HDD file system problem

[Goi]

Hi,
I've been getting random reboots lately, which presumably wreaked some havoc on the file systems(NTFS). I ran Seagate's diagnostic tools CD and it showed no physical damage but basically just about all my 4 drives have file system errors. I run chkdsk on windows and it showed errors, so I did a chkdsk /f to fix the problems upon reboot. However, that doesn't seem to solve the problem. I'm still getting errors when I do a chkdsk and when I run the diagnostic tools. Strangely, some drives don't show up errors when I run chkdsk. It reports "no errors found", while others don't even show that line, i.e. no indication if there's an error or not. Both partitions of my boot drive show errors though, despite the chkdsk /f earlier on.

I also tried to chkdsk in safe mode but that showed the same results, except now my boot drive doesn't show any indication of an error or not.

Any ideas on how I can solve this? Thanks!

 

[Nohr]

Try booting off the Windows CD and running chkdsk /r in the recovery console.

 

[Goi]

I haven't tried that yet, but just an update, I tried chkdsk /f again on the 2 partitions of my boot drive and then reboot to let it do it's magic, and after that, I ran a read only chkdsk on just those 2 partitions, and it gave me the following errors in my boot partition:

CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

The other partition has the same problems except for the 1st 2 lines.

I'll try the chkdsk/r later. How do I get into the recovery console? I've done it before but I can't remember.

 

[Nohr]

How to use the Recovery Console

 

[Goi]

OK, I just tried that. I did a chkdsk /r for all my partitions and it claims to have fixed one or more problems. That took a couple hours, and when that was done I booted up again and did a regular read only chkdsk and it still shows errors. What's up with that?

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Scandisk /F recovers files that do not have Directory (Folder) entries. They are usually caused by the power to the computer going off while the Hard Drive is writing data. Since the Directory entry is the last thing written you end up with lost files and wasted space. /F converts them to files in your Root Directory so you can look them over and recover part of your lost chapter in the novel you were writing. If I remember correctly they have a .CHK extension. Delayed write on the HD can make it more likely to happen. Turn it off if it's on. Hope this helps a little, Jim

 

[Goi]

Yes, power going off suddenly is probably my problem due to the spontaneous reboots I'm getting. I wasn't aware Win XP had a scandisk command line though. I googled around and didn't find anything. In fact, they all seem to mention that XP doesn't have scandisk. I tried running scandisk on the command line and it wasn't recognized either.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, I think you are right. I don't use XP. Tried it a few times, but it gets in the way of too many things I need to do. I'm pretty sure it has CHKDSK, which will also recover the lost data. Looking in the recovered data may give you a clue, but not likely. Luck, Jim

 

[Goi]

Like I said, I've already tried chkdsk but it didn't solve the problem.

 

[V00D00]

Sounds like your drive is crashing hard core. Is it a seagate?? There was a thread about a dude who had a bunch of seagate drives crash on him. Seagate said it was a flaw in the Smooth chip on it. You really really really should GET THE IMPORTANT DATA OFF THAT DRIVE.

You will probably keep gettingbad sectors all over the drive. Then the drive automatically marks them unusable and everything appears OK for a while. The cycle will continue until you have no more free space becasue all the sectors are marked bad.

So copy your important stuff to another drive, and RMA it.

 

[Goi]

Yes it's a Seagate 7200.8 250GB SATA drive, which was why I was kinda worried after reading the posts, but the Seagate diagnostic tools gave it a clean bill of health, with only a bad file structure. chkdsk also didn't report any bad sectors, just errors in the MFT/file system.

btw if I wished to backup my drive, can I ghost it on another drive or will that also preserve the bad file system/etc? I've never ghosted anything before. My OS is installed in C: and all my applications are installed in D:, and both partitions are in my Seagate, so do I just ghost C: or both C: and D:?

Geez I just ran a chkdsk on all my drives and my brand new Maxtor from black friday has a 4KB bad sector. My other 3 drives are all fine according to chkdsk.

 

[V00D00]

Why oh why would you install the OS on one and the apps on another? If you had to reformat, you would have to reinstall the apps anyway. You should do OS+Apps on one, and files on another.
So if you wanted to keep your OS and Apps intact with ghost you are correct, you would have to ghost C: and D:.

If you don't have any other files on the drive, you can just clone the whole disk. If you have a bunch of files, then that might be out of the question. I think as long as you assign the same drive letters when you restore the ghosts you should be alright making separate ghosts of the C and D drive.

 

[Goi]

Well I've been doing the OS/app partitioning for a while now. I do it so that every so often when I reformat my C:, I can just copy the settings(or even entire applications that don't require installation such as firefox/miranda) from my old programs folders to the new one without having to back them up, since they're already there and I don't reformat it. I'd have to back them up somewhere else if I had it all in 1 big C:

Would ghosting only take the amount of space required for the files, or would it require the size of the HDD? I'm thinking of reformating both drives and then ghosting it back to see if it fixes anything. What do you mean by "a bunch of files"...what files exactly are you referring to?