"Disk read error", cannot boot Win7 partition

[wongnog]

So something happened to my Windows 7 partition this morning, I got a random BSOD while working and now Windows won't post. Instead I'm greeting with this:

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

If I boot from my Windows 7 DVD and attempt a startup repair, it does not recognize any windows installation so it doesn't really do anything when I attempt the startup repair. All it says is:

Root cause found: System volume on disk is corrupt.
Repair action: File system repair (chkdsk)
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0

When I go to command prompt, I cannot access my C:\ partition at all. I can however access my D:\ partition from the same hard drive which has all my data.

I've tried some bootrec commands, but it didn't seem to fix it. I've used Diskpart to make the C:\ partition active. Diskpart can still see the C:\ partition, but I can't seem to get access to the partition.

When I go to command prompt from the Windows DVD and run the command bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force, for the C:\ drive it says:

Could not open the volume root directory:
The parameter is incorrect

When I try to access the C:\ drive from the command prompt, it says "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable"

I loaded Ultimate Boot CD and ran the SeaTools for my Seagate hard drive (that's the one with the Windows partition that is no longer being recognized), but SeaTools reports it could not find any drives! DiskPart can see the hard drive and all the partitions, but it can't access the C: partition. It says there are some NTFS errors and to run a Chkdsk /f on the partition, but I can't because the system says C:\ is unreadable. Just finished a full surface scan using with ViVARD (from UBCD) and found no errors.

Really hope someone can help here!

 

[wongnog]

Update: I ran chkdsk c: /f and got this:

Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover
master file table from disk.
Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted.
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

 

[Jonmor68]

If Seatools couldn't find a Seagate drive then it's dead. If you say you can still access the data partition, I would be backing that up fast while you can.
If the partition with the os is corrupted, then that drive is useless, apart from the data that you have on the second partition.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Yup, its a HDD failure.Get a new one and I hope you have your data backed up.

 

[vvhocare5]

Wait...How can we say its a HDD failure when it passes a surface scan test w/o errors and he can read data on his D: partition?

Im thinking he lost the partition and MFT and he should do a reinstall of Windows on that partition to rebuild it (I see no recovery).

Alternatively you could pull the drive and connect it to another system and read it a little better but the end result will be the same.

I have had one time failures caused by windows obliterating my partition and MFT, reinstall and no issues for the next couple of years...

 

[Tamz_msc]

^Yes, but it might be an indication that its about to fail.I had a similar problem, where one of the partitions could not be formatted, and data transfer was extremely slow.So I back everything up during the night(at a staggeringly slow speed the refused to go beyond 2MB/s) and after two days it failed completely.

 

[wongnog]

Well what do you know, after a few more repair attempts suddenly my D:\ data partition was unreadable! I tried to use TestDisk to repair the MFT but either I didn't know how to do it or the program wasn't able to do it. In the end I used GetDataBack for NTFS which was able to read all my files, which I copied over to an external HDD and then reformatted the hard drive. I did a full chkdsk surface scan on the disk and it said it was fine. So I guess I will continue to use the drive but not as my primary boot drive anymore. BTW it's a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12

 

[wongnog]

Best answer selected by wongnog.