NTFS hard drive bad sector recovery on a sata drive

#1

Anyone here had to tackle the problem of a 90 gig partition dissappearing from a 120Gb sata drive?

The Scenario:
-Maxtor 120 Gb drive with three partitions, c: 20 GB formatted as NTFS with windows install, d: about 10GB formatted with FAT32 used to share info between operating systems and to strip Alternate Data Streams off of NTFS files. and then the culprit e: partition which had my "my Documents" folder relocated to it and also my main initial download target folders.

-Late one night recently doing nothing that jumps to my mind as being especially disk intensive, my computer started acting all sluggish. It had been up for probably approximately 144 hours since last reboot, so I thought what the hell....1st thing you always try when troubleshooting windows is to reboot, so I did. Upon reboot, after logging in, the start menu and desktop were even more sluggish. Lots of cpu cycles were being used (cpu fan spins faster under load) but I do not know by what. Then I get a warning dialog indicating the path to my My Documents folder is invalid. I try to browse to it in windows explorer, and the e: drive is there, but shows it as being unformatted and empty and asks if I want to format it when I try to browse into the file tree. ( i responded no of course ). I immediately went into the disk admin util and removed the drive letter refrence in the hopes to avoid an overzealous attempt by any software that might reference that drive to try and recover or write to it. Then I go to the registry and remove all references to e:usr and e:downloads just to be extra sure.

-Inspection of the System Event Logs shows that it is FILLED (all 512K) with disk error messages going back a couple hours, occuring every couple seconds sometimes multiple times per second indicating that the HD has bad sectors. I reassign the faulty partition a drive letter, X, and start trying to do chkdsk /r /f /x on it. When chkdsk is able to finish an entire cycle, there are numerous screens scrolling by with "unreadable" and other error messages. Often times though, chkdsk will quit without an explanation other than the unreadable areas it is has encountered.

-So I grab a copy of the Winternals Boot CD that was linked here recently courtesy of Mandizzle and give it a shot. Using the recovery utilities on the cd, I start a scan of the drive and let it go overnight. When I go to bed it has completed 38% of the scan. About 7 hours later, it has only progressed to 45%. It appears like the utility is getting bogged down trying to decifer the bad sectors so I abort it and try booting from Hiren's Boot CD v8.0. I have tried the spinright utility and a couple others but there is not very much documentation with this cdrom so I don't really know which out of these programs would be best to use. I have been able to see the file tree with all the original structure (plus a bunch of fixed or found directories courtesy of the the chkdsk runs) but the drive remains unavailable in Windows XP Pro SP2. I have also been able to see the files and folders using a utility called GetDataBackNTFS (or something similar) however when using it to copy the files to a different drive the computer will always Blue Screen with a stop error mentioning IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL.

- SO here I am, anyone with any advice on things to try or a tool you have had success with in the past for tasks like these? Also, after recovering the data, transfering the OS on my C: drive to another physical disk and completely wiping it with repeated passes of writing 1's and 0's, what do you think the liklihood of a repeat occurance of this is? The drive is only like 20 months old, so it has quite a few hours before I even approach the MTBF rating.

-A little more background about what all this drive is hooked up to in case anyone wants to toss around some ideas...AMD64 4000+ processor, DFI Lanparty NF4 ultra D Mobo with Nvidia Sata ports. #1=failing drive, #2 & 4=300GB Maxtor 3.0 Gbps,16MB cache with NCQ enabled, model, #3=Seagate 500GB 16MB cache, NCQ enabled. Disks 2,3,and 4 are all just 1 partition each and the Seagate has been converted to a "dynamic disk". Heat has not been an issue as all these things are in an Antec p180 case which has a seperate compartment for the Hard Drives and a fan that pulls fresh air over them in a "wind tunnel" type arrangement. I would estimate that the HD temps under normal system use usually stay in the mid to upper 30's (degrees C). The Power supply is new within the past 2 months and is an Antec NeoHC 550W, so I am doubtful that it is the cuprit here.

Anyone have any insight?

#2

Sounds like you better check the specs on the rotary girder...I only understood computer...sluggish. I could help you troubleshoot a truck but not your PC. I do hope you get it figured out. Come on hacks, I'm curious too...I want ot learn!

#3

A couple of suggestions...
PowerMax is a diagnostic utility for Maxtor HDD's that you can download from Maxtor's website. Run the program on your drive and it will inform you about the drives health.
S.M.A.R.T should be turned on in the bios if it is an option and it will check your drives when you boot-up.

How were you able to transfer the data to another drive? I didn't see that info in your post and I'm curious.

#4

I have never been a fan of creating multiple partitions on the same drive, man I've heard one too many horror stories...As per getting data off of a drive that has written 0's, I wouldn't waste time installing GetDataBack for NTFS...As long as you have another drive to recover files to, you can grab all your goodies off, and that's definitely what I'd do, had I been paying attention yesterday when I had my impending doom coming, I would have been able to save some of my important files...

And for the record, I've never liked Maxtor drives...

#5

QUOTE(DaddyJ)A couple of suggestions...
PowerMax is a diagnostic utility for Maxtor HDD's that you can download from Maxtor's website. Run the program on your drive and it will inform you about the drives health.
S.M.A.R.T should be turned on in the bios if it is an option and it will check your drives when you boot-up.

How were you able to transfer the data to another drive? I didn't see that info in your post and I'm curious.

powermax does not work with nforce4 sata chipset at last check. SMART fails upon post saying drive failure is looming close and to backup the data and replace. I got tired of having to hit F1 to continue the boot after the error, so I disabled SMART. I rescued 98% of the data using the program referenced in the original post GetDataBackNTFS quite a handy program as it has saved my bacon twice now. The remaining 2% of the data was on bad sectors and not that important and easily recreatable, so based on the laws of diminishing returns, I quit the recovery process.

The status now is I have that 90 gig partition unallocated and just looking for time to transfer my OS to one of the other drives. Anyone have a tried and true method for cloning your OS drive including the MBR to another drive??

#6

QUOTE(AYHJA)...As per getting data off of a drive that has written 0's, I wouldn't waste time installing GetDataBack for NTFS...As long as you have another drive to recover files to, you can grab all your goodies off, and that's definitely what I'd do, had I been paying attention yesterday when I had my impending doom coming, I would have been able to save some of my important files...

And for the record, I've never liked Maxtor drives...

Maxtor is quickly falling out of favor with me too.

I think you misunderstood the question pertaining to the 1's and 0's....I was asking if wiping an entire drive with repeated writes of 1's and 0's would be a successful method for recovering the drive and making it usable again. I can't get an RMA from MAXTOR because their diagnostic BS software does not support The nForce4 SATA chips. Their help FAQ instructs you to install the drive in another system or get an add-on card to connect the drive through.....like I want to spend more time/effort/energy/money troubleshooting thier piece of shit drive for a stinkin RMA that once I pay for shipping I could go out and get a different brand, more cache, quieter drive for the same money.

#7

Acronis True Image

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/

I'll post it if you want it.

GetDataBackNTFS has saved me also, it's a very good program.

#8

Once the bad sectors are marked as bad the OS will write around it. It does not guarantee that more problems will not occur...

#9

what makes a sector "bad"?

did it get caught smoking during recess by the loading dock? did it stay out past curfew? did it smuggle a flask to the winter dance?

snicker.....seriously, is there a way to recover a "bad" sector once it has been labelled as such?

#10

A defect on the disc, you can run chkdsk or spin rite to repair it.

Repair means mark as defective (OS will not use). The defect will spread most likely.