[Caffeine_Powered]

Couple months ago posted this topic-
http://www.geekstogo...37#entry1231437

Since then I've gotten my hands on a recovery disc for this computer. Before installing windows again I figured I'd do a full format. 7 hours later it was stuck at 44%. So turned it off tried it again, same result. I deleted the partition all the windows files were on and tried to fomat again, same result.

No matter what i do I still get the same result. I thought about it a bit and though possibley the problem between the formatting and the orginal problem could be linked to a bad HDD. Figured before I lay out 60 bucks for a new HDD, I'd get a second opinion (3rd, 4th, and 5th opinions welcome).

Quick Specs-
Intel Celeron M 1.4 ghz
RAM - 768 MB (DDR333)


I pulled the HDD after this to check the specs on that:
Toshiba HDD2193
40 GB
2.5"
ATA-6
5400RPM

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Go to the Toshiba web site for your model and see if you can't find some diagnostics to run on the drive. Also, if you just have a few bad sectors, running scandisk can "correct" them by telling Windows to ignore writing to or reading from them.

[Tyger]

Go to the Toshiba web site for your model and see if you can't find some diagnostics to run on the drive. Also, if you just have a few bad sectors, running scandisk can "correct" them by telling Windows to ignore writing to or reading from them.

[Caffeine_Powered]

Go to the Toshiba web site for your model and see if you can't find some diagnostics to run on the drive. Also, if you just have a few bad sectors, running scandisk can "correct" them by telling Windows to ignore writing to or reading from them.

Good idea, hopefully they have one that can run out of DOS or off of start up.

As far as chkdsk, from my understanding, if you have alot of bad sectors and windows ignores them all, you not only lose HDD space but it only prolongs the life slightly. Eventually the drive will fail no?

Also I had trouble getting the CHKDSK to work correctly in DOS for some reason. I typed the command about 10 different ways.

[taru]

A few years ago, I ran across a similar problem with an old 40Gig hard drive from samsung. At a certain percentage [let's say 44%] while formatting (at DOS using a DOS startup floppy) it freezes. I figured that writing into hard drives was like a turntable arm moving outwards from the inside of a spinning record. So what if I just had the hard disk's spindle skip that bad sector?

I tried an experiment. I calculated [for example] 43% of the total hard drive space and partitioned that much off. And then, partitioned another 3% to try and isolate the bad sector, and then partitioned the remainder off, and then finally removed partitioning from the 3%. The first one and the last ones were formatted into drives leaving the non-partitioned 3% inaccessible. All of these using fdisk from the startup floppy.

It took a little time and effort before I got the percentages right, but I was able to use the hard drive for another five years before it broke down completely.

Edited by taru, 29 July 2008 - 01:38 AM.

[Tyger]

Don't confuse chkdsk and scandisk. Scandisk finds and "fixes" error, which is what you want, chkdsk only reports known error. You can run scandisk is Safe Mode in Win98 and ME, if you ask for it to run in XP it will run when you next boot the machine.

[shard92]

Don't confuse chkdsk and scandisk. Scandisk finds and "fixes" error, which is what you want, chkdsk only reports known error. You can run scandisk is Safe Mode in Win98 and ME, if you ask for it to run in XP it will run when you next boot the machine.

this depends on your os. In windows 95/98*shard92 then you want to run scandisk but if you are running 2000/xp/vista you want to run chkdsk....

[123Runner]

Toshiba does not have drive diagnostics, but the article states try IBM or maxtor.

HARD DRIVE TESTS

Also read whats located HERE. It states Hitachi.

Edited by 123Runner, 29 July 2008 - 02:59 PM.

[mpfeif101]

Don't confuse chkdsk and scandisk. Scandisk finds and "fixes" error, which is what you want, chkdsk only reports known error. You can run scandisk is Safe Mode in Win98 and ME, if you ask for it to run in XP it will run when you next boot the machine.

Scandisk isn't even in XP, and if you run chkdsk with the /f switch, it will actually fix the errors.

I'd recommend booting from a MS-DOS CD and try running chkdsk from there.

[Neil Jones]

Don't confuse chkdsk and scandisk. Scandisk finds and "fixes" error, which is what you want, chkdsk only reports known error. You can run scandisk is Safe Mode in Win98 and ME, if you ask for it to run in XP it will run when you next boot the machine.

Scandisk isn't even in XP, and if you run chkdsk with the /f switch, it will actually fix the errors.

Scandisk is part of XP but its a terribly cut-down variation on how it used to look under Windows 98. At least under Win98 it told you what it was doing and what it wanted to do, under XP it just does stuff and tells you nothing about what it's spend the last three hours doing.

CHKDSK is the more useful tool if you run from a command prompt as it actually tells you stuff.

I'd recommend booting from a MS-DOS CD and try running chkdsk from there.

If the drive is NTFS this isn't going to work.

[mpfeif101]

Oops, thanks for catching that. I meant a Windows install CD.

[Caffeine_Powered]

alright so what I should try is to run "chkdsk" in DOS (or the variant of it I can access through the OS recovery CD) and this won't "fix" the sectors just report them?

I'll give it a try and report back when I have trouble typing the command in. Even though I know the command and it tells you the command I lose something in the transfer.

[123Runner]

The command is "chkdsk c: /f/r" Note the space before c: and after c:

The /f command automatically fixes any errors it encounters, the /r command locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

[Caffeine_Powered]

The command is "chkdsk c: /f/r" Note the space before c: and after c:

The /f command automatically fixes any errors it encounters, the /r command locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

but like I don't believe I want to fix the errors since it'll just ignore them. I just want a report. so just take out the f?

[shard92]

no you want to fix them.... think of it this way reading a book and skipping every couple of pages.... as far as running with bad sectors I wouldn't unless there is nothing you are afraid to loose or that you back up periodically... the newer versions of windows handle bad sectors better than previous versions but once bad sectors appear and can be the beginning of a cascade failure of the drive....

[Caffeine_Powered]

Alright what I want is to find out how many bad sectors there are so I can see if it's worth getting a new HDD. I was just going to buy a new one, but if I can see if it's worth saving I'll do that first.