion seems to be that I did not enable big lba in the win2k registry,
or rather it was a 48 bit lba issue.
Ok, I think someone else said that, so what would cause that then?
Is it something to do with 48bit lba?

Yes. It's everything to do with 48 bit lba.
Click to expand...

So now I have enabled big lba, and I hope that sorts it.
 
Bob said:
I bought a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 160Gb Hard disk last week,
partitioned it up into about 5 partitions, put various files and
downloaded stuff on them, then all at once like today, none of the
partitions were available!
Win2k reported that folders were not available and were corrupt.
So, I rebooted and the HD was found ok on bootup; fdisk reported only
25Gb available, but maybe that was just fdisk. I booted back into
Windows and all the partitions on that disk had disappeared.
I then ran PM8 and re partitioned the said disk again, but I am loathe
to put anything on it incarse the same thing happens.

Any ideas as to what may have caused it? I did NOT do anything out of
the ordainary on this machine at all. It just happened??

Thanks
Click to expand...

Just off hand I'd say you don't have 48 bit LBA active so Windows doesn't
handle it properly; causing it to become corrupted when you write a lot of
data onto it.
 
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