CHKDSK only works on one partition of data drive

Hi,

I have XP running on a WD 40G drive, and a 250GB
Maxtor drive in two partitions as the data drive [E, F]

It has worked fine for a long time, although I
don't use it much.

Lately I noticed the cursor would hang on the hourglass
if I clicked on partition F. This would eventually lead
to a ctrl-alt-del and reboot.

I ran Windows Chkdisk on partition E with no problem.
But when trying F, it just froze.

I also have a Windows Maxtor Blast disk utility, and when
I started it, it said 'no disk found'. Great!


Anyway, since one partition works, this looks a bit funny.


Should I pursue the dos utility attack, or would something
else be better?

I have decent backups, but I don't want to get the pliers out
unless really necessary.

Each partition has about 6GB free space left.


Thanks for any insight on this,

itchy

On Tue, 6 Aug 2013 09:00:24 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Hi,

I have XP running on a WD 40G drive, and a 250GB
Maxtor drive in two partitions as the data drive [E, F]

It has worked fine for a long time, although I
don't use it much.

And hi to you.

No ****, Sherlock. Btw - congratulations on the 40G, still, though,
no prize: my first HD was 20meg.

Should I pursue the dos utility attack, or would something
else be better?

Better, definitely;- I'll defray my doubts, provided you also will.
What you'll need may not be easy to procure. Preferably the original
manufacturer's software utilities for doing a LLF (Low Level Format).
Recurrent errors subsequently surfacing should be within a tacit and
conditional understand of broad mayhem and operational failure for
having kept that dinosaur so well fed over the years.

I have decent backups, but I don't want to get the pliers out
unless really necessary.

Don't bother wearing out those pliers. Buy yourself a Samsung solid
state drive, like mine, I found on sale for $40US. If you can work
with 40G, just think how much more can be accomplished with 64G and no
platters.

I'm not going to coment on your 250G Maxtor, as I only recently lost a
250G Seagate;- alas, due to a badassed Asus's MB's failing capacitors,
and I'm still in undescribably woeful mourning.

wrote:
Hi,

I have XP running on a WD 40G drive, and a 250GB
Maxtor drive in two partitions as the data drive [E, F]

It has worked fine for a long time, although I
don't use it much.

Lately I noticed the cursor would hang on the hourglass
if I clicked on partition F. This would eventually lead
to a ctrl-alt-del and reboot.

I ran Windows Chkdisk on partition E with no problem.
But when trying F, it just froze.

I also have a Windows Maxtor Blast disk utility, and when
I started it, it said 'no disk found'. Great!


Anyway, since one partition works, this looks a bit funny.


Should I pursue the dos utility attack, or would something
else be better?

I have decent backups, but I don't want to get the pliers out
unless really necessary.

Each partition has about 6GB free space left.


Thanks for any insight on this,

itchy

At 250GB, the drive should support SMART.

Check the Health tab in HDTune, and see whether
the drive has Reallocated Sectors or Pending Sectors.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

In this example, the two "0" values are good news, while
the yellow is actually wrong. Some parameters, the interpretation
is wrong.

http://imageshack.us/a/img12/5764/7f4.gif

If the drive is bad, replace it.

See the dd_rescue description near the bottom of this page,
for how you copy the maximum number of good sectors, from
a bad drive. Once the bad drive is copied to the good drive,
then you can try CHKDSK on the new drive if you want. You want
the new drive, to be the same size or a bit bigger, before
trying the transfer. That's to avoid snipping the tail off
the second partition.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

Paul