[Paracitik]

Hello there. I am new to these forums and I am sorry that I'm asking for help right off the bat, but I have a few problems I need help with.

First, I have a Western Digital 120gig Hard Drive that came with my computer. It has been working fine for about 2 years, but now whenever I start my computer, a black screen comes up saying: "There is a problem with your Hard Disk Drive. Read your owners manual for troubleshooting. Press enter to continue." I press enter and everything works fine.. nothing is even slow or anything. I went to PCPitstop and this is what it told me.

Drive C Statistics:
Volume Size 114.47 GB
Used Space 113.56 GB
Free Space 911 MB
Total Files 138634
Cluster Size 4 KB
Health Analysis:
Initial Scan Result OK. No crosslinked files.
Percent of Data Fragmented 25 %
Percent of Files Fragmented 9 %
Total Fragmented Files 12391
Total Excess Fragments 282137
Average Fragments per File 3.16
Overall Disk Health Poor. Very high fragmentation levels.
Recommendations: Use a disk defragmenter as soon as possible to improve performance.

Can somebody please give me any suggestions on what to do? I have so many mp3's and video's and whatnot that I can't afford to loose which brings me on to my second problem.

A couple months ago I bought a 200 gig Maxtor hard drive and hooked it up as the slave. It was working AMAZINGLY up until a few weeks ago. Suddenly it started slowing up and right now its at the point where it actually freezes and stops responding. If I let it sit there for a while, it will eventually respond again and I can explore it.. but at a VERY slow pace. I backed up all my mp3's, videos and other files that I wanted saved from my first harddrive and now I can't even access half the folders I put them in on the new drive. A message comes up saying "The disk in the drive is not formatted.". That error message makes no sense to me because its a Hard Drive.. there is no disk. This is what PCpitstop said about this drive.

Drive D Statistics:
Volume Size 194.47 GB
Used Space 111.88 GB
Free Space 82.6 GB
Total Files 5687
Cluster Size 4 KB
Health Analysis:
Initial Scan Result OK. No crosslinked files.
Percent of Data Fragmented 26 %
Percent of Files Fragmented 2 %
Total Fragmented Files 204
Total Excess Fragments 1076
Average Fragments per File 1.11
Overall Disk Health Poor. Very high fragmentation levels.
Recommendations: Use a disk defragmenter as soon as possible to improve performance.


If anybody could give me any help on what to do I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

--Eric

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Run diagnostic software on the drives and defrag them.

[warriorscot]

Run diagnostic software on the drives and defrag them.

[Paracitik]

Thank you for your prompt response.

When I go to defrag my C drive it says it needs 15% free space and I only have about 1% of free space.. should I still defrag?

And what Diagnostic software do you recommend?

Thanks.

[Tyger]

Thank you for your prompt response.

When I go to defrag my C drive it says it needs 15% free space and I only have about 1% of free space.. should I still defrag?

And what Diagnostic software do you recommend?

Thanks.

You need to move files off the old drive to another one. Defrag the Maxtor first, then move files over to it. Then defrag your old drive. It sounds like you could use a stand alone drive, like a USB one, in your system both as backup and to keep the files in your other drives to a reasonable size. And keep it turned off when you aren't using it so power surges won't destroy your files.

[fellowplanetdweller]

ALWAYS First run SCANDISK then DEFRAG.

Helps to know version of windows, but it's mostly the same from Windows 95 on up.

Go...

My Computer > RIGHT CLICK on the drive you want to scandisk AND choose PROPERTIES then TOOLS then SCAN for errors (the language changes between windows versions slightly)

Just read the screen from there--be sure to checkmark boxes like "FIX errors" but not necessarily "Scan for and correct bad sectors" (this will take longer--not sure how much longer)

After this is done.... then you can defragment your drives... There is no reason to defragment (move data arouund on your drive) until you have verified your data integrity, hence scandisk, then defrag.

As for why your 200G Maxtor is only sometimes readable, etc.

Could be a few things:

(again windows version would help)

* File System type

* faulty cable

* hard drive controller problem

* intermitant power

* bad drive

* drive to large for BIOS (see if BIOS updates are available for your PC)

There are more, but these are the most common off the top of my head.

fellowplanetdweller

[Tyger]

ALWAYS First run SCANDISK then DEFRAG.


fellowplanetdweller

He's right, otherwise you may be writing to bad parts of a disk.

[Paracitik]

Ok, thank you all. I checked my Maxtor for errors and checked both boxes and it said a lot of file segments were unreadable.. and it fixed whatever and now it works perfectly.. except I lost some information on it. Why did that happen?? Why would things become unreadable out of the blue? Anyway, It no longer freezes or runs slowley so I backed up everything I needed to from my main drive onto the Maxor. I deleted some uneeded things off my main drive and now I have 20 gigs free. I defraged it and now it runs smoother. The only thing is I still get that error when I start my computer and I can't defrag my Maxtor because I get a message saying "CHKDISK is schedualed." so I'm assumming that I have to restart my computer and let it run the check disk or whatever. If anyone has any information or suggestions, please share. Thanks guys!

EDIT:

Oh, btw, I have Windows XP home. 1024 mb of ram.. a p4 2.4 processor.

How do I check if there are updates for my BIOS?

Edited by Paracitik, 28 July 2005 - 10:40 PM.