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View Full Version : Hard drive crashing XP. How do I repair it?



Judaeus Apella
09-01-2005, 04:15 PM
I have this hard drive I want to get all my stuff off, which used to be in my old system a few years back, mostly artwork I did in college, documents, mp3's, the usual, wedding pictures, the usual. The problem is that when I try to transfer or open certain files, the OS crashes. I get this error giving me this stuff about if I have any new hardware, to remove it and disable memory cache, blah blah blah. I took a picture of it if you guys need the numbers/code. I have XP Pro SP2, and when it tries to scan for bad sectors, it can't find any! Then after the scan, the OS doesn't load, instead it crashes again, then it loads the next time, or crashes again until it either scans it and doesn't find anything or finally loads properly. I tried scanning the disk using windows error checking software, but when I tried that, the OS crashed with the same result. I also tried this software called Flobo HDDBadSectorRepair, but that just crashes the OS too! The hard drive does not make any unusual noises, and DOES work. I've been getting files off it all day yesterday and today. I just can't go into certain folders.

Does anyone know how to restore this hard drive? I'm not sure if this is important or not, but it was formatted by Win98 SE which is what my system last year was, and was browsed with another computer recently that had XP (not pro), and sometimes I get errors saying I can't transfer or delete a folder because of a problem with a thumb file... which is a hidden file that I think is an artifact from the other XP machine. I don't remember this many problems with this hard disk when I tried to pull some stuff off of it on the other XP machine. I was thinking, is there a setting that’s shutting down the OS that I can uncheck, that will not damage my machine or software?

Is there some kind of software you guys can recommend, or something hardware related? I was thinking that maybe if I made it external, the OS might not crash since its not directly attached to the motherboard. Would that work? And no, I’m not paying hundreds of dollars to get any of this stuff back. It's not worth it, but it is worth it to try and do it for under $50. If there's any freeware you guys can highly recommend, I'd really appreciate it!

The small partition I'm trying to recover is about 3 megs, and is a FAT partition. The large one is not detected, except by that program I tried and is NTFS. I was thinking that maybe some stuff on the FAT partition may be linked in some way to the NTFS partition, and when XP tries to reference to it, it crashes? I don't know, I'm guessing long shots cause most of my knowledge is on other components and cooling. *shrugs* I haven't had that much experience with hd's

Ugly n Grey
09-01-2005, 04:37 PM
Long time no see,
You don't call , you don't write, not even a good bye kiss and now you want help...

I am already troubleshooting, something similiar, jump in on this...
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=73032

Your problem is mostly likely caused by the way the BIOS is seeing the drive though, can you tell me what mobo you formatted it on originally?

Judaeus Apella
09-01-2005, 05:05 PM
Asus I think.... a moldy oldy, It was for a Pentium 3 450Mhz. Do you need the actual model?

BTW, sorry I've been mega busy with my new classes. German 101 is totally killing me.

Ugly n Grey
09-01-2005, 05:19 PM
If you can find the model, that's better for me and I can see the drive table that way and understand the translation (if any used on the drive). the drive model number would be helpful to, maybe I can help you correctly remap it. Making it external might help since they use the lowest common denominator method... you can also try an add in EIDE controller for PCI...

Judaeus Apella
09-01-2005, 05:49 PM
Ok, it took a little searching but I found it. *blows off dust and chokes*

The most obvious numbers or codes I can find are on a sticker: MS1951088-M6P410-A28-01681

Is that what you needed?

WAIT! I just noticed a faded model number between this humongous card slots at the bottom of the mobo. "ASUS P28-F Rev. 1.00"

Ugly n Grey
09-01-2005, 05:51 PM
Yep that'll do. I'm about to drive back to toronto, my reply may be late..

Judaeus Apella
09-01-2005, 05:55 PM
Thats ok :)

Edit:
I just noticed that the files that crash the OS change around! The same one that crashed the OS last time, doesn't the next time. ....WTF? Like I said, the drive isn't making any noises. Is it the BIOS? Is it my OS? I also knoticed that if I try to delete files off of this drive, the number of files that crash the OS increase. If it crashes and runs a check on the drive before starting the OS, it says that the files were incorrectly moved to the recycling bin, and are all restored. Then numver of files that crash the OS go back down. This is really strange...

Someone over at the Virtual Dr. Forum suggested this:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download

Looks like that just might be what I need!

"Accessing very large (>2TB) NTFS volumes or accessing volumes that are not seen by the BIOS, like some fibre channel disks"

Looks like a powerful tool, and if the BIOS really is the problem, then this might fix the problem and let me get my files back. What do you think?

KILLorBE
09-02-2005, 03:51 AM
A few things you could try:
Boot in safe mode and try to copy the files (Sometimes you may need to copy the files 1 by 1). Copy/Paste is more likely to work than Cut/Paste.

Use PC Inspector (http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm) to recover the files (Free).

If you have another spare drive (Or unused partition) format it with the FAT filesystem and copy the files under DOS (Use a Windows 98/98SE/ME CD or a bootdisk that supports the copy command).
Note: DOS doesn't support long filenames eventho it should be possible (I never got it to work).
So a file like 'Rammstein - Mutter.mp3' will look like 'Rammste~1.mp3' (Not sure but maybe it's all capital letters) under DOS, after copying the file it'll still look like that.

Did you use an utillity from the HDD manufacturer to see if the drive is fine?
Also most manuf. include a copy tool on the utility disk which may work.

BTW: The MOBO is more likely a P2B-F ;)