why would a HDD suddenly erase and unpartition itself? and whats the best HDD going??

[daveqb]

my HDD, upon a reboot, totally wiped itself, and became not partitioned!

couldnt find boot record.
booted off Ghost back disk and it couldnt install image

booted off WinXP CD and said the HDD was not partitioned in two like i had it and was unpartitioned (raw)

just like that, all music, games, programs, tax info, all 30+ gigs gone!!

so now its acting a bit slow , so keeping an eye on it,

1/ whats the best diagnostic program for HDD's?

2/ whats the best HDD going?? in case i replace it, (only 2 months old)

 

[owensdj]

The best diagnostic program for a HD is the diagnostic software you can download for free from your HD manufacturer's web site. Sound's like your HD is having real problems, so you'd better backup your data and then run the diagnostic software ASAP. If your HD is only 2 months old, the manufacturer should replace it. Generally, IDE drives are covered for 3 years. SCSI drives are usually covered for 5 years.

For IDE drives, I like Western Digital right now.

 

[MWink]

Any chance you had a virus?

 

[daveqb]

thats what someone else said,

i doubt it,
its a few day old intall and only been visiting forums in that time,
and only downloads were Windows Update and SiS Sandra update..

oh and VIA's new 4 in 1's drivers

so doubt the virus

well running the Maxtor diag as we speak, its passed the first 2 tests

i was hoping it was faulty, i need a bigger one !

but weird hey, to lose data AND become UNpartitioned!

 

[Mavrick007]

Yes that does sound strange indeed. Hehe You weren't playing with any huge magnets lately were you? If you find out what happened or some other info, let us know. You might want to try it in another machine before you format it again, just to be safe.

 

[daveqb]

i was using Windows fine, then did a re-start (been playing with all these fun settings in the BIOS of my new GA-7VRXP board)
and it booted up saying couldnt find boot record.....


did get a new screw driver a week or two ago, and didnt realise til i got , that it is magnatise to help with the screws, you know...

but that wouldnt do it huh ???

or my mild overclocking ??

its pasted a few tests, but seems to be spending an awful long time on the burn in test....
fingers crossed it wont make it
gonna leave it over night, too tired , too late at night to wait for it ......

 

[Rick014]

"did get a new screw driver a week or two ago, and didnt realise til i got , that it is magnatise to help with the screws, you know..."

"but that wouldnt do it huh ???"

Doubt that's the problem.
I use a magnetic screwdriver, as well as some other people I know, and it's never caused a problem.

 

[evergreen96]

Try Ndd/..... it may be able to "repair the partition" Same thing happened to me but i repair it but had longs of "long chain, cluster" but I was able to recover the majority of the data before starting from scratch again..

Not sure about the virus thing but I suggest you up date your a-virus prog.

It happened on my D: drive (2nd Phyiscial HD) Other drives where unaffected

GL

 

[tk149]

I've had a hard drive do seriously weird stuff while I was overclocking.

 

[Dim]

When you were messing with the BIOS settings, did you change the drive geometry settings (heads, cylinders) for the drive? If so, restoring the settings may give you your data back.

 

[daveqb]

thanx guys.

nah never touched the HDD stuff, just the memory timings..

i tried Ontrack's Easy Recovery on it.. it recovered a grand total of (drum roll) ......ZERO files!

put windows back on (takes 8 mins with using an image, i LOVE Norton Ghost!)

then ran the tests all night, just started its last test and its due to finish in 20mins.
so far its passed all the tests hehe

this is the weirdest thing, scared to store any valuable data on any HDD now, gonna have to invest in faster CD Writer (got an 8x's)
so i can put all my stuff onto CD,
knowing my luck i will lose them , LOL

 

[Electronics4Life]

Your problem is similar to one i had (I hope)/am having. My hard drive did not hold windows files though, it was only used for storage. It would just *lose* its parttion and format state about every 2 weeks. I eventually got sick of this and sent the drive in for RMA. The drive I recieved was STILL doing the same thing. As a last ditch effort I stopped using a NTFS file system and switched to a FAT 32 file system. So far, (it has been about a month) everything is working as it should be. So maybe try using a different file system on that drive....