Disk 1 dynamic unreadable

[Shieze]

After having some issues with my pc this morning, and having to reboot while it was trying to get into windows, my one hard disk is now unreadable.

Is there anyway to fix this (if the hard disk is not dead) without losing the data that is on it?

I am back at default settings now as well (not overclocked).

 

[Shieze]

Someone must know something about this. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I also had many disk controller errors under eventviewer. So I am thinking that this drive may be trash, but I would like to know more before I just give up on the data on it. The drive is only 6months old, 200gb sata seagate.

 

[DougLite]

I think I can help you out, but I'll need some more info.

You can't use Dynamic Disks on XP Home or on laptops.

What kind of volumes did you have on the disk? Were they just simple volumes, or did you have them spanned or striped across other disks?

Did you have any sort of abnormal hardware activities (random reboots, not POSTing, BSODs, etc) immediately before the disk 'failure'?

What kind of power supply do you have, and what other hardware is it supplying power too? Do you have any sort of power protection (power strip, line condtitoner, battery backup?) Also, anything like lightning strikes, brownouts recently?

Have you tried to reactivate the disk in Computer Management and see what happens? Write back and we'll see if we can track down the problem. Thankfully, Seagate offers a five year warranty, at least on their recent drives.

Possible problems:
A) The Drive is defective. If it's a mechanical problem, you'll need a pro data recovery company to get the data off of it ($$$$). If it's an electronic problem, taking the controller board off of another drive that's exactly the same may get it working again (last resort - voided warranty) long enough to get your data off of it and scrap it.

B) Have you changed drivers/Service Pack/Mobo BIOS etc - you may be able to go back to a previous version and see what happens.

C) Try it in another box if available. Once again, if it works, immediately backup all of the data on it you can't replace - you don't have time to mess around doing other stuff with it.

D) Crazy high bus frequencies, particularly on 9xx series Intel chipsets, can scramble SATA drives. Drive is ok, but the data on it is more than likely toast. One time it happened to me, and running fixboot from Recovery console got it all back - only MBR had been screwed up.

 

[Shieze]

Sorry I couldn't type much info earlier because the system was having stability issues.

This is a sata drive, which was not part of any raid. It only had the single partition.

Basically what happened I woke up this morning and went on my pc (left it on over night which I always do), and the system was acting very odd. The ide activity led was on, and it seemed as if my computer was frozen (mouse wouldn't move, keyboard was unresponsive). I was just about to reboot when the mouse moved for a second. Basically it would move for 1 second, then freeze up for about 20seconds. I had to hard restart.

The system then came back into windows without much issue. I thought this was a fluke issue and I started loading everything up, and I loaded winamp up. I didn't want to listen to the song on winamp which came up so I clicked next, and winamp became unresponsive (songs on the same disk which is unreadable now, but the initial song did start playing). After this I could not open any new application, but my currently running IE was still working without an issue. I had no means to restart but to hard restart.

On next bootup I lowered my overclock some, and then on booting into windows (the Windows XP logo and the progress bar) it stayed there a few minutes and was not loading windows. The progress bar was moving though. I decided to hard restart. After that I was able to get into windows without an issue, but the drive was showing up as unreadable. I started doing a virus scan and searching the web for this issue and I got a bsod.

I then brought the cpu / ram settings to the default and went back into windows. I got another bsod after a couple minutes. I ran a memtest86 with no errors, I tried running prime95, but a bsod occured again.

I then decided from reading a few things on this bsod, to reinstall video drivers, I believe this has solved my bsod issue, as I left prime95 running took a shower came back, browsed the web a bit, and posted my initial post, without seeing a bsod.

At this point I am not at home but this is where I am at now. I did see a LOT of disk controller errors I believe it was under eventviewer though.

Will the fixboot work on my non boot partition? As this is the one that is unreadable.

I also had not installed anything new on this system in over a week for software, and for hardware in over 4months and the system was running perfectly fine up to this point.

This is also Windows XP Pro.

Thanks,
Shieze

 

[DougLite]

Looks like, unfortunately, it's mechanical problem with the drive. (Try different power/data cables if you have them, that may be lucky enough to work too) I had a 120GB WesternDigital go out in a similar fashion, and was forced to RMA the drive. Same symptoms - gobs of disk errors in Event Viewer and complete lack of response from the system when I tried to reactivate the drive. Luckily, it was mirrored, so I didn't lose any data but it still sucks to lose the drive.

EDIT: I lost that 120GB WD Drive to a crap power supply, which is I why I asked so many power related questions in my first post /EDIT

I gather that you have two HDs installed. Boot your system with nothing but video, CPU, one stick of RAM, and the HDDs installed. This means disconnect your CD/DVD drives (the goal here is to keep the power load as light as possible), and any other expansion cards from the system, and try to copy the most important data off the drive. Failing that, try to import the disk into another box and back it up that way. Then you need to contact Seagate about Warranty Service