Dying hard drive?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I keep getting this error:



I'm assuming that it means my hard drive is dying.
I'm hoping that it's not my C: drive!
I went into Event Viewer, but it doesn't tell me which drive, just that same business about "HarddiskVolume2".
There are only 2 hard drives installed on the PC and Disk Management has them labled as "0" & "1"......
It also says they are both "Healthy"
How can I tell which drive this is?

TIA!!

[nic2k4]

Find out who makes them, go to the manufacturer's site and download their diagnostic utility...

[Xylob the Destroyer]

both drives are Maxtor.
my past experience with their diagnostics tools is that it's crap...
currently running chkdsk on my 2ndary drive, as I suspect it may be the culprit, but chkdsk seems to be stuck on Phase 5 (been running Phase 5 for over an hour now...)

[redwudz]

Not that it always works, but I keep S.M.A.R.T. enabled for my hard drives from BIOS. It usually gives you some warning with a problematic hard drive.

Have you kept your IDE drivers updated? (Motherboard drivers, usually?)

I would also check your IDE cables. It could possibly be a loose connection., though that seems unlikely.

Or it may just be a flaky HD. I have had a few Maxtor's that way. Depends on the model and series. They make those drives in quite a few locations.

Bottom line, I would back up any important files from that drive, once you figure out which one it is.

[bevills1]

It's the second partition on which ever drive it is according to the message posted. Open "Manage" and then "Disk Management" should allow you to determine precisely which drive it is. Have you tried saving to another location as directed in the posted message? Try saving to another drive, and if that fails, it's more likely some Windows problem or possibly corrupt files problem rather than a drive problem.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Each drive only has 1 partition. Partitioning drives is pointless, especially when the drives are only 20G & 40G.
Disk Management has yielded no information.

I got tired of waiting for chkdsk on my 2ndary and figured it would be done when I woke up. 8 hours later and it was only 50% though Phase 5 -- it's only a 20G drive!
Tried chkdsk on my C:\ drive but couldn't get it to work, kept getting an error stating that it couldn't access the volume. I used msconfig to turn off all start up services except Microsoft's and it did the whole 40G drive in less than 30 minutes.

Event Viewer under the log on gave me a run down of what it found, but there was nothing unusual in the log....

I will get the errors even when I'm not moving/copying/saving anything. Using FireFox I get the errors...

I've got a clean install of Norton 2005, full scan reveals no virus/malware. Same for AVG. Same for Ad-Aware. Same for SpyWare Dr.

[oldandinthe way]

If you can, go into safe mode and backup your disks, they're relatively small so a manageable number of DVDs should do it. $mft is the master file table so this is a high risk situation of your data.

Then while in safe mode run chkdsk /r and scan the surface

Chkdsk or Chkdsk /f does not check everything.

[redwudz]

You may be able to run CHKDSK in 'Safe Mode' and it would run a lot faster.

The 'Delayed write failed' is a communication problem, more common to USB external drives where the data write is interrupted by the computer accessing the USB ports.

With a internal drive, it could be caused by a bad cable or using a 40 conductor cable instead of an 80 conductor, or a controller that is configured to a faster access mode than the drive allows. This would be a BIOS setting. But if your BIOS sets the access speeds automatically, not too likely.

It can happen when the data reaches the drive faster than it can process it, or the drive is not caching the data properly.

One thing you might try is going to the 'Properties>Policies' of the drive and turning off 'Enable write caching on the disk' and see if that helps. But this also may slow down disk performance.

Here's some other causes: http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid1_gci1041334,00.html

[Xylob the Destroyer]

got 3 different hard drive proggies: HDDLife, HD Tune, and Hard Drive Inspector.
All 3 of them practically shit and set off a siren when I ran them on my back-up drive. It's fucked.
I managed to (slowly... ) get all my stuff off of it last nite.
I'm going to temporarily replace it with an even older(!) 2G Maxtor.
The C:\ drive is OK according to all 3 of the programs, but one of them said that based on it's age and the number of hours it's been used/run, I should start preparing for replacement before it also starts having issues. Probably not a bad idea since it is pretty old.

I wish it wasn't practically impossible to find 40G drives these days
Hell, a 20G would suffice for this particular machine, as I'm only using 9G of my 40G...
Maxtor and SeaGate (what's the difference now?) still make 40G drives, but you can get a 120G for only $15-$20 more...
Small drives DO still have a place in this world...

[zzyzzx]

How old is the drive in question?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

hehe...
OLD.
When's the last time you saw a new 20G drive for sale? Like I said, even 40G are hard to find now. I remember when I bought it that 100G was the biggest you could get and they were prohibitively expensive.
I'm not sure exactly, but when I pull it out tonite I'm sure it will have a manufacture date on it.

[bevills1]

FYI check http://bensbargains.net/ to find 160 GB or larger drives for $40 or less after rebate from time to time from various vendors. The site has great deals on other items as well.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

yeah, some pretty good deals on there, but I'm looking for 40G drives...

Maxtor has some on their site, but they aren't "real" Maxtors, they're just rebranded SeaGates.
Maxtor was the only company that made Ultra ATA/133 drives and since SeaGate bought them out, nobody makes ATA/133 drives anymore.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

How old is the drive in question?

manufactured June 2001.