Nonsensical error message from CHKDSK...

[ntscuser]

After enduring several days of seemingly random freezes in Win XP Home, I ran CHKDSK and it gave me the following error message: "Not enough disk space to replace bad clusters in file 87965 of file named ." This was repeated with the file numbers 87966 and 87967. There is currently over 20GB of free space on that particular hard drive and none of the files is bigger than a 1GB vob! So just how big is a cluster?

Incidentally, the IDE primary channel is still running in UDMA Mode 5 despite its apparent difficulty in reading the disk. I had expected it to drop to PIO mode.

[guns1inger]

HDDs have a set of clusters reserved for use when disk failures begin to occur. Replacement clusters are allocated from this pool, and this pool only. If you have used up this reserve and are still needing more then your disk is well on the way out and should be replaced immediately.

[jagabo]

I don't think Chkdsk knows anything about the hard drive's automatic SMART sector remapping. It only works at the file system level. File system clusters vary in size from a few KB to 64KB or so. Chkdsk tells the size in the summary report but calls it "bytes in each allocation unit".

I don't know why it couldn't relocate a few bad clusters a a drive with so much free space. It should be able to relocate bad clusters to any unused space on the hard drive.

But guns1inger is right, if Chkdsk is finding bad sectors/clusters then the SMART remapping sectors have run out. It would be prudent to replace the drive.

[ntscuser]

Thanks for the replies. I ran the CHKDSK utility again, this time from within System Mechanic and that encountered no such diffficulty although it did locate and delete corrupt entries that running CHKDSK from WinXP failed to notice!!!!

This is one of my newer and more dependable (Seagate) drives. Seatools failed to find anything wrong with it.

[MidnightMike]

How old is your IDE cables ? just to be on the safe side becarefull with old worn out IDE cables they can spell numorous nightmares when they start failing after a couple of years causing disk read error and failing to initiate either the HDD or CD-ROm upon bootup on your pc.

story short, replace the IDE cables with new ones just to be sure your pc and xp can read from the hdd just in case you might have that problem again or even worser.

[ntscuser]

How old is your IDE cables ?

Just a few months. I replaced the cheap ribbon cables which came with the PC with a set of new round ones from a respected supplier but I'll bear in mind that could still be the problem and might swap them around.

[deadrats]

How old is your IDE cables ?

Just a few months. I replaced the cheap ribbon cables which came with the PC with a set of new round ones from a respected supplier but I'll bear in mind that could still be the problem and might swap them around.

funny you mention the round ide cables, some time ago i too had switched to the round cables and i started having all sorts of hdd problems, i switched back to the flat ribbon cables that came with the drives and everything was fine.

incidently, i have since stopped using ide drives all together and just stick with sata, much less headaches (though i'm seriously thinking of going scsi).

[jagabo]

I've had problems with rounded cables in the past too. I use only flat cables now.

[ntscuser]

The PC appears to be working fine now after running the CHKDSK facility three times from within the System Mechanic shell but being Windows I never know when it will next go wrong? Running CHKDSK from the Win XP menu has often proved to be useless. Either it cannot find a problem or tells me it cannot fix it. On one occasion it even corrupted the master file table of a data drive and I had to copy everything off it and reformat.