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hard drive problem? folder is not accessible?

O

oblivionx

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 9, 2004
Messages
112
Okay, so my computer is deciding to explode this week. As if finals weren't enough. My DVD burner is dead, I think, there is another thread on that, but now I noticed that my hard drive may be corrupt in some way.

When I was installing my new RAID0 raptors, I noticed that occasionaly, before I finished installing windows on the raptors (like in between the first restart and the continuing of installation), I would get a chkdsk error that says one of my disks needs to be checked, and it would scan my F:/ drive, find a bunch of loose hooks or something and reindex them. The drive was always working fine in windows, and it seemed like the chkdsk wasn't really doing anything. I was planning on investigating the problem as soon as the Raid drives were up and running.

However, two days ago (just shortly after I got the RAID drives working like I wanted them to), suddenly there were problems on the F: drive. When I click certain folders, I get an error message:

Access Denied
F:\FOLDER is inaccessible.

Right clicking and going to properties displays 0 bytes for the size of any of these folders. The drive has maybe 12 folders, and 5 of them are "inaccessible" (even though the "free space" available on the drive properties is clearly accounting for these inaccessible folders). Here is the weird thing though, this drive is a 125GB partition of a 250gb hard drive, and the other partition has absolutely no problems. Everytime chkdsk ran when I was installing the raids, it scanned the same partition. Also, I ran a chkdsk F: /f /r in windows, and it went through the whole process and did not detect any errors (well I was away from the computer, it completed and the folders were still inaccessible, but I ran the one in the drive properties too, the check for disk consistency thing, and that found no errors).

So I don't know whats wrong. Maybe I need to run the chkdsk in dos? Though I don't know how to do that since this is a secondary drive. When the drive is in use it just asks me if I want to release all handles to the drive or something, not run it on the next restart.

I'm pretty sure something is wrong with the drive, since that's just how my luck works this week. So anyway, is there any way I can recover any of the data in those folders? If I can, I'll try to back as much of it up as I need, and go through WD warranty, since the drive is fairly new.

It's about 5am right now, and I've spent most of the day painting with enamels, so I'm a little lightheaded. Therefore, please excuse me if this post is a little bit incoherent...I'll re-read it in the morning and edit it if it is.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions
Thanks,
Kevin
 
WARNING: SATA Cautions
worth a read, and a possible contributing factor

Corrupted Files!?
your new todo list


since its just the one drive (partition?)
its probably not a system wide error (like memory)
Id say that the permissions on the folder are corrupted
or the filesystem itself, but chkdsk "should" have fixed that

start with recovery and work towards repair,
then finish with root cause identification

try a direct scan with File Scavenger (recovery)
 
Alright, I've tried a few things and heres an update on what I've done.

First, I shielded the SATA cables w/ foil and a ground wire, according to the instructions in another thread here. Hopefully, if the problem stemmed from this, it won't happen again.

Next, I installed a few HD SMART utilities to read the SMART information about the drives. I know this is not entirely accurate, but I thought it might give me insight into whether or not I had bad sectors and whatnot.

Smart displays no bad or unusable sectors on the drive. The drive integrity percentage is also like 99 or 100, which makes sense since this drive is fairly new. The smart rating on my older, 120gb drive is a little bit lower, which also makes sense since the drive is a bit older.

Also, Smart was reporting an HD temp of 51 C, which is high for HD is it not? However, at the time I was running the file recovery tool so that drive was being heavily accessed, and it was running hotter to the touch than usual. Heat may have been the source of the corruption, but in that case I still don't see how it would affect only 1 partition.

In either case, I rearranged the fans in my case to ensure that my secondary HDs are getting proper cooling, and the temperature is significantly cooler...about 38C (which even seems a little higher than it feels), just barely warm to the touch.

Anyway, so I used File Recovery and I managed to restore some of the data...I got some errors during the process, that said I should check for "data integrity", but there are so many files I can't really test them all. The data is pretty insensitive so it doesn't matter all that much if I lose it, but I want to make sure I don't have a hardware error so I can decide whether or not to go through warranty.

After running file recovery, I set chkdsk F: /f /r to run on boot up, and I let it go. Step 4 was going really slow, and after about an hr it hit 12%. I was reading on my bed, and I looked up about 15 minutes later, and suddenly it was in Windows. Now I highly doubt that it finished the other 88% in that 15 minutes, so I'm wondering if that signifies some sort of problem. There are no error msgs or anything.

Furthermore, I had moved all the working files on the drive to a seperate folder in the root directory. Now, after the chkdsk, I can't access ANY files on the hd. I can open the "SAFE" folder (which is what I named the folder I moved all the files to), but I get the same "inaccessible" msg on any subfolder of it. All other folders in the root directory are still inaccessible, with the exception of the SAFE folder.

So now I'm running File Recovery again, and am going to try to transfer this stuff off the drive. Any ideas on what could be wrong? The drive reports no bad sectors, so would a repartition/reformat fix up the drive? Also, is there any chance this data corruption will spread to the other partition?

Once file recovery finishes, and I backup whatever I can and I'll test the drive in another computer, though I'm almost positive it's going to give me the same error.

Also, how can I check for data integrity after I recover these files - short of clicking every single file and making sure it works? Does chkdsk do it?

Sorry for any newbie questions. I've been scouring the net for ideas, but there are so many different possibilities I am just getting more lost.

Thanks for the help
Kevin

PS: how come e-mail notification doesn't work for me? My e-mail is set correctly, and I am a registered user, but I never get e-mails when there are replies.
 
Hmm...possible update on the problem. I just installed the Asus PC Probe after my reformat, and my 3.3V line is listed as 2.944V, and is flashing (which means it's out of the 10% range, but within 15%). Could this somehow affect the hd corruptuon, or if not, what does this mean?

What is the 3.3V line used for? Vid cards I think? My video card is a geforce 4 ti4600, and it doesn't require an external power source, so it might not be causing a problem now, but could this cause a problem when I update to a 9800 pro?

Also, since I've started reading threads here, I've noticed a lot of threads about the importance of a good PSU. Of course, I didn't know this when I bought my tower/psu a year ago, and now I'm thinking it might be time to invest in a new PSU.

My PSU is a Turbolink 420W
Model CWT-420ATX. Anyone ever heard of this psu/is it good/is it reliable at all?

Thanks, and let me know. I'm also posting this in general forums as I want to know more about it, even if it is not related to the hard drive corruption issue. Thanks.

Kevin
 
All the links from IceCzar are good. One other thing is you might try is to re-install the drivers for the drive.

I recently ended up reformatting a 200GB drive due corruption from some bad RAM. Could read some files, not others. A CHKDSK would freeze at 29% and then bail, none of the file recovery tools would work, semaphore timeouts, etc.

After an NTFS reformatting with the Western Digital Data Lifeguard tool (version 11-You've used them already, right?), I still had problems with the drive. The drive was the only disk on the controller, so I forced a re-install of the HD controller driver. Voila, all fixed.
 
Thanks for all the help guys, I resolved the problem.

I used the file recovery tool and recovered all the data on the drive, and transferred it to other drives. Most of it was recoverable, I only lost a few files in my first recovery, got 99% of it back.

Then I deleted the partition completely, and re-allocated it and rebuilt the partition. I think the problem was the partition table - there was no hardware error (smart reported no bad sectors, chkdsk worked).

One thing I noticed was that when I created the partition using the WD software, it made a primary partition and a logical partition. However, when I remade the partition right now, I remade it as a primary partition so now the drive has two primary partitions.

I don't really know the difference, but I suspect somehow this might have led to the problem. Drive is working great now; I've transferred all the stuff back.

Once again, thanks a ton

Kevin
 
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