System rebooting during defrag

N

n64man120

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
3,498
Whenever I try to defrag my C:\ drive using Diskeeper, the system reboots itself suddenly during the process. I ran the chkdsk utility from a reboot, and it is causing the system to restart once chkdsk reaches 66% or so. I had to hit a key and skip the check disk, just to get back into windows. Clearly something is wrong, as the system shouldn't crash from a chkdsk or defrag. I'm using a DFI Ultra mobo, and have heard of some issues with the DM10 and NForce4 chipset. Thats my only lead.

Some background info...

The drive is a 300GB WD Diamondmax 10 SATA drive on a DFI Ultra NF4 motherboard. I've got a 15gb OS, 50gb Apps, and rest is data. I have defragged many times in the past without any issue. Today I was successfull in defragging the Apps partition first try, however have had no luck with the OS. I regularly scan with NOD32, and my system is about as clean as it gets.

What do you guys think I should do / whats causing it? The system is having no stability issues on it's own, but not being able to do a simple 15gig defrag worries me.

Edit: Running Powmax utility didnt find any drives, and seeminly hung. But I think it has support issues with NF4 as well.
 
Yea so much for diagnosing it that way then. I'm at a loss for ideas, as google hasn't proved too helpfull. Hopefully someone will see this later today and give me some guidance, as it doesn't seem like all too strange of an issue, just a matter of finding the solution. I'm torn at formatting the system since it functions fine, and is very setup and configured with registry tweaks and such. But not being able to defrag or chkdsk the OS concerns me.

Also, if I end up having to give it all up and go that route... DiamondMax 10 300GB 16MB cache, or Barracuda 7200.9 300GB 16MB cache, which would you perfer to have your OS/Apps on? Some benches I ran show me the Seagate being faster, but that doesn't seem entirely fair, since I'm running from the OS level, and thats all installed on the Maxtor.
 
When you say reboot, do you mean the system does a blue screen (bugcheck) and reboots? Does it give you X amount of time before it shuts down? Have you looked in either the application or system event log for an error?

I've used Diskeeper for quite some time, and I've never seen it straight up reboot a box. My guess is that it's bug checking out. Uncheck "Automatically restart" when system failure occurs (under system properties). This might help you a bit
 
Ah, thats for the advice, got me somewhere. Initially, it was just going to black screen and rebooting. I enabled all the debugging of Diskeeper and disabled auto rebooting on errors.

Now the system BSOD's with the following:

Code: 
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

yada yada yada

nvatabus.sys

The only logging I was able to find, was under Computer Management, Event Viewer, System. There is an error entry, which was logged roughly 5 seconds after I started the defrag, which reads:

The device, \Device\harddisk0\D, has a bad block. There's no other error messages, just some paritition moves immediatly before it, and log information regarding the system loading itself back up afterwards.

It seems I've zero'd in on the issue as much as possible, can anyone make more out of this information, and give me a suggestion for resolving it? I'm tempted to try and get a new firmware from maxtor, as this seems to be a corruption issue.

Edit: Now that I turned all the error information on, running the disk checking utility still gets to the same place as before, 66%. And it now kicks to a BSOD, with the same information as I was getting from the defrag.
 
First try updating the mb drivers. (in your case I would use the latest from http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp )

That might let the system properly mark that sector as bad on the drive. (you have a bad block on the drive)

You could also try downloading the UBCD and run some of the utilities on it.

Does your MB have SATA ports that are not on the Nforce chipset? (eg: mine has two on a Silicon Image controller) If so you could move the drive to the other controller and try the maxtor utilities again.

edit: you really should RMA the drive though.. and get your important data off of it now.

==>Lazn
 
I'll run through those suggestions and see if I have any luck. I've got the system shut down and open, just spent a while digging out the drive to get FW and S/N's from it. I'm gonna give Maxtor a call and see about the firmware upgrade. I was also going to see about trying the newest non-beta bios for the DFI Ultra, and flashing that on.

You reccomended an RMA, does having a bad block mean a block is physically damanged, and not a software issue which can be fixed with a reinstall?
 
I updated the motherboard drivers, error is still present. I also called Maxtor and talked to them for a few minutes, they said the firmware upgrade would be useless, as it's to fix dissapearing harddrives, not corruption issues. They said it could be hardware or software related, agree? I suppose if it's hardware, then I should most definitly be pushing for an RMA on the drive?

In the process of downloading the UBCD now, however I'm unsure what exactly I should try to run, as theres no detailed descriptions.
 
If it actually has a bad block (and it seems like it does) it is a hardware issue.

As for the UBCD it has a lot of tools on it, it is just a boot disk with a bunch of utilities. (including powermax, but we already know that one doesn't work)

If you have another PC with a SATA port I would move it and run Powermax on it.

==>Lazn
 
I tried running a disk checker utility from the UBCD, and the system eventually BSOD'd with the same error as before. This damn nvatabus.sys is what it's reporting. I do have another system that supports sata, old P4P800 mobo, I'll give that a shot. If it errors/crashes during the powmax utility, does that tell us for sure that it's hardware related?
 
Hooked it up in another system and ran powmax. It said it failed the advanced test, and gave me a code to submit for the RMA. So I suppose I should send it in for a replacement? I kinda feel bad doing it, since the system works 100% fine for daily use, but the defrag/diagnostic says otherwise.

So now... I doubt they'll do a cross-ship for free. I have a new 300gb Seagate drive I just picked up, so I can backup my 100gigs or so of data to that. Do you think I will take any performance hit using the 7200.9 for OS/Apps rather than the DM10?

Security wise, how much would you trust a company such as Maxtor, when sending a HDD to them for RMA. Should I just leave it, do a format, or spend the time to write zero's to the drive? I don't have much critical information on it like banking, but there's always website logins, personal photos, and various downloads. How far do you think I should go to eliminate the data before sending it in?


Last but not least, if I'm starting from scratch again, I'd like to set up a partition to dual boot to Vista to try out. I've got the 300gb Seagate, and the 300gb Maxtor once I get the new one in. My initial thoughts are to use the Seagate as the primary drive, put 20GB for XP, 60GB for Apps, and the remaining 120GB for Data. The Maxtor drive will be used for additional data, and perhaps a backup of the more sensitive Data on the Seagate. I suppose I'll put the pagefile on this drive also.

Where would be the best place to put the partition for Vista? I was thinking of having it at the beginning of the Maxtor drive. Is it easily doable to have Vista at the start of the second drive like this? Is it possible to uninstall Vista in the future, and have the system boot straight to XP from then on? I'd like the option of doing that, switching from Vista to some linux distro on the same partition area, or formatting the partition and simply merging it with the rest of the drive. Are all of these options doable later on?
 
The only reason that it works when you are not defragging is that the file that spans the bad block is not one you use regularly.. But once you try to use that file your comptuer would BSOD the same as it does on the defrag. It has a actual failure, so replace it, it will not get better, and might get worse.

As far as your data, how sensitive is the info on it? I would format it at least, I am sure Maxtor will not be reading it, but if they recondition the drive, there is a slight chance of someone else getting it and who knows what they will do with it.

The maxtor will be faster than the Seagate, but the 7200.9's only downfall is seek times.. I don't know if you will notice the difference or not. (I did moving from a 7200.9 to a 160GB Raptor, but that is a bit more extreme of a difference)

And configure your partitions however makes the most sence to you, the start of a drive is faster than the end of a drive, but don't worry about it too much.

It is always possible to change partitions later, but keeping the data on them when you do is when things become tricky.

==>Lazn
 
New drive is on the way! They do cross-shipping for free, nice of 'em. It's not all that sensitive, just college papers, photos of family/friends, and material I'd prefer the RIAA/MPAA not to know about. Nothing too sensitive, so a simple wipe should be fine, unless someone's got an agenda against me. So if you were me, quick format, full format, or write zeros? Don't wanna waste time goin overkill, since it's not like bank statements are on there.

As for partitioning and such, I think I've got it mostly figured out. I'm going to leave a chunk of space at the start of the secondary drive, for Vista, and/or any other OS I'd like to dualboot to in the future. There shouldn't be any problem with having Vista installed on the secondary drive, correct? I read online that it's easily doable to remove the multi-boot screen, if you choose to uninstall Vista at a later date.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top