HELP!! Disk failure or corruption!

[conguero]

The bane of my existence! As some of you know, I am a BIT hard on hard drives. I download pretty much constantly. It's an addiction. Well I have yet another HD issue and I am wondering if I can use a Data Recovery software to fix it.

Here's the scoop: About 3 months ago, I came home and and my computer had crashed. I rebooted. Nothing. I tried again and again. I even connected my HD to a different IDE channel because I have a intermittent IDE issue.

After a few days of desperation, I put the HD in my dad's comp and it worked as a slave. So I backed it up and reinstalled my OS on a new HD and used the reformatted spotty one as a slave. Then I ordered a pci-based ide card and it worked well. I thought my problem was solved though I still suspected the HD of being the problem.

Well, lately, I have been finding that my comp has restarted on it's own, having stopped at the login. Other times the screen has scrambled, leading me to believe I had a vid card problem. Then, a few days ago the spotty hd started disconnecting on it's own. I had some success with disabling its IDE channel (the one with the known issue) and re-enabling it. I then put off backing up the data (dumb du dumb dumb dumb).


Well, now I can't do anything with it. The disable/enable thing doesn't work. The HD's name has changed to "Local Disk" and when I try to view it's contents I get one of two messages: "THE PARAMETER IS INCORRECT" or "THE DRIVE IS CORRUPTED AND UNREADABLE". Also, refreshing the contents of "My Computer" takes FOREVER.

Any ideas? Will a data recovery tool work? If so, which one?
Thanks in advance for any help.

-Tormented in Tulsa

[slam]

if the computer was still having boot issues, even though the problem drive wasn't the boot drive, i'd suspect some sort of motherboard issues or software/driver problems. can you try putting the drive in another computer again to see if you can get to the data?

in case all else fails, there is software out there that can recover data off a hard drive. usually, it just reads straight through, putting files back together. if your hard drive wasn't very fragmented, you can get a good recovery sometimes. in order to run it, though, you need an empty hard drive to recover the data to, and the process isn't very fast. i would only go to software recovery tools as a last resort. let me know, though, and i can hook you up with the program.

have you tried using xp's disk tools? under properties on the drive, click tools, then do a scandisk. i would uncheck 'fix errors' the first time you run it, just to see if it even finds anything wrong.

[larryhead]

I'd try it as a slave in another computer again... if it works fine you know something else is amiss with your system. Also, I have heard of certain viruses causing similar symptons as you described (screen scrambling, random reboots). Have you run a good antivirus check and scanned with Norton, Ad-Aware and M$ Antispyware tool etc.?

[conguero]

Thanks for the speedy response!
Something I should have included in the post: I am running Win 2k Professional with all updates. I am also using NTFS on all HDs.
Re: scandisk... I have tried numerous times. It simply looks like it is going to run, and then quickly disappears and gives no error message. When I try to defrag it says it cannot run on volumes of this type. Before it went kaput, the system did several automatic scandisks at startup.

Re: trying it as a slave... I haven't tried it this time. I will tho.

Re: antivirus... I am running symantec corp ed 8... Its definitions are up-to-date and were before the HD went kaput.

Re: adaware and it's ilk... I have been running both spybot and adaware and haven't found any issues in a year or so. Both are up-to-date and I have spybot's immunization running.

Re: motherboard issues... I do have some... I have noticed that while I am using the computer, particularly during video and audio playback, that everything freezes for a few seconds. I mean... no mouse movement, no ctrl-alt-del functionality...nothing. Whenever that happens, it sounds like my cd drives are spinning up. But the odd thing is that those drives and my other HDs are connected to to that PCI-slot IDE card.

Hmmm... I hope that helps. Thanks again for your help!

[conguero]

I was reading slam's response to Simolean2's post called SERIOUS CRASH!!!?!? and I decided to also try the event viewer. Lo and behold... Oct 10 and 11 there were a lot of events per day under system log relating to one or two hard disks (#'s 4 and 2 as far as I can tell. mostly # 2). I think th 11th is when my HD went under.

The last and most of the recent ones read like this: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 during a paging operation."

A similar one is: "An error was detected on device \...\DR0 during a paging operation. "

Another said: "The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period." I believe that would be the HD in question. I did switch my connections around to troubleshoot tho.

Another said: "The device, \Device\Scsi\Ultra1, did not respond within the timeout period. "

There are more. I don't want to go overboard (no pun intended... he he). Let me know if any of that helps.
Also. Is there a way to make the comp notify me when this starts happening? It might be able to fix it before it gets to this point.
Thanks!

[conguero]

Ok. This is the final bit of info on my hard drive woes.

I tried it as a slave. The same stuff happens. Can't do a disk check. Can't access data. Space used is 0kb. Space available is 0kb. It says the file sytem is RAW when it was NTFS. It still causes the computer to lag when displaying "My Computer." XP did ask me to format the disk. I don't remember that in Win2K.
1. So, can I at least recover my data? Will it be usable or in the RAW format? What would it being RAW mean anyway?? Is it just a text file of corrupt code?
2. If I recover my data, should I scrap the HD altogether?

Suggestions??

BTW, would anyone like to deliver a eulogy for my poor deceased HD? The service is being planned for next week. ;)

[larryhead]

Man... that thing sounds hosed. You could try some data recovery software... I think Norton makes one. Alternativey, send it in to a data recovery center if you really need the stuff on there, that could be your best time-efficient bet. It sounds like either your partition table got corrupted or the drive has actually been physically damaged (in which case, it's fucked forever). I've seen drives where the spindle has rubbed against the disk and carved 1/2" deep tracks into it. Is it making any grinding noises?

BTW.. what brand & size drive is it? I've always used Western Digital with no problems (knocks on wood), but bad drives can happen to anyone. I wish you luck.

[slam]

try powerquest lost & found. if you can't find it, let me know. it'll rip the drive straight to a second, pre formatted drive. since the file table is probably fscked, it'll just try to recover the data in order. so if your drive was mostly defragged, you'll probably recover most of it.

i've used it. it worked.

so you'll need a second drive of at least the same size to try to recover to. it's a dos-mode program, nothing fancy, and it takes a really long time. but hey, might as well give it a shot.

'oh ye, great programmer in the sky, take unto thee this beloved drive. let it's 1s and 0s forever cycle through the beautiful alogrithms of the universal mesh...'