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Hard drive broken? Help needed.

Hardware, Software & Internet

Minitokyo » Forum » Computers & Internet Fora » Hardware, Software & Internet  Hard drive broken? Help needed.

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Okay, I was using my computer and everything was going fine, nothing seemed wrong.
Well, then I restarted my computer so my regional settings would take affect so I could play a game. When my computer boots up, Windows now says one of my hard drives, a 200GB Maxtor is now unformatted/RAW.
What happened? THis is my anime/download drive and I'd really like to fix this.

What ever you do, do not format your harddrive.
Backup all contents inside into and drive.

Try this utility.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

Your harddrive might already be corrupted it's just hasn't act up on it yet, until now.

Some other person in another forum had the same problem as you and that's what he did.
and it works.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v260/raptorfb/invalid.jpg
I'm guessing this is something important right?
I have seen this message many times before with other drives that have "broken".

If you have a spare HD, try transferring a all the files from the corrupted one. You have to use the DOS command for this one.

Now I don't say that's the solution but I think it's worth a try.

Backup all your files first.
From the looks of that utility, it only recognize 132Gb of your entire 200gb drive.
In order words you have not partition and format your drive correctly to
pass the 132GB barrier.
Thus leading to this type of diaster as you have now.


Odd, before the reboot, it was recognised as a 1 189gb partition with 160gb used.
Also, when I used that tool showed me, it says that my "boot sectors and backup bot sectors" are bad.
What does this mean to me?

Your boot sector or Master Boot Record (mbr) is what is used to start and OS (Win, Linux, ect). If just that is bad, all it might mean is you can't use it to boot. But it will piss off windows for sure. Find some one with a Linux sys and see if they can read it or you might try BartPE. I have never used it but I have heard of people using it to fix there HDs.

Just some suggestions.

how about just adjust the jumper settings and make this a slave drive, and then use another bootable drive to transfer files

It is a slave drive. No OS on it either.
Just one folder, ANIME.
The disk usage was, again, about 160gb.

Quote by sundewzerYour boot sector or Master Boot Record (mbr) is what is used to start and OS (Win, Linux, ect). If just that is bad, all it might mean is you can't use it to boot. But it will piss off windows for sure. Find some one with a Linux sys and see if they can read it or you might try BartPE. I have never used it but I have heard of people using it to fix there HDs.
Just some suggestions.

Bart PE is typicall an OS that runs on a CD or DVD.
Unlike Windows PE where you must be a system builder or enterprise user in order
to obtain a WindowsPE CD.
Bart PE can be download from the Internet, andyou can customize it to your needs.

I use BART PE for transfering my data from one hd to another when my OS will not
load properly.

All I know is I use a linux boot disk to remove my admin password, which I somehow forgot. ^_^'

Quote by tiki223

Quote by sundewzerYour boot sector or Master Boot Record (mbr) is what
is used to start and OS (Win, Linux, ect). If just that is bad, all it
might mean is you can't use it to boot. But it will piss off windows
for sure. Find some one with a Linux sys and see if they can read it or
you might try BartPE. I have never used it but I have heard of people
using it to fix there HDs.
Just some suggestions.


Bart PE is typicall an OS that runs on a CD or DVD.
Unlike Windows PE where you must be a system builder or enterprise user
in order
to obtain a WindowsPE CD.
Bart PE can be download from the Internet, andyou can customize it to
your needs.
I use BART PE for transfering my data from one hd to another when my OS
will not
load properly.
All I know is I use a linux boot disk to remove my admin password,
which I somehow forgot. ^_^'

z
No OS on this drive.
Just for reference, this is my D: drive, and of course, Windows is on C: drive.

If your file table is messed up, you may be able to find some tools to rebuild it. Google for "repair NTFS file table" and you should get some hits. I found this utility: http://www.ptdd.com/

It looks like it's able to recover boot records, file tables, etc. If you're really concerned, I would suggest finding a way to recover the data to another drive first. One tool I recommend for this is Get Data Back (for ntfs). It's saved my ass several times (like when I accidentally reformat a drive ^^;;).

Quote by kawaiiguyIf your file table is messed up, you may be able to find some tools to
rebuild it. Google for "repair NTFS file table" and you should get some
hits. I found this utility: http://www.ptdd.com/
It looks like it's able to recover boot records, file tables, etc. If
you're really concerned, I would suggest finding a way to recover the
data to another drive first. One tool I recommend for this is Get Data
Back (for ntfs). It's saved my ass several times (like when I
accidentally reformat a drive ^^;;).


Yeah, I know of the magic gdbntfs performs.
Sadly if can't finish scanning the drive. Gets about 12% then is flooded with LBA read errors (# 1 and 177) until the program locks up and will not do anything, regardless of the time given.

It seems your hard drive has bad sectors.
Is the data inside that drive really important?

If it is, then try sending it to a data recover specialist.
Most HD manufacture should offer this type of service, but you must pay out
a ton of money.

Here is a data recovery specalist there are also others.
http://www.ontrack.com/

Your harddrive is just simply corrupted (sorry to be so repetetive), I'll vouch that something you did messed around with the harddrive's boot sector. But since this is a slave drive, you should really be able to just bypass it.
Recover all you can and try using the winXP disk to repair the slave drive's boot sector. If you're feeling lucky you could take a stab at trying to reset the slave drive's boot sector yourself, I believe the first two bits (or bytes, you should really check on this before you do it) are basically what tells the system/windows what the condition of the harddrive really is (i.e. partition type, format, etc...)
BTW, that 132 gig thing, I have a gut-feeling its due to that old kernel problem that doesnt let it read past 132gb of drive space. WinXP had that problem, but I think SP1 fixed it.
You haven't lost your data yet, and don't send it off to some company until you've exhausted all your resources -- my friend had this problem with his harddrive and the company messed up and just wiped the entire drive clean, said that the harddrive was physically fine, and charged him $40...

Quote by MSGNoodleYour harddrive is just simply corrupted (sorry to be so repetetive),
I'll vouch that something you did messed around with the harddrive's
boot sector. But since this is a slave drive, you should really be able
to just bypass it.
Recover all you can and try using the winXP disk to repair the slave
drive's boot sector. If you're feeling lucky you could take a stab at
trying to reset the slave drive's boot sector yourself, I believe the
first two bits (or bytes, you should really check on this before you do
it) are basically what tells the system/windows what the condition of
the harddrive really is (i.e. partition type, format, etc...)
BTW, that 132 gig thing, I have a gut-feeling its due to that old
kernel problem that doesnt let it read past 132gb of drive space. WinXP
had that problem, but I think SP1 fixed it.
You haven't lost your data yet, and don't send it off to some company
until you've exhausted all your resources -- my friend had this problem
with his harddrive and the company messed up and just wiped the entire
drive clean, said that the harddrive was physically fine, and charged
him $40...


How would I perform these repairs?

To perform the byte by byte fix you'd need some sort of bytereader, there's a bunch of free ones. I can't say exactly, I've only done this operation once just to see what would happen (as in I caused the harddrive problem on purpose, so i knew what to fix). Since you're not sure what happened, I think you'd better look up if someone has an example document to show what bytes had to be changed -- you got a common problem, someone out there has the solution online, google.com should be able to find it.

If you're feeling lucky, you can try the Windows XP disk (assuming you had windows XP installed). I believe the disk has some repair function to fix boot-records, but alas my memory fails me. Although, it is known that sometimes the WinXP disk can be evil and just wipe your harddrive entirely clean.

Actually, just doing a quick search said that you can't exactly recover a dead NTFS partition, unless you're gonna fork it over to a professional. Whether or not that article tells the full truth, I don't know. I've seen dead partitions of all types recovered through using a bytereader/editor, but it's a time consuming process

Here's two sites that will (hopefully) help:
http://www.toolsthatwork.com/bbdocs/editor.htm
http://www.toolsthatwork.com/bbdocs/diskstructures.htm

Hopefully this helps, just don't go around editing random bytes.

Everyone is trying to help with the recovery of your data. I'm afraid I may not be able to help much with that other that to give you a couple of warnings. Boot sectors are usually fixed by running fdisk.exe from a dos boot disk. The problem with this is a complete format of the disk must be completed next before the disk becomes usable. I would also be worried about a virus or somothing being on the bad drive. If you were just doing normal things and then cycled power and the drive quit working, it doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. Viruses have been known to take out boot sectors.

  • ko1
  • 3y 3wk ago

Like my college instructor said, "Death, taxes, and hardware fails."

Have you tried Maxtor's Powermax program yet? www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

Might help. Might not. Free download so it wouldn't hurt to try.

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