Cyclic redundancy erro

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Biffarama

n00b
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
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I ran a search on "cyclic redundancy" on the forum here and read some of the posts, so I think my drive is dying on me. But I thought I would post my problem to see if anyone had suggestions.

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB drive I use as an internal backup to my primary HDD. Got home last night to find that the backup software I use was giving me an error message when trying to write to the Maxtor. So I open Windows Explorer (I'm using XP Home BTW) and try to access the drive. I'm able to look at files in my backup folder, but if I try to open other folders on the drive I am unable and Windows gives me a "Drive has not been formatted. Would youlike to format now?" error message. I click "No" because I'd like to try to recover some files I have on the drive before I remove it.

I go to Maxtor's web site and see they have a PowerMax software utility to see if the drive is damaged. But, as I understand it, if I use this utility all the data on my drive will be wiped out. Am I correct in thinking this?

Also, I tryied to run Windows' CheckDisk utility on the drive but after 25 minutes or so it said that it was unable to complete the test on the drive.

My question is this, it appears I have bad sectors on the drive. If that's the case should I be able to access other files on the drive? The drive is dying, I know, so I will replace it, but I'm just hoping to recover as much from it as I can before it's too late. Anyone know any tools I can use to do so?

Thanks
 
Biffarama said:
I go to Maxtor's web site and see they have a PowerMax software utility to see if the drive is damaged. But, as I understand it, if I use this utility all the data on my drive will be wiped out. Am I correct in thinking this?
Click to expand...
From my experience most manufacturer drive test software is non-destructive, i.e. does not touch the data.
 
I was under that impression too, but if you look at the page on Maxtor's site it says "WARNING: ALL DATA WILL BE LOST WHEN PERFORMING THE LOW LEVEL FORMAT QUICK OR FULL OPTIONS."

PowerMax
 
Only if you do those options, though. Don't hit anything that says "format" and you'll be okay ;)
 
Biffarama said:
I was under that impression too, but if you look at the page on Maxtor's site it says "WARNING: ALL DATA WILL BE LOST WHEN PERFORMING THE LOW LEVEL FORMAT QUICK OR FULL OPTIONS."

PowerMax
Click to expand...
But you're not going to use them to "test" the drive, are you?
 
When is the last time you checked your cables? Could one have possibly come loose just enough to cause problems?
 
Sounds to me like you may be having cable issues, and your drive may be fine. CRC errors are usually generated by noise on the cables. Try reseating them and see if that helps at all.

Also, is this SATA or PATA?
 
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