A Disk Read Error Occurred

[Hikermann]

Accch!!

WIN XP Home Edition - put in a new 320GB hard drive a week or two ago; everything reloaded and worked fine. Two days ago, while a DVD was loading, things went wacko ... and Windows would no longer completely load.

Tried Repair, but that was useless; reloaded XP a couple of times, but it wouldn't get past the "Press any key to boot from CD" stage; finally attempted to clean the disk and reload XP last night -- now the Disk Read Error message shows up.

Only have access to www via my MacBook, so downloaded DBAN Boot n Nuke, as well as UBCD528 to burn onto disks; couldn't figure out, though, why the download/burn files showed differently: DBAN download = 15.5 MB but when dragged to burn the disk showed only 229 KB; UBCD download = 487 but when dragged to burn the disk showed only 98 KB. Neither would boot the PC.

What th' ... ?

What's the solution for the Disk Read Error Occurred?
How do I clean the drive and start-a-new?

Many thanks.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

You probably have a faulty hard disk with bad sectors, if so send it back to suppliers you can't fix it
(temporary fix sometimes possible but usually more problems will occur)

Diagnostic software is available from most of the major hard disk manufacturers

Seagate DOS bootable ISO works on other brands
Western Digital Windows DLG also works on other brands

Under Windows XP onward the best software to burn a ISO to CD or DVD is ImgBurn

DBAN is for erasing data not fixing hard disk
ubcd probably has Seagate dos diagnostics and other similar programs on it

Never tried to burn Iso on a Mac so I do not know the best program
this tutorial may help

http://www.oit.umass.edu/support/computer-classrooms/burn-a-dmg-or-iso-file-disk-macintosh

regards

Mike Barnes

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

sorry but this sounds like a defective hard drive.

Install it in a working computer and download hard disk monitor trial to check the health, you can also run a chkdsk /f/r on the drive to try and repair it (works better from another computer)