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#1
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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD
I bought a 300GB internal Maxtor drive in autumn 2005.
It's not the system drive, I use it only for storing large files under XP and Linux. It's formatted as FAT32 with Linux mkdosfs (but I don't think that the high level formatting is relevant here). Today I looked into the Windows event protocol and recognized, that on 18.09.2006 chkdsk found 12 KB of defective sectors on this drive (I think this was one of these Autochk disk checks that XP does sometimes after booting). Today, chkdsk /r found the same 12 defective sectors, so at least there is no new damage in the last 9 months. I downloaded the Maxtor (=Seagate today) diagnostic tool (for Windows) and ran the simple (=no risk for data) tests, and at least the two more comprehensive tests failed, so I'm quite sure that chkdsk tells the truth. I have several questions in context with this problem: 1) The help page of the Seagate tool offers the possibility to "repair sectors in most cases" with the DOS version of the tool. I always thought that you can't really solve a hardware failure by software, but only sidestep it. Is it really possible (for any tool) to repair sectors in most cases or do you think this is only another expression for "doing a low level format and making the defective sectors invisible to a high level formatting program"? 2) Perhaps I could save the data on several slower drives and then do a low level format. But now that Windows chkdsk has marked these sectors as defective they won't be used for storing (even not when writing with Linux on the disk (?)), so I would not see any advantage in a low level formatting. Am I right with this? 3) I have warranty from my computer store on the drive (and also the warranty from Maxtor), but can I claim without reasonable doubt that with 12KB of defective sectors that drive is defective (in your opinion, of course different countries may have different judges) ? Or do you think the store owner could argue that this one time event may have been caused by other reasons (but I find no other critical events near this date in the application event protocol) and that I should wait until new defective sectors occur? And a similar question: If you were me, would you change the drive, or would you think that 9 months without new defective sectors is sign enough that the other sectors are sane? After all it would be very annoying to lose a 1GB-movie by some KB of defective sectors. 4) (Sorry if a little bit off topic here) Why doesn't XP tell me what it does and, more specifically, that it does a chkdsk after booting? I disabled the bootsplash Microsoft Logo but all I'm seeing when XP starts are some driver loading messages and then a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner, finally (sometimes after hours when chkdsk is at work) the blue welcome screen. How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone with this, asking me if I want to do the suggested changes or, at the very least, tell me afterwards with a popup that it has found defects and has changed something? Thank you in advance Bernd |
#2
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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD
In article ,
Bernd Stelter wrote: I bought a 300GB internal Maxtor drive in autumn 2005. It's not the system drive, I use it only for storing large files under XP and Linux. It's formatted as FAT32 with Linux mkdosfs (but I don't think that the high level formatting is relevant here). Today I looked into the Windows event protocol and recognized, that on 18.09.2006 chkdsk found 12 KB of defective sectors on this drive (I think this was one of these Autochk disk checks that XP does sometimes after booting). Today, chkdsk /r found the same 12 defective sectors, so at least there is no new damage in the last 9 months. I downloaded the Maxtor (=Seagate today) diagnostic tool (for Windows) and ran the simple (=no risk for data) tests, and at least the two more comprehensive tests failed, so I'm quite sure that chkdsk tells the truth. I have several questions in context with this problem: 1) The help page of the Seagate tool offers the possibility to "repair sectors in most cases" with the DOS version of the tool. I always thought that you can't really solve a hardware failure by software, but only sidestep it. Is it really possible (for any tool) to repair sectors in most cases or do you think this is only another expression for "doing a low level format and making the defective sectors invisible to a high level formatting program"? 2) Perhaps I could save the data on several slower drives and then do a low level format. But now that Windows chkdsk has marked these sectors as defective they won't be used for storing (even not when writing with Linux on the disk (?)), so I would not see any advantage in a low level formatting. Am I right with this? 3) I have warranty from my computer store on the drive (and also the warranty from Maxtor), but can I claim without reasonable doubt that with 12KB of defective sectors that drive is defective (in your opinion, of course different countries may have different judges) ? Or do you think the store owner could argue that this one time event may have been caused by other reasons (but I find no other critical events near this date in the application event protocol) and that I should wait until new defective sectors occur? And a similar question: If you were me, would you change the drive, or would you think that 9 months without new defective sectors is sign enough that the other sectors are sane? After all it would be very annoying to lose a 1GB-movie by some KB of defective sectors. 4) (Sorry if a little bit off topic here) Why doesn't XP tell me what it does and, more specifically, that it does a chkdsk after booting? I disabled the bootsplash Microsoft Logo but all I'm seeing when XP starts are some driver loading messages and then a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner, finally (sometimes after hours when chkdsk is at work) the blue welcome screen. How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone with this, asking me if I want to do the suggested changes or, at the very least, tell me afterwards with a popup that it has found defects and has changed something? Thank you in advance Bernd Go to the Maxtor website and look for support. There will be a way to enter your serial # and find if your drive is still within their warrranty. In any case, download their drive test software and run it. If it returns a failure code, replace the drive. The test is read-only and won't affect your data. Maxtor's warranty process works fine. On that website, you give them the serial # and the error code. They issue an RMA number. They will end you a new disk drive, you copy your data over, if you can, and then send the old disk back. You need to give them a credit card # in case you don't return the old drive. If you keep the drive, teh test software has full read-write confidence tests, but, I'll replace any didk I can, if it's on warranty. -- a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001 |
#3
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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD
How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is
telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone with this Enable the boot logo back. , asking me if I want to do the suggested changes It cannot ask. It will just apply any changes. More so: this is about system drive only. Non-system drives can be CHKDSKed on a fully booted system. -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation http://www.storagecraft.com |
#4
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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD
Al Dykes wrote: Today I looked into the Windows event protocol and recognized, that on 18.09.2006 chkdsk found 12 KB of defective sectors on this drive (I think this was one of these Autochk disk checks that XP does sometimes after booting). Today, chkdsk /r found the same 12 defective sectors, so at least there is no new damage in the last 9 months. I downloaded the Maxtor (=Seagate today) diagnostic tool (for Windows) and ran the simple (=no risk for data) tests, and at least the two more comprehensive tests failed, so I'm quite sure that chkdsk tells the truth. I have several questions in context with this problem: 1) The help page of the Seagate tool offers the possibility to "repair sectors in most cases" with the DOS version of the tool. I always thought that you can't really solve a hardware failure by software, but only sidestep it. Is it really possible (for any tool) to repair sectors in most cases or do you think this is only another expression for "doing a low level format and making the defective sectors invisible to a high level formatting program"? 3) I have warranty from my computer store on the drive (and also the warranty from Maxtor), but can I claim without reasonable doubt that with 12KB of defective sectors that drive is defective (in your opinion, of course different countries may have different judges) ? Or do you think the store owner could argue that this one time event may have been caused by other reasons (but I find no other critical events near this date in the application event protocol) and that I should wait until new defective sectors occur? Go to the Maxtor website and look for support. There will be a way to enter your serial # and find if your drive is still within their warrranty. Yes, I did this and it IS within their warranty. In any case, download their drive test software and run it. If it returns a failure code, replace the drive. The test is read-only and won't affect your data. Yes, that is what I meant with the cited "Seagate diagnostic tool" (Seagate has bought Maxtor and does not provide separate Maxtor drive test software). I tested the drive and it showed a "failed" (and no additional information) for two different types of comprehensive tests. Maxtor's warranty process works fine. On that website, you give them the serial # and the error code. They issue an RMA number. They will end you a new disk drive, you copy your data over, if you can, and then send the old disk back. You need to give them a credit card # in case you don't return the old drive. If you keep the drive, teh test software has full read-write confidence tests, but, I'll replace any didk I can, if it's on warranty. Yes, but if even the read tests fail, I think that read-write tests would also fail. I would have to save the data on several smaller and older drives (whose sanity is also questionable) and this wouldn't be worth the effort. Greetings Bernd |
#5
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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD
"Maxim S. Shatskih" wrote: How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone with this Enable the boot logo back. Thank you. I always thought that the Microsoft logo would hide the system messages (like it does in Linux), but apparently this is not the case. , asking me if I want to do the suggested changes It cannot ask. It will just apply any changes. That's a step back in comparison to scandisk, IMHO. More so: this is about system drive only. Non-system drives can be CHKDSKed on a fully booted system. Yes, but regarding my event protocols, it seems that after a "dirty" shutdown (e.g. power failure) it checks also one or several other drives. Greetings Bernd -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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