Possible Drive Failure - Weird problem...

[furious trout]

So i rebooted my machine this afternoon, and after it had post i get an error message :
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll is missing

This is odd thinks i and head off to google where i find this KB article (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314477) explaining my Boot.ini file is knackered.

So i boot into Recovery console and run bootcfg /rebuild and i get a message telling me the drive is unreadable. There then follows a couple of very frustratring hours where i try to ascertin if disk is stil functional:mad:.

The upshot being the partitions on my system disk are completly b0rked. which is a pain in the ar$e as i have data on them i need to recover. i'm now reduced to installing windows onto an old hdd to try to recover the
data on the disk using the tool Starbuck mention in this thread (http://www.wizdforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=794&highlight=recovery).

i'm more that a little perplexed as to why this has happened my research so far seems to indicate this usually happens when you try to install 2 os's to dual boot and the boot.ini file get corrupted yet i wasn't doing this i only bloody rebooted the thing.....it's enough to make me consider linux :h34r:

[ỒĊBłůē]

Ouch! That doesn't sound too good. Bad luck there, man.

What did you try running from the Recovery Console? :huh:

[fillip]

Major bummer there.

Hard drives seem to me to be the most tempremental component in a system. Whereas a CPU is likely to die from being toasted from poor cooling or an ambitious overclock, and a mobo is most likely to die from a power surge or a short of some description, the disk drives just fall over @ random. I've seen 2 do it now - one recoverable the other not

[Fibbles]

One time a few years back, I went to buy some furniture for my bedroom. Before I left the comp was running perfectly, but when I got back I turned her on and got a boot disk error, and kept getting them. So I swapped out my 40GB WD Expert for the 40gb IBM Deathstar that was my storage drive and it too, was giving the errors. After I couldn't get either to work or the comp to detect them, I went to the local Office Max (eye gouging prices, but I was desperate) and bought a 80GB WD (holy cow, 80 gigs!!!). Anyway, I was never able to recover the data from either drive cause they both, uh, killed themselves. Since then, I've been a fan of backup devices like Iomega Jazz drives and such. The Iomega Rev drive I got is awesome, but it's sort of expensive ($300 for the drive, $40 for the 35gb disks). The reason the Rev was very appealing is because of the removable disks. An external hard drive is cheap, but I've had one fail on me, so I'm sort of weary :wacko: and if 1 Rev disk was to fail, I've got 3 more backups.

[zer0]

well a very easy thing you can do is download knoppix (linux distro wich runs from a cd) well basicly stick that in and you got 1 a working os and 2 a way to attempt to get your data off your disk. i always find linux is more able to mount danaged drives than windows so try it out.

also until you get a new drive you got a working os (who knows it might convence you to use linux :P )

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

...the disk drives just fall over @ random. I've seen 2 do it now - one recoverable the other not
I dont think people generally realise how complex a HDD actually is. The heads skimming across the drive platers is like a fighter jet flying at mach3 2 inches above the ground. Theres not much room for error.

[furious trout]

Ouch! That doesn't sound too good. Bad luck there, man.

What did you try running from the Recovery Console? :huh: i ran bootcfg /rebuild to try and rebuild my boot.ini file but it couldn't complete the process as it couldn't find a valid windows installation. I also tried fixmbr out of desperation but my master boot record was fine.

I have managed to get windows installed on another disk so hopefully today i'll be able to recoved the data:h34r:

The really annoying thing about the whole situation is that i just bought a DVD writer for purpose of backing that drive up - had i done it yet? had i buggery......:rant::rant:

[ỒĊBłůē]

I dunno if it'll work but you could always try the following, (substitute your boot drive letter for c: if different);

If possible find and backup your boot.ini first

chkdsk c: /p - should force a thorough scandisk check but will only display errors

chkdsk c: /r - as above but will attempt to repair any disk errors

Try booting into Windows following this, if it won't try;

fixboot c: - creates a new partition boot sector

copy E:(or XP CD drive letter)\i386\ntldr c:

copy E:(or XP CD drive letter)\i386\ntdetect.com c:


then try bootcfg /rebuild

[fillip]

I dont think people generally realise how complex a HDD actually is. The heads skimming across the drive platers is like a fighter jet flying at mach3 2 inches above the ground. Theres not much room for error.
On the contrary, I think it's astounding that we have 300GB capacities from a relatively basic technology, and I fully appreciate the tolerances are miniscule, but it's the very nature of the device that makes it so unpredictable.

[furious trout]

I dunno if it'll work but you could always try the following, (substitute your boot drive letter for c: if different);

If possible find and backup your boot.ini first

chkdsk c: /p - should force a thorough scandisk check but will only display errors

chkdsk c: /r - as above but will attempt to repair any disk errors

Try booting into Windows following this, if it won't try;

fixboot c: - creates a new partition boot sector

copy E:(or XP CD drive letter)\i386\ntldr c:

copy E:(or XP CD drive letter)\i386\ntdetect.com c:


then try bootcfg /rebuild
Thanks for the suggestions

I tried that last night the only problem being it wouldn't run chkdsk as the disk was reporting an unrecoverable error.

On the up side i have now managed to recovered most of the data from the drive (w00t! ^_^ ).

However i'm more than a little sceptical about this drive now and i'm less than keen to use it for anything else. I'm gonna reformat it and see how i go (storing only non critical data this time!!)

[jiff]

Just a point, Are you overclcking? I have lost my drive god knows how many times pushing things to far. Last time I thought my drive was FUBAR, but oh no, silly me set my Mulitplier wrong in bios, corrupted my wondows:blink:

[furious trout]

nope no overclock.

i'm putting down to a windows annoyance as ther dosen't actually seemt to be anyhting physically wrong with the drive. It reformatted fine so i'm testing it at the moment to see if it's gonna fail again

[fivecheebs]

Try the Maxtor (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=22) diagnostic software, PowerMax. It works for other makes of drive too :)

[furious trout]

Cheers Cheebs i'll give that a shot.

I've already run the Western Digital software on it (it's a WD drive) that didn't report an anomalies but then idon't think much of it as a bit of software...

[fivecheebs]

No probs mate, I have used the maxtor software a few times, and it seems OK to be honest. It has several (3 iirc) levels of detection, the most thorough took a long time (ie i left it goining overnight). It helped me figure out an odd problem with one of the workstations at work. The OS kept hosing itself, thought it was the drive, turned out to be IDE controller.