fubar'd XP and/or HD???

[Paddy]

My installation of XP is falling apart.
Loads of applications are giving dll errors and many just fail to load. I attempted a rebuild yesterday, but I don't have enough space to backup all of my data.

The bits that are irreplaceable are fine, but i have 100GB of media that although i could download again, it would be a PITA.

I tried to get around this by doing some partition juggling but Partition Manager 8.0 reported a bad sector on the HD and failed to make any changes.

WinXP's chkdsk finds nothing.
OnTrack's EasyRecovery Pro bombs out when it tries to scan the disk.

I have tried to use SeaTools (Seagate's DFT) but I cant find a floppy that works. Windows reports that the floppy isn't formated, but it cant format it. I use maybe one floppy a year, so I can't vouch for the integrety of the media.

Pants!

I the HD is a 120GB Baracuda V. It is less than 6months old, and when i got it I ran the extended SeaTool test and it found no problems then....

Questions:

• Are bad sectors a physical defect in the drive?
• Can they be 'repaired' or jsut 'flagged' by a good format?
• Could the bad sector just be an artifact from a failing OS?
• Can I resolve this without resorting to loosing my 100GB of p0rn... I err... mean *movies*

I note that When XP installs it gives you the option of a quick format or an extended/normal format. The quick option takes seconds and the normal takes a few mins... If I were to install 2K, it would take 40mins or so to format the disk.

• What is the best way to deal with this bad sector???

Finals in a few weeks... I dont want to be spending more time on this than I have to.....

Paddy.
x

[az]

One bad sector isn't bad - scandisk just flags it and takes one of the sectors it has in reserve for exactly these situations out of the reserves and into duty. BUT more failing sectors, especially when their count is rising exponentially, hint at a hardware fault:

The head hit the drive, scratching a little of the surface off (creating a few bad sectors, which, seen alone, wouldn't be a problem). The scratched off bits then dance around inside the HD, damaging the platter surface even more - creating more bits that fly around and damage the platter, and so on until the drive becomes unusable.

Especially when you get file not found errors, it's time to back up all your important pr0... data and buy some diskettes to run SeaTools. If more and more bad sectors are appearing, return the drive (I'd return it now anyways, but do a backup and erase your data before - especially sensitive data!). I'd lend a HD from a friend (or buy one from a shop with a good return policy, though that's not the morally right thing to do) for the backup. Do it as soon as you can!

AZ

[Paddy]

I have all of the important bits backed up. I guess i need to do a DFT, a format and then a reinstall ???

[Tempest]

Bad sectors are most often a physical defect in the drive, more details in az's post. A format can be used to "retest" the sectors marked as bad -> if a sector marked as unusable (=bad) appears to be working, it is unmarked.

But I doubt that a single bad sector would give that much trouble, unless you're extremely unlucky and it is located just where some important system file(s) should be. So, I fear that (unless it's your RAM/MoBo/power supply that is at fault) your drive might be dying... Using/borrowing another drive could, besides being used for backup, also be a good test to see if it's your drive or some other component that is about to let its smoke out.

In any case, backup what you can/need and run SeaTools. If the drive tests seems to be OK, you can reformat and reinstall. But if the drive gives you ANY trouble, just return it. These problems very rarely just vanish, they usually just get worse. My old Barracuda drive started with a bad sector, but in the end I could run chkdsk as many times as I wanted, and it'd always give me a new kind of error message...

[az]

As Tempest said, just back up everything you can, and return the drive. It's the least hassle that way, and the drive is almost predestined to give you more trouble in the future, even IF you can sort your problems out now.

AZ

[Paddy]

I'll backup and put the HD into another computer so that I can try SeaTools. If that reports no problems, then i will reinstall.

If it does, then yet another D back to Holland

[Sethos]

A bad sector = physical anomoly of some sort on the drive plater itself...this happens usually when a computer isn't shut down properly and the heads land out side the landing zone of the platter, and hence always do a proper shut down, even if you have to do a warm reboot just to do a proper shutdown... all a scan disk util does is flag the bad areas and record them so that they are not used.

A bad sector isn't a bad thing at all really so long as you don't have an excess of them and they are not in the boot sector, in which case your in some big doo doo...

~Sethos

PS: Does anyone actually know the actual accronym of FUBAR?

[Fat Tone]

Paddy:

Fu*ked up beyond all reapir, but unbelieveably not dead yet!

FUBAR BUNDY.

Formatted the HD and it all checked out fine - must have been XP falling appart.

[az]

AFAIK, HDs have no landing zone anymore since.. a long time ago? At least you do not manually park them anymore

Fubar comes from the german word "furchtbar" (pronounced a little like foorshtbar - though I don't know any english example with the correct pronounciation of "ch" ), which alliance soldiers picked up during WWII.

AZ

[UtwigMU]

If you have Bad™ sectors that the utility confirms, RMA drive ASAP.

[Sethos]

It's right that you don't have to park the heads anymore, not since like the late '80 or so i think actually, The OS usually does this for you in the shutdown routine when you shutdown. there is still a landing zone which I believe you can still specify in the BIOS, actually as I think about it now I know you can still specify it in the BIOS (as it happens I was looking at it earlier today strangly enough...heh) it's sort of a given that it is automatic now though, thank God...

Ah the old days when you had to always type "park"...

~Sethos

[The PIT]

I thought the landzone was automatically detected by todays bios's.
Normally it means a drive is failing although it could be tomorrow or years down the line.
Strange things with bad sectors. Once had an 800mb drive and this had bad sectors which increased slowly. Repartined the drive into two 400mb partions and they disappeared and never came back.
The drive dies years later when I accidental dropped it a foot onto the floor.

[Sethos]

The drive dies years later when I accidental dropped it a foot onto the floor.

I used to work @ a super market in the milk fridge...every once in a while while slinging the cartons on to the shelf you'd miss and drop one...from like 6 feet in the air it could fall on solid concrete and not even dent it, but like one foot and the thing'd make a bigger splash than a whale...guess it's a universal phenomenon...

~Sethos

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Sethos
I used to work @ a super market in the milk fridge...every once in a while while slinging the cartons on to the shelf you'd miss and drop one...from like 6 feet in the air it could fall on solid concrete and not even dent it, but like one foot and the thing'd make a bigger splash than a whale...guess it's a universal phenomenon...

~Sethos

Yup, I had the same job. Man, there's nothing worse than watching a gallon of milk blast all over the concrete.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Wombat
Yup, I had the same job. Man, there's nothing worse than watching a gallon of milk blast all over the concrete.

Oh there is. A Gallon of Beer.

Once saw a mate of mine drop a pint. Landed upside down but didn't spill a drop.