Repairing a Damaged File system?

[Bugsy_malone 666]

Ok so for the 4th time my 2nd hard drive in my PC has decided to have issues, the same issue as the previous 3 times.

3 months ago my main and only 80gb hard drive started clicking and suffering when reading the later sectors of the main disk, with data loss on the horizon I decided to purchase a Hitachi 250gb IDE HD as a secondary drive that I could move all my data too (stuff that was my work/ saved stuff no software thats installed) at the time the hard drive was formatted to fat32 as the 80gb had been formated to that before I installed windows XP.

So with my data safely moved to the new drive (some perminantly moved rather than copied) the 80gb main drive was struggling more and more to the point of crash somewhen soon, so I bought a new 80gb maxtor hard drive, took the old 80gb out put the new one in and installed windows from scratch, that worked lovely but I was unable to read my 250gb drive!

after much search on tinternet I gave up and cut my losses and just formated the drive which at the time was coming up as `unreadable` `do you want to format now` as everything I`d copied was backed up on CD thats what i did, so this time it was a NTFS file system.

Copied everything on from CD and some of the other stuff from the old 80gb hard drive and eventually got back to working as normal. A month passes and 1 day for no apparent reason i got to click on the drive for something and it comes up with this drive is unreadable data or files corrupt.

Managed to get hold of some data recovery software and move all the data (luckily only 15gb!) to my main 80gb hard drive tried repairing the drives file system but no luck so reformat again, this time using a `lowlevel` format tool from hitachi, then use windows xp to format as ntfs, copy all the stuff back and I'm back in business again working fine with no problems until about a week ago.

so to start with I had a fair few issues with my PC booting in general for no apparent reason it would come to read the drives point of system start up(the black screen with white writing) and just hang for 5-10 minutes sometimes releasing the motherboard main battery and pulling the power supply plug all together solved the problem and it was fine, after a week of this sort of problem one day turn the PC on and it booted no trouble, low and behold it couldnt read the 250gb hard drive again claiming its corrupt.

So thats the story, questions are how can I repair the file system of the drive so its readable again? the recovery software shows all the files there happily as I put them before the crash. Is it maybe a different problem? Faulty drive perhaps?

I have tried the 250gb hard drive in another PC and its coming up with the same message about it being unreadable.

after a 4th crash im losing my faith in technology a bit considering this PC is 2 years old and has been 100% reliable which i built myself, start to get a problem i buy new drives and my problems just seem to unfold!

Cheers

[willin]

Originally Posted by Bugsy_malone 666

Ok so for the 4th time my 2nd hard drive in my PC has decided to have issues, the same issue as the previous 3 times.

3 months ago my main and only 80gb hard drive started clicking and suffering when reading the later sectors of the main disk, with data loss on the horizon I decided to purchase a Hitachi 250gb IDE HD as a secondary drive that I could move all my data too (stuff that was my work/ saved stuff no software thats installed) at the time the hard drive was formatted to fat32 as the 80gb had been formated to that before I installed windows XP.

So with my data safely moved to the new drive (some perminantly moved rather than copied) the 80gb main drive was struggling more and more to the point of crash somewhen soon, so I bought a new 80gb maxtor hard drive, took the old 80gb out put the new one in and installed windows from scratch, that worked lovely but I was unable to read my 250gb drive!

after much search on tinternet I gave up and cut my losses and just formated the drive which at the time was coming up as `unreadable` `do you want to format now` as everything I`d copied was backed up on CD thats what i did, so this time it was a NTFS file system.

Copied everything on from CD and some of the other stuff from the old 80gb hard drive and eventually got back to working as normal. A month passes and 1 day for no apparent reason i got to click on the drive for something and it comes up with this drive is unreadable data or files corrupt.

Managed to get hold of some data recovery software and move all the data (luckily only 15gb!) to my main 80gb hard drive tried repairing the drives file system but no luck so reformat again, this time using a `lowlevel` format tool from hitachi, then use windows xp to format as ntfs, copy all the stuff back and I'm back in business again working fine with no problems until about a week ago.

so to start with I had a fair few issues with my PC booting in general for no apparent reason it would come to read the drives point of system start up(the black screen with white writing) and just hang for 5-10 minutes sometimes releasing the motherboard main battery and pulling the power supply plug all together solved the problem and it was fine, after a week of this sort of problem one day turn the PC on and it booted no trouble, low and behold it couldnt read the 250gb hard drive again claiming its corrupt.

So thats the story, questions are how can I repair the file system of the drive so its readable again? the recovery software shows all the files there happily as I put them before the crash. Is it maybe a different problem? Faulty drive perhaps?

I have tried the 250gb hard drive in another PC and its coming up with the same message about it being unreadable.

after a 4th crash im losing my faith in technology a bit considering this PC is 2 years old and has been 100% reliable which i built myself, start to get a problem i buy new drives and my problems just seem to unfold!

Cheers

Bugsy_malone 666 Hi, before you try and do anything, right click on my computer, select manage, disk management. tell us what it says about your 250gb drive.

[Bugsy_malone 666]

Originally Posted by willin

Bugsy_malone 666 Hi, before you try and do anything, right click on my computer, select manage, disk management. tell us what it says about your 250gb drive.

This is what it shows....



as you can see D: which is the 250gb file system is showing no file system(should be NTFS), while my 80gb system drive is NTFS and my spare 40gb to recover files to is reading FAT32.

[Analoguesat]

It may not be a drive fault - its also possible the mobo is shot, or that the power supply is overstressed and cant deliver enough juice to the drive.

[willin]

Originally Posted by Bugsy_malone 666

This is what it shows....



as you can see D: which is the 250gb file system is showing no file system(should be NTFS), while my 80gb system drive is NTFS and my spare 40gb to recover files to is reading FAT32.

Can you do - right click on my computer, select manage, disk management, right click on the drive in question, select properties/ hardware tab/select(highlight) that drive again, properties again/volumes/populate. show us what it says.

[Bugsy_malone 666]

Originally Posted by Analoguesat

It may not be a drive fault - its also possible the mobo is shot, or that the power supply is overstressed and cant deliver enough juice to the drive.

I have been wondering these 2 things myself, seems strange how it just loses the file system though. the mobo/power supply have been fine for 2 years.

system is an AMD XP2500, 1024mb ram, ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card, DVD burner with a 350watt power supply. Couple of fans and the 2 hard drives mentioned (now 3 while im doing this repair.)

[Bugsy_malone 666]

Originally Posted by willin

Can you do - right click on my computer, select manage, disk management, right click on the drive in question, select properties/ hardware tab/select(highlight) that drive again, properties again/volumes/populate. show us what it says.

ok this is what it shows me....



cheers for your help guys

[willin]

Sounds to me like the MBR (master boot record) may have a problem, I reckon if you repair the MBR you could be back in business, on the XP install CD there is a tool called fixmbr.exe ( I think), or have you tried to repair your existing installation with the xp cd?

[Bugsy_malone 666]

well I did a bit of reading up on that last time this happened (or the time before!) and from what I understand the fix MBR thing on the windows xp CD is designed for the OS hard drive, when I tried it on the D: drive last time im sure it made matters worse.
but as you say, what things point to is a damaged master boot record, the informations all on the disc its just windows doesnt know how to interpret it meaning the contents page(MBR) of the book(the HD) is unreadable.

so that makes sense but im wondering if there are any other options to explore first before I try that one?

cheers for your help dude Its nice to have other people with a different perspective look at these things

[willin]

Originally Posted by Bugsy_malone 666

well I did a bit of reading up on that last time this happened (or the time before!) and from what I understand the fix MBR thing on the windows xp CD is designed for the OS hard drive, when I tried it on the D: drive last time im sure it made matters worse.
but as you say, what things point to is a damaged master boot record, the informations all on the disc its just windows doesnt know how to interpret it meaning the contents page(MBR) of the book(the HD) is unreadable.

so that makes sense but im wondering if there are any other options to explore first before I try that one?

cheers for your help dude Its nice to have other people with a different perspective look at these things

1. Use the Windows XP CD-ROM to start your computer. On the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER to set up Windows XP. 2. Press F8 to agree to the license agreement. 3. Use the ARROW keys to select the Windows XP installation that you want to repair, and then press R.

Windows XP Setup repairs the installation files, Windows XP automatically restarts, and then the Setup program finishes the repair of your Windows XP installation.
Note You must have your 25-character product key to complete these steps.

Something to try, and may be create a restore point before hand.

If and when you get sorted set up this for future problems.