Hard Drive Dilemma

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P

pudgy

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Dec 31, 2007
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It started when my computer froze, and I could not use ctrl+alt+del, so I turned off my computer. The next time I booted up it got to scandisk, went to 8% and stayed there. It happened every time I booted up. So, I restarted the computer and when it got to the scandisk screen, I pressed escape and exited scandisk, so it would go to Windows (98 SE), and bypass scandisk. In Windows, I went to scandisk. When it got to checking the file allocation tables, it stops, and freezes up my computer, and it happens all the time I do scandisk. Is there something wrong with my file allocation tables?

What could be the problem for this? Can this be corrected? If so, how can it be corrected?

Here are my system specs, if it might help:
-'Enlight' ATX Case
-AMD Athlon Thunderbird 950 Mhz
-Asus K7V-T (Mainboard)-- KX133 Chipset
-256 MB SDRAM PC-133 (Kingston Value Ram)
-Western Digital 30 GB, 7200 rpm, ATA66 hard drive (master)
-IBM 20 GB, 7200 rpm, ATA66 hard drive (Slave)
-AccuDrive 50x CD-Rom
-Samsung CDRW (6*4*24)
-Hercules 3D Prophet II MX
-Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1
-'Single Point' 56K V.90 Modem
-Floppy Drive (Sony)
-HDD Cooler Fan (in 5.25" bay)
-Logitech Optical Mouse
-Multi-Function Keyboard
-4 USB's
-2 PS/2's
-1 Printer Port
-2 Serial Ports


Thank You!!
 
Nice system.

This is not an easy one. I think you should call the manufacturers "customer service" and discuss the problem with them.

It looks like there is a bad sector on the HD and I would make sure my backups are up to date. Scan disk should find bad sectors and prevent their being used. So if it can't fix it, it must be damaged beyond it's capability to repair. You might be able to reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system. If it fails in reformat, then I would say you have a bad drive.

But as I said, talk with the manufacturer. Looks like you are entitled to a new drive.

I wonder...what is the speed of gravity?
 
I ran scandisk from a boot disk, and it still froze. If it has bad sectors, can it be corrected by reformatting it or will I need a new hard drive?
 
Is the hard drive that is giving you problems the one with your operating system on it? When you say it froze, how long did you let it sit there when it appeared to freeze?

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
 
It's the hard drive with the operating system on it. [My 30 gig has my OS (Win 98 SE), and my 20 gig has nothing on it except for backed-up files.] I left it alone for 5-10 minutes and no progress was made. (In scandisk there's a little picture of a disc of a hard drive that spins while scandisk runs and you can see that it's doing something, the picture of the spinning disc stops when it gets at the "checking file allocation tables").
 
I'm not an expert, so hopefully someone will confirm this, but in my experience, this means you have an area on the hard drive that has become corrupt. To solve it you need to to a Low Level format on the drive. Simply booting to dos and doing a formatC:<enter> won't fix the problem. I would suggest a using a format utility that will completely zero the drive. It's like startting with the drive as it was when it left the factory.

<font color=red> To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.</font color=red>
 
Went looking, here's a WD utility I found that will diagnose the drive for you, and fix problems with it. It also has a zero format utility.

<A HREF="http://www.westerndigital.com/service/diagnostics.html" target="_new">http://www.westerndigital.com/service/diagnostics.html</A>

<font color=red> To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.</font color=red>
 
a low level format may work but I have never had much luck. I suggest fdisk and reformat. if Fdisk has problems, you probably are better off getting a new drive.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
 
No problem

I've had a couple problems that wern't solved by a standard format, but were solved with a complete zero format. I guess try that as your last resort, since it takes a long time. I would definitely though, try the diagonstics utility from western digital.

<font color=red> To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.</font color=red>
 
basically FAT (as this is 98) is being itself and has mashed up... not a nice thing... a format should sort it out if it is a file allocation table error... (i hope) but then again you never know... quite a rare error but ive had scandisk trying to come up every time i booted... i never let it run other than in windows... not during boot-up a weekly run... no errors... drive intact to this day... it seems to me that scandisk in 98 does more damage than good... considering how often 98 crashes having scandisk scan your entire drive a few times every day isnt the best of things for your hard drive...

you do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong
 
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