Accessing HD causes system to restart

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Steve - 30 Jul 2008 09:34 GMT

I recently returned from holiday to find that my computer was booting VERY
slowly. After a bit of online research, I narrowed the issue down to my HD
being faulty. I tried chkdsk and it was failing, system restore also crashed
etc. I bought a new HD today, reinstalled Windows and the machine is running
fast again.

However, when I try to access a certain folder on my *old HD* (from the
newly installed OS/HD), my machine resets itself. Every time I access this
folder, the same thing happens. I guess that the damaged disk area is where
this folder is located. I can access other folders without any problem. When
I try to run chkdsk, the machine also resets itself.

My questions are:

1) What is the problem with this area of the disc?
2) How likely is it that my whole HD will be unusable in the near future?
3) Is there any way to mark the damaged area as unusable, so that the system
doesn't reset? Can I mark an entire partition as unusable, as it seems to
only be affecting one?

TIA.

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Big_Al - 30 Jul 2008 13:26 GMT

> I recently returned from holiday to find that my computer was booting VERY
> slowly. After a bit of online research, I narrowed the issue down to my HD
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>
> TIA.

I'd first say run chkdsk, but you got that one down pat by now.

As for the whole drive, depends on why its a bad sector. If its dirt
floating around scratching the surface, well you got a time bomb.
Otherwise a spot could just have failed or corrupted. Impossible to
say. The drive manufacturer might have some utilities you can
download and run that might mark bad sectors, but I always thought that
was a feature of chkdsk. Still it would be a different program and it
might handle drive errors better than Windows.

But as far as a partition is concerned, you can go into drive manager in
XP and just delete it. If its not there its just gone space on the
drive. Yes, you could remake the partition and format it. Or just
format it now. And not quick format, but the long format as it is
supposed to check and mark out bad sectors. (or did years ago).

HTH, Al.

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Steve - 30 Jul 2008 10:29 GMT

>> I recently returned from holiday to find that my computer was booting
>> VERY slowly. After a bit of online research, I narrowed the issue down to
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
> format it now. And not quick format, but the long format as it is
> supposed to check and mark out bad sectors. (or did years ago).

The faulty disk is a Maxtor 200GB. I just tried using SeaTools, and
performing a "long test". It crashed the test program (no reset, just
frozen). At the point of crash it had reported:

0% LBA 50186 3 Error(s)

I suspect there is a serious localised hardware fault within the disk - and
everytime software encounters it, the disk fails.

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jaster - 30 Jul 2008 18:55 GMT

>>> I recently returned from holiday to find that my computer was booting
>>> VERY slowly. After a bit of online research, I narrowed the issue down
[quoted text clipped - 42 lines]
> I suspect there is a serious localised hardware fault within the disk -
> and everytime software encounters it, the disk fails.

Make sure you have the jumpers correctly set for master/slave on the
drives.

Every once in a while some HDs go bad. If the CD/Floppy versions of
SeaTools DOS or MaxBlast can't access the HD there's little you can do.

I'd backup from the folders that you can access. Then try to backup sub-
folders of the bad folder.

I'd try the chkdisk /f command from safe mode with only the faulty HD
installed.

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kony - 30 Jul 2008 19:17 GMT

>I recently returned from holiday to find that my computer was booting VERY
>slowly. After a bit of online research, I narrowed the issue down to my HD
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>
>TIA.

The drive should be considered unusable. Get any data off
if necessary, RMA it under warranty if possible, and retire
it otherwise.

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