repair bad sectors

[mooky]

I have a 160 gig Maxtor hard drive that lately has been making clicking
noises...I read on many sites that it could be due to bad sectors so I
downloaded PowerMax and haven't used it yet to scan and repair
sectors...is there a way to repair the bad sectors and not lose any
data?

 

[Malke]

I have a 160 gig Maxtor hard drive that lately has been making clicking
noises...I read on many sites that it could be due to bad sectors so I
downloaded PowerMax and haven't used it yet to scan and repair
sectors...is there a way to repair the bad sectors and not lose any
data?

No. If the drive is making noises and the data on it is important and
not backed up, try and back up the data immediately. Then replace the
drive. You can try the drive utility if you like, but get the data off
safely first.

Malke

 

[Richard Urban]

I have seen many drives with bad sectors and they don't make a clicking
noise. You have a hardware problem that is causing the bad sectors. The
result of the hardware problem is also the clicking noise.

Replace your hard drive A.S.A.P.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[mooky]

How can I determine what the hardware issue is? Also, I can't afford to
replace the drive....this drive may be a cpl. years old at the
most...sometimes after I get a blue screen, I reboot and it works fine
for a while...sometimes a few or several days....but I did a checkdisk
lduring the night and the pc had the kernel_stack_inpage error
again...also my 160 gig drive says in disk management that it has 128
gigs(healthy system) and 24.7 gigs unallocated...should I partition the
24.7 gigs and make it a logical drive? I would like to merge it with
the other gigs, but don't have the software to do so as I can't spend
any extra cash...aslo worried about data loss if I do that....

 

[Malke]

How can I determine what the hardware issue is? Also, I can't afford to
replace the drive....this drive may be a cpl. years old at the
most...sometimes after I get a blue screen, I reboot and it works fine
for a while...sometimes a few or several days....but I did a checkdisk
lduring the night and the pc had the kernel_stack_inpage error
again...also my 160 gig drive says in disk management that it has 128
gigs(healthy system) and 24.7 gigs unallocated...should I partition the
24.7 gigs and make it a logical drive? I would like to merge it with
the other gigs, but don't have the software to do so as I can't spend
any extra cash...aslo worried about data loss if I do that....

I told you how to determine the hardware issue. After you get the data
off, run a diagnostic utility from the drive mftr. Generally if the hard
drive is good, the motherboard will be the issue. Depending on how you
bought the drive/computer, the drive may still be under warranty.
Contact either the drive mftr. or computer mftr. for details.

Random errors usually indicate hardware failures. Here are general
hardware troubleshooting steps:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

You certainly should do nothing further about partitioning, etc. until
you 1) get the data safely backed up; 2) determine the hardware problem.
The relative newness of the drive is irrelevant. Drives can fail out of
the box and hardware dies.

I understand that you wanted a simple "one-button" fix that costs
nothing, but unless you are able to troubleshoot the hardware yourself,
consider taking the machine to a reputable professional computer repair
shop (not your local version of BigStoreUSA) and have them diagnose it
for you. Also please understand that answers you get in a newsgroup are
"best guesses". After all, we cannot see or test your computer from here
and that is really necessary for accurate diagnosis with hardware issues.

All I can tell you is if the computer were in my shop, I'd start by
attempting to boot the box with Knoppix or pull the drive and slave it
in another machine to try and get the data and then do hardware testing.


Malke

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a 160 gig Maxtor hard drive that lately has been making
clicking noises...I read on many sites that it could be due to bad
sectors so I downloaded PowerMax and haven't used it yet to scan and
repair sectors...is there a way to repair the bad sectors and not
lose any data?

Whether it's bad sectors or not (probably not), you very likely have a
serious hardware problem, and the drive is probably about to fail
catastrophically. If you don't already have a backup of everything important
on the drive, making one should be your highest priority. Then replace the
drive.

To answer your question about repairing bad sectors, bad sectors are
physically bad, and they can't be repaired. If you have data that resides on
bad sectors, that data is lost. But again, clicking is indicative of other
drive problems, but not bad sectors.

 

[Sharon F]

How can I determine what the hardware issue is?

The clues are rather strong: Clicking noise from hard drive and
accumulation of bad clusters = a failing hard drive. There's no issue here
that you can fix. If the drive is still under warranty, call the
manufacturer for a replacement. Hard drive warranties range from 1 to 5
years.

As for the rest of your post, my suggestion is "do nothing" extra with that
drive except pray it doesn't fail entirely before you can replace it. Start
moving personal data to other media so that it is not lost forever when the
drive does fail.

Even if your clicking noise ends up being a bad fan (check those they cost
a few dollars to replace and could save the CPU from frying), the
accumulation of bad sectors still indicates a physical problem with the
drive.

 

[mooky]

my hard drive is a cpl. years old....I hate to get a new hard drive
because I don't have a full copy of xp...all I have is the old xp home
upgrade cd I had when xp just came out...sometimes the drive will work
maybe several, hours, mins, days, or even a week before it happens
again....I just reboot and keep on truckin'...also I have 24.7
unallocated gigs of space on my this drive, my primary drive....would
it help to partition it and make it a logical drive?

 

[Jim]

my hard drive is a cpl. years old....I hate to get a new hard drive
because I don't have a full copy of xp...all I have is the old xp home
upgrade cd I had when xp just came out...sometimes the drive will work
maybe several, hours, mins, days, or even a week before it happens
again....I just reboot and keep on truckin'...also I have 24.7
unallocated gigs of space on my this drive, my primary drive....would
it help to partition it and make it a logical drive?

No. You need a new drive. The only repair for a bad sector is a new
drive. If you can't afford one right now, start saving your pennies.
The age of your current drive is not important. Most drives last a long
time; however, a given drive can fail at any time.
Jim

 

[mooky]

ok thanks...I read on some sites where some people have had this
problem and still have a working hard drive even if it's been
clicking....even if it hasn't been clicking and I get the same error,
is it another hardware issue that conflicts with the hard drive? I know
it's not the RAM because I put 2 new 256mb sticks in last week...

 

[Eric]

I have a 160 gig Maxtor hard drive that lately has been making clicking
noises...I read on many sites that it could be due to bad sectors so I
downloaded PowerMax and haven't used it yet to scan and repair
sectors...is there a way to repair the bad sectors and not lose any
data?

Clicking is definetly not a good sign, but a few things you could try...

Does chkdsk report any errors? Chkdsk will in a command shell in read-only
mode.
To pass flags, you'll have to boot in recovery console though.

If it does report bad sectors, they can't be fixed. Bad sectors are
physically bad. (Odds that it is a "logical" bad sector is so low, you can
write it off.) Just having one bad sector on a drive means that you actually
have many more. HDD's these days have spare sectors for bad sectors to be
remapped to. Its done transparently in the background at the hardware
level. One bad sector means that all the spares have been taken up already.

Check the power supply. Is the HDD getting enough power? Maybe temporarily
disconnect the load off other devices to rule that in or out. Reseat your
cables and double-check the jumpers while you have the case open as well..

Maybe you will get lucky, but most likely this HDD is living on borrowed
time... If your data is more valuable than the drive, get a new drive
before using any of the low level utilities that require wiping the drive.
Clone it over and then give them a try.

 

[mooky]

I'm going to do a chkdsk /f/r....someone told me that doing this can
fepir bad sectors and recover the lost data...I only did the chkdsk/r
last night sop I'm doing both tonight and see what happens...

 

[Eric]

ok thanks...I read on some sites where some people have had this
problem and still have a working hard drive even if it's been
clicking....even if it hasn't been clicking and I get the same error,
is it another hardware issue that conflicts with the hard drive? I know
it's not the RAM because I put 2 new 256mb sticks in last week...

Well, you can continuing running a failing HDD. It may just continue
hanging on a by a thread, but catastrophic failure can come at any time. I
have an old P2 running headless in a cubby hole, using FreeBSD to do some
gee-wiz "LAN appliance" things, with a HDD in ridiculously terrible shape.
POSTing takes a couple minutes for the BIOS to whine about all of the HDD's
arthritis. I'm too lazy and cheap to replace the HDD until it completely
goes, but do keep a drive image at the ready for when it does..

Doing this with one of your actual "working" computers is very foolhardy
though. Personal data is more valuable than HDD's these days...

 

[mooky]

Thanks for the info...I did a chkdsk/f/r overnight and I don't know
what the results were because the event viewer service was disabled
for some reason and it didn't show the log file because of that I
guess...any other way to find the log for it?

 

[Sharon F]

my hard drive is a cpl. years old....I hate to get a new hard drive
because I don't have a full copy of xp...all I have is the old xp home
upgrade cd I had when xp just came out...sometimes the drive will work
maybe several, hours, mins, days, or even a week before it happens
again....I just reboot and keep on truckin'...also I have 24.7
unallocated gigs of space on my this drive, my primary drive....would
it help to partition it and make it a logical drive?

If you wish hard enough... the drive will still fail. It's not a matter of
if, it's when. As this drive limps along, files will corrupt. Swapfile data
can corrupt. Corruption can cause all kinds of problems: "mystery errors,"
corrupt files, etc.

No. Partitioning will not help.

Sorry.

Some technical jibberish: Drive manufacturers allot a portion of the drive
as a "slush fund." When there are bad sectors, it swaps out the bad for
good - taking it from the slush fund reserve. When you start seeing bad
clusters reported, it means that the reserves are gone and that the problem
has been going on for a while.

For the XP situation:

New drives come with tools that allow you to transfer files - including the
operating system - from old drive to new. Some report problems with these
but they have always worked for me.

And, you can install "clean" with the upgrade XP CD. You need a copy of a
previous version of Windows on hand - say, Win98 or Win ME on CD. At one
point during setup, you'll be prompted to insert the Win98 or ME CD. Once
the check is completed, you take out that CD and put the XP CD back in so
that XP setup can continue. If you do not have a Win98/ME CD, check ebay
for a copy or borrow one.

 

[Poprivet]

I'm going to do a chkdsk /f/r....someone told me that doing this can
fepir bad sectors and recover the lost data...I only did the chkdsk/r
last night sop I'm doing both tonight and see what happens...

No need; /r includes /f automatically.

From chkdsk /? in command prompt:
" /R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies
/F)."

Watch the screen as it runs to see immediate results.

 

[Kerry Brown]

You are ignoring all the good advice you are getting. The longer you wait to
replace the drive the more likely it is you will lose the data on it. Every
time you run chkdsk there is a chance the drive will fail or chkdsk will try
to use a bad sector and corrupt the file system.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

my hard drive is a cpl. years old....I hate to get a new hard drive
because I don't have a full copy of xp...all I have is the old xp home
upgrade cd I had when xp just came out...sometimes the drive will work
maybe several, hours, mins, days, or even a week before it happens
again....I just reboot and keep on truckin'...also I have 24.7
unallocated gigs of space on my this drive, my primary drive....would
it help to partition it and make it a logical drive?

What you do is of course entirely up to you, but you are playing with fire.
Your drive is very probably about to completely fail, and you keep delaying
and saying things like "I hate to get a new hard drive."

As I said, "If you don't already have a backup of everything important on
the drive, making one should be your highest priority. Then replace the
drive." The longer you wait to do this, the greater your risk.

Almost certainly, you *will* shortly get a new hard drive. The only real
question is whether you do it now before the old one dies, or a little
later, after you've lost everything on it.

By the way, you are apparently unaware that Upgrade CDs of Windows XP *can*
do clean installations. The requirement to use an upgrade version is to
*own* a previous qualifying version's installation CD (with an OEM restore
CD, see below), not to have it installed. When setup doesn't find a previous
qualifying version installed, it will prompt you to insert its CD as proof
of ownership. Just insert the previous version's CD, and follow the prompts.
Everything proceeds quite normally and quite legitimately. If you don't have
a previous version's CD, you can buy a used copy of Windows 98 very cheaply
someplace like eBay.

 

[Richard Urban]

You have gotten good advice from many people who have seen, and corrected
for, your situation hundreds of times over.

If you value your data (last photos of grandpa before he passed away and the
like) you will backup your precious data "YESTERDAY" and get a new hard
drive.

A 120 gig hard drive is now available for about $50-60 American, as opposed
to the $300 I paid when they first became available.

The choice, of course, is yours. But I feel we will be hearing further from
you - when you come here to ask about how you can recover your lost
information from a failed hard drive.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Mooky, You're driving everybody crazy by seeming to ignore all the warnings
about losing your data and pressing on in a vain attempt to "repair" your
clicking drive.

Please let us all know that either 1) you have backed up your data or 2)
your computer is just a play toy and you don't have any data worth backing
up.