Hard Drive Problem

[richiebee]

I have a dual boot system with 3 physical drives...

C drive - XP MCE installation, some applications, some data
(D = small FAT32 partion on E drive)
E drive - XP Home installation, all applications
F drive - data drive only.

This has been working fine for the last 18 months.

This morning, my normal installation (XP Home) didn't detect the C drive, which has some data required to run some applications (some of my sample libraries are on the C drive). I figured it was probably that the drive has died. I rebooted, and was able to boot into the XP MCE without hiccup (which is on the C drive). I was able to run a scan disc on the C drive which reported no issues. I can use the C drive as normal with the MCE boot. So it seems the C drive itself is fine. Rebooted back into the XP Home installation... still not registering the C drive.

I tried to do a system restore in XP Home to see if that would fix it, and it tells me that there are no restore points. Restore is turned on for the E drive.

When I check the properties of the C Drive in the Device Manager, it says that the "Status" is "unreadable".

Anyone know what might cause this?

[CyberCat]

Go to the control panel and access the disk management console from the administrative tools. See if Home can see you C drive then.

Try EasyRecovery Professional to see if it will get your data.

[Charlie_M]

sorry man... I know a good bit about hard drives but all on the physical side (writer, reader, and disk design... it's what I do all day). Sounds like the issue you're having is on the host/interface side. Good news is that there does not appear to be any issue with the head or disk so the info is all still there. Recommend that you back up though (probably you did that already). The intermittent nature of the problem makes me worry about the PCBA. There are a number of ways the PCBA can fail. Is the drive itself only 18 months old? If so... get your data off and return it for a new one (every drive maker gives you 3 years warranty).

Of course also check cabling... master/slave settings, etc..

Good luck.
Charlie

[brandondrury]

Were you able to get into XP via SafeMode?

PCBA

What is a PCBA?

Brandon

[Charlie_M]

PCBA = Printed Circuit Board Assembly.

It's the thing screwed onto the drive that has the chips, resistors, capacitors, and connectors to the outside world mounted on it.

The bare board itself (no components on it) is called a PCB (for Printed Circuit Board).

After it has been "stuffed" (i.e., all surface mount parts installed and soldered in place via automated surface mount technology, aka SMT) and had the connectors mounted, it is then referred to as a PCBA.

If the drive is subjected to excessive shock or too strenuous a series of plug/unplug operations, the solder may give, or if the SMT/assembly process was not followed correctly some of the solder joints may be brittle or insufficiently robust for their intended long life. It's a pretty rare failure mode but it can happen. It can also happen (very rarely) that a component degrades or gets mechanically knocked out of place if it gets shocked in a way it's not supposed to. These failure modes are possible in any product with a PCBA as part of its design. They occur very rarely as long as everybody is doing a good job, but the PCBA, especially connectors, is something I start to suspect when there is an intermittent failure or other intermittent weird behavior.

Charlie

[brandondrury]

After it has been "stuffed" (i.e., all surface mount parts installed and soldered in place via automated surface mount technology, aka SMT) and had the connectors mounted, it is then referred to as a PCBA.

Thanks. I'm vaguely familiar with surface mount and PCB, I just had never heard that acronym before.

Brandon

[richiebee]

This was definitely a software problem. The easiest way to deal with it was to format the drive and reinstall everything. Now that I have, and its running sweet again, I'm going to clone the drive to avoid the need to reinstall everything the next time (if there is one).

[brandondrury]

I'm going to clone the drive to avoid the need to reinstall everything the next time (if there is one).

That's a GREAT idea. My rig has acted a bit funny the past two days. It gives me HUGE peace of mind knowing that I can just restore my rig back a very stable state in about 10 minutes if problems do come up. Having the clone is awesome!

What do you use to clone hard drives? I've been using the PartPE thing and I've been really happy with it. Create A Perfect Backup Of Your Windows Hard Drive

Brandon

[BillyShears]

I'm using Drive Image XML as well, though I'm using it with UBCD instead of BartPE and think it's brilliant. I tried true image but it didn't like my SATA drives but Drive Image XML worked brilliantly. The only thing that caught me out was that I created an image from the first partition to use on my second partition as well (duel booting XP). It didn't work at first as I forgot to change my boot.ini on the second installation so it knew it where it was - I was staring at a blank screen for a good 20 minutes before I could figure that out. I'm amazed at how often a commercial product can be such a pain in butt and then along comes a legit freebie that just works the way we want.

[richiebee]

I got Acronis True Image. I used it to clone a good installation, now I use it for data back up. I can change over my hard drive and be back in business in under 5 minutes. Not sure how long restoration of data would take, but its something I've been meaning to do forever, and never got round to it. Thankfully with the problems I had, I didn't lose any data. I'm guessing it might be a good idea to fire up the stored hard drive once in a while. I've heard they can seize up if they're not used for a long period of time.