Hard Drive making Explorer crash

bcoombes wrote:

I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is
plugged into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

The drive does not seem to be making any weird noises at the moment,
but it was when I unplugged it, when I came home one night. It could
have been a head crash?

Is there something I can boot into to make a raw backup of everything
on it, and recover from that?

Everybody winders user should have one of these.
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

I gave that a go, while Knoppix is downloading. No luck though - BSOD.
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

nvstor.sys



ss.

Conor wrote:


Yeah, I was thinking along those lines. Have you got any pointers on
that app to use and how to go about it? Cheers.

When you've booted off the Live CD, if it is like Ubuntu, it should
automount it and have an icon on the desktop. gparted is the tool to
partition it.

Cheers. It's just that with this explorer crashing, I was not
expecting it to be that easy.

Windows isn't very good at dealing with broken filesystems - generally
going off into a flat spin rather than outright crashing. And there's
no way to stop it trying to mount broken disks either, unless you'd
tagged it not to mount *before* it broke, which is unlikely.

The Linux filesystem plugins are a lot more sturdy, probably because
they expect to have to deal with surprise changes from Redmond on
occasion so they don't mind if there's something they don't really
understand.

To add to the above, I've found that sometimes software errors can be
so bad as to make a drive unusable but using the manufacturers drive
tools to scrub it and repartition it can recover the drive to a usable
state.


This looks like a hardware error. I am not bothered about the disk, as I
can no longer trust it for anything anyway. I'd just like to retrieve
what's on it.

ss.

In message , Synapse Syndrome
writes
I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is plugged
into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

Have you tried replacing the data cable?



--
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.

Synapse Syndrome wrote:
bcoombes wrote:
I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is
plugged into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

The drive does not seem to be making any weird noises at the moment,
but it was when I unplugged it, when I came home one night. It could
have been a head crash?

Is there something I can boot into to make a raw backup of everything
on it, and recover from that?

Everybody winders user should have one of these.
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

I gave that a go, while Knoppix is downloading. No luck though - BSOD.
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

nvstor.sys


Hmm, it seems nvstor.sys is an nvidia driver that reads SATA drives on an
nvidia SATA controller (I assume this is an nvidia mobo). It would be very
unusual for the controller to be at fault so it sounds as if the hard drive
does have some issues. Your next move depends on how much the data on the
drive means to you. Probably won't do any more harm to see what a linux livecd
makes of it...good luck...What make of drive is it BTW?

Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Synapse Syndrome
writes
I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is
plugged
into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

Have you tried replacing the data cable?



Good point.

Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:

Windows isn't very good at dealing with broken filesystems - generally
going off into a flat spin rather than outright crashing. And there's
no way to stop it trying to mount broken disks either, unless you'd
tagged it not to mount *before* it broke, which is unlikely.

I've had some success using safe mode to recover such disks, along with
a third-party drive imager. Note that if you just need a handful of
files from a malfunctioning drive with an intact filesystem, command
prompt works a lot better than Explorer.


--
John Jordan

Synapse Syndrome wrote:

Is there something I can boot into to make a raw backup of everything on it,
and recover from that?

Not boot into but ...

DriveImage XML
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

You might need to ensure that you don't open any explorer windows first,
but this app should allow you to do a raw copy to elsewhere.

Another good program a friend swears by is EASEUS Disk Copy, but I've
not used it myself.
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

--
Adrian C

Adrian C wrote:

Is there something I can boot into to make a raw backup of everything
on it, and recover from that?

Not boot into but ...

DriveImage XML
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

You might need to ensure that you don't open any explorer windows first,
but this app should allow you to do a raw copy to elsewhere.

Thanks, but that would not have been any use in this situation, as anything
Windows based, including boot disks, crashes.

Another good program a friend swears by is EASEUS Disk Copy, but I've not
used it myself.
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/


Now that is some fantastic freeware, thanks! It copied everything onto
another drive without any problems at all, and could not be any easier to
use. It must be Linux based, but has a very simple interface that is made
to look like an XP program. I used it to juggle some partitions around as
well, so that I had a free drive for the clone. I would recommend it for
drive cloning, as well as raw recovery.

It showed that I had 48 bad blocks that could not be read on the old drive.

The Partition Manager program mentioned on that page is also free, but it is
Windows based, so would not have worked in this case, but it looks like a
good freeware alternative to Acronis Disk Director.

Before I tried EASEUS Disk Copy, Knoppix was refusing to mount the drive,
and while researching the error I found something called The Trinity Rescue
Kit (Linux based), and I was trying to figure out how to work it (not easy
at all).

Thanks again.

ss.

Bernard Peek wrote:

I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is
plugged into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

Have you tried replacing the data cable?



Not only that, I moved it to another machine. I have never actually had a
faulty SATA cable before.

ss.

bcoombes wrote:

I have a 250GB drive that makes Explorer repeatedly crash when it is
plugged into the machine. Windows is completely unusable.

The drive does not seem to be making any weird noises at the moment,
but it was when I unplugged it, when I came home one night. It could
have been a head crash?

Is there something I can boot into to make a raw backup of everything
on it, and recover from that?

Everybody winders user should have one of these.
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

I gave that a go, while Knoppix is downloading. No luck though - BSOD.
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

nvstor.sys


Hmm, it seems nvstor.sys is an nvidia driver that reads SATA drives on an
nvidia SATA controller (I assume this is an nvidia mobo). It would be
very unusual for the controller to be at fault so it sounds as if the
hard drive does have some issues. Your next move depends on how much
the data on the drive means to you. Probably won't do any more harm to
see what a linux livecd makes of it...good luck...What make of drive is
it BTW?

Yeah, nVidia nForce Professional 3400 chipset on an HP ProLiant ML115 G5.
The disk was a bloody Maxtor DiamondMax 10.

ss.