2500+ "bad file records processed"

[CanadianPilgrim]

Ouch. I have an HP 2TB hard drive, about 3/5 full with movies, music and pictures. It is about a year old.

I was trying to access this HD just after Christmas and was getting error messages that it was inaccessible and that it must be formatted before use.

I started running chkdsk on it through Win7 with the toggles on to fix file errors and attempt recovery of bad sectors. It was running for about a week, with progress showing only about 1/20 done. Then tonight, I noticed that it is reporting over 2500 "bad file records processed" and counting.

What am I looking at? What is a file record exactly? Will I ever be able to recover a bad file record? Does anyone know of any general failure reports with these large format HPs?

Thanks.

 

[smorizio]

Ouch. I have an HP 2TB hard drive, about 3/5 full with movies, music and pictures. It is about a year old.

I was trying to access this HD just after Christmas and was getting error messages that it was inaccessible and that it must be formatted before use.

I started running chkdsk on it through Win7 with the toggles on to fix file errors and attempt recovery of bad sectors. It was running for about a week, with progress showing only about 1/20 done. Then tonight, I noticed that it is reporting over 2500 "bad file records processed" and counting.

What am I looking at? What is a file record exactly? Will I ever be able to recover a bad file record? Does anyone know of any general failure reports with these large format HPs?

Thanks.

try running hd tune and look at the drive smart report. sounds like the drive is dying or there a virus.
try booting off a hirum boot cd and try some of there tools.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds
may be able to recover your files...before you run have another drive or some cd to burn your recovered files too.

 

[dormantreign]

Yeah, i had the same thing happen to me over chirstmas. I lost alot, but had it backed up thank god. Anyways i returned the drive because i had it just before christmas and invested in 3 spindles of bluray blank disks to back my stuff off on that. Its going to be hard to get the files off that drive. Lots of programs out there can help though. Good luck.

 

[CanadianPilgrim]

Ouch. ...

I started running chkdsk on it through Win7 with the toggles on to fix file errors and attempt recovery of bad sectors. It was running for about a week, with progress showing only about 1/20 done. Then tonight, I noticed that it is reporting over 2500 "bad file records processed" and counting.

What am I looking at? What is a file record exactly? Will I ever be able to recover a bad file record? Does anyone know of any general failure reports with these large format HPs?

Update: now at 20,000 bad file records -- and counting! The HP HD monitor occassionally pops a message that there is no room on the hard drive, but that is nonsense, there should be about 750GB on there.

THIS PROBLEM SEEMS UNIQUE ON THE INTERNET. A Google search of `bad files records processed`shows that noone has reported so many bad file records. (1 guy reported 700, a few reported less than 10, most reported `0`)

There appears no answer on the internet to these questions:

What is a "bad file record"? Is a bad file record ever recoverable? Are there general problems with these large format hard drives?

 

[Scott_D_Bowen]

It might have been caused by CHKDSK running on a previous boot and the PC being restarted mid way through a repair using the tool.

Did you upgrade from Windows Vista by chance?
- Pre Service Pack Vista's CHKDSK had issues with large drives

I concur, excluding frivolous answers.* and social.* hits there is only 1 hit on the microsoft.com domain for this.

If it has taken so long to run then there is definitely something physically wrong with the media, or it's running over a non DMA enabled interface or even thinks it is USB 1.x or something weird.

On the up side you have an interesting problem, so I'm more likely to read up on it.


PS: There's nothing wrong with the majority of HDD's up to 2TB in size on the market as 'old-school' Windows supports MBR with up to 2TB partition volumes without issue.

 

[CanadianPilgrim]

It might have been caused by CHKDSK running on a previous boot and the PC being restarted mid way through a repair using the tool.

Did you upgrade from Windows Vista by chance?
- Pre Service Pack Vista's CHKDSK had issues with large drives...

If it has taken so long to run then there is definitely something physically wrong with the media, or it's running over a non DMA enabled interface or even thinks it is USB 1.x or something weird.

Here are the answers:

1. The PC was not restarted during a chkdsk process. However: 1) a day or two before the problems occurred, I copied over some large files from a different computer (XP Pro); 2) I have always used WinExp to manage this drive, and I know that HP's utility runs in the background >> I am thinking the File Allocation Table got screwed up.

2. I did not upgrade from Vista on any of the machines (2) that have ever accessed this drive. Always been Win 7 Home 64 and XP Pro.

3. Drive was connected DMA USB 2.0.

NOW, HERE IS IMPORTANT UPDATE 2: CHKDSK finished (or stopped) running last night, after about 12 days processing. WinExp on my Win7 shows all my folders, but ALL of them are empty. The Drive Properties shows as much space used as before, so I suspected the files are still there. I tried to run CHKDSK (scan only) again from the CMD prompt, but it returns the message that the utility cannot be run because the files are in RAW format!

Then I tried (on my Win7 computer):
-Easus Data Recovery Wizard: the drive does not show up as selectable to scan.
-Linux Disk Internals: it shows the drive without letter assignment, "empty?" and not accessible.
-Testdisk 6.14 (running in a DOS window): it finds the drive, but it can't read my file system returning the message that the file system seems damaged.

Frustrated, I then found this (VERY IMPORTANT):

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/how-can-i-get-windows-7-to-read-raw-hard-drives/fa425072-72d9-4e4c-b80b-98a3882319b2

IT seems the problem may be a Win7 issue. So, out of curiousity, I plugged the suspect drive into one of my XP computers and voila: I can open all folders, all my files are there, and I can open the files themselves!

Would a Veteran look at this interesting thread and tell me if there is a connection, possibly a cause? Possibly some incompatibility issues between WINXP and Win7, given my statement above that I used both OSs on this failed drive. Note: the HP utility software is not installed on the XP computers, only the WIN7 computer.

Finally, apart from the obvious answer that I should back up the suspect drive using an XP host, anyone have any other suggestions on what I ought to do next?

 

[CanadianPilgrim]

On the up side you have an interesting problem, so I'm more likely to read up on it./quotemsg]

Scott, before you chase a goose, please see my most recent post/update. Very important, as it looks like a Win7 issue.

 

[CanadianPilgrim]

Aaagghh. Mac never looked so good...

 

[ind1989]

My 2tb Seagate HD now at '2455 bad files processed'. Few days before when I formatted the drive I also did a disk check but stopped it while still checking. after that I was able to access the info but was not able to copy in or out of the HD. I have about 1.1Tb data in it. Plz help me as to whats going on. Also I have recovered all the data from a 1Tb seagate drive before when it got corrupted, can i use the software here ? also its going on for abt 2 days now but its not got frozen its still counting.should I stop disk check or continue with it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[Hawkeye22]

Check the SMART status of the drive. I suspect a high number of reallocated sectors and you've probably run out of spare sectors. This could cause the error that you are out of room.

 

[CanadianPilgrim]

Ended up RMAing the drive after failure to read from any OS. I had most of the data backed up, fortunately.