Hard drive problems

[gimps]

Atleast I think it's harddrive problems.. so I download a set of archived files, and when I try to extract them I get errors in certain files. So I re-download those files, and then get corruption in other files. The drive WAS FAT32, and hoped that converting it to NTFS would help. Unfortunately, it didn't.
I don't have the problem with larger files, like disc images, and whatnot, only with archives, generally RAR files.
Any idea what would cause this? And/or how I could fix it? Would a full format of the drive help? How about a low-level format?

 

[Calin]

Try a disk check, with the surface check also. If there is a problem on your hard drive, this will find it.
Try also another file archiver, if the first thing don't work. Hmmm... A surface check would take hours.

Calin

 

[LTC8K6]

Go to the drive mfgs site and download the tools for your drive. They will let you know if there is anything wrong with the drive.

Do you have SMART enabled in the BIOS? SMART is pretty good at detecting a failing drive as well.

 

[gimps]

I'm pretty sure I do have SMART enabled, but I'll double check that. I'll also go ahead and give a full format a shot.
As for doing a disk check, well, I'll see what happens with that.
And I don't think it's the archiver, because on any of my other harddrives, I don't have that problem, and I have 4 hds total.

 

[gimps]

ok so I don't have SMART enabled on that drive.. due to being on a RAID controller, it doesn't have the capability.
Also, I tried using the manus. disk tools, but #1 it wouldn't load DOS when I tried to boot off the floppy, #2 I don't think it'd be able to find the drive anyway, as it's on a RAID controller.

Know of any good disk checking programs? chkdsk isn't too great...

 

[gimps]

Ok, so I just did a full-format I drive... I think that's all it needed. As I was moving the files last night, to move about 10 gb of files to another drive, on a different channel, it took about an hour'ish. Well, after formatting today, it only took about 10 minutes to copy all 10 gb back to the drive.
Also, after moving the files, running chkdsk, deleting everything left in the drive, it still showed about 2 gb of space being used, but I couldn't find any of those 2gb in any of the folders (including the hidden folders). After formatting, it only showed about 66 mb being used.
So I think I just need to full-format all my extra drives..
But it'd still be nice to have a better disk error-checking program than chkdsk... any suggestions?