Failed HDD: Can this drive be reclaimed??

zapp22 said:

ah.. one more question gents: when this is all done, how do I then make something on that drive actually bootable? assuming the best, chkdsk will render the drive at least readable, then I hope to recover/save files & fragments

If chkdsk completes and is successful (you may have to run it more than once for this to happen), then it should fix the drive so it can boot.

Edit: Some info on the /r option... "When /R is used, CHKDSK attempts to read every sector on the volume to confirm that the sector is usable. Sectors associated with metadata are read during the natural course of running CHKDSK even when /R is not used. Sectors associated with user data are read during earlier phases of CHKDSK provided /R is specified. When an unreadable sector is located, NTFS will add the cluster containing that sector to its list of bad clusters and, if the cluster was in use, allocate a new cluster to do the job of the old. If a fault tolerant disk driver is being used, data is recovered and written to the newly allocated cluster. Otherwise, the new cluster is filled with a pattern of 0xFF bytes" (Microsoft, 2007).

just to OCD - is there a distinction between /R and /r ? looking at the command list on technet I don't see a /R - just want to make sure I learn what I can.... thx

also, as to boot: wouldn't that presume upon chkdsk the power of marking the 'fixed' partition as the 0 and primary, and further implies that whatever file damage has been done did not damage the MBR, or that it has been replaced with a good one? i would be knocked out if the thing booted after this much damage

terminology question: is what chkdsk refers to as a "file record segment" the same as what the more cryptic tools refer to as a "cylinder" ?

writhziden said:

zapp22 said:

ah.. one more question gents: when this is all done, how do I then make something on that drive actually bootable? assuming the best, chkdsk will render the drive at least readable, then I hope to recover/save files & fragments

If chkdsk completes and is successful (you may have to run it more than once for this to happen), then it should fix the drive so it can boot.

Edit: Some info on the /r option... "When /R is used, CHKDSK attempts to read every sector on the volume to confirm that the sector is usable. Sectors associated with metadata are read during the natural course of running CHKDSK even when /R is not used. Sectors associated with user data are read during earlier phases of CHKDSK provided /R is specified. When an unreadable sector is located, NTFS will add the cluster containing that sector to its list of bad clusters and, if the cluster was in use, allocate a new cluster to do the job of the old. If a fault tolerant disk driver is being used, data is recovered and written to the newly allocated cluster. Otherwise, the new cluster is filled with a pattern of 0xFF bytes" (Microsoft, 2007).

zapp22 said:

just to OCD - is there a distinction between /R and /r ? looking at the command list on technet I don't see a /R - just want to make sure I learn what I can.... thx

also, as to boot: wouldn't that presume upon chkdsk the power of marking the 'fixed' partition as the 0 and primary, and further implies that whatever file damage has been done did not damage the MBR, or that it has been replaced with a good one? i would be knocked out if the thing booted after this much damage

terminology question: is what chkdsk refers to as a "file record segment" the same as what the more cryptic tools refer to as a "cylinder" ?

There is no difference between /r and /R in terms of how it runs, only in terms of upper and lower case in our alphabet.

As to the MBR, it depends on whether chkdsk is able to salvage enough data to put back into good sectors from the bad sectors. In my experience, it usually does a pretty remarkable job of doing so.

As to your "cylinder" versus "file record segment" I am not familiar with either terminology, so I cannot answer that question without hazarding a guess, and I don't like creating hazards. I will look into it. In the meantime, maybe someone else understands the terminology better and can answer the question?

File Record segment: "A specific file record segment... uniquely identifies every file and directory on an NTFS volume" (Microsoft TechNet, 2005).
Cylinder: I believe this used to refer to the physical portion of the hard drive that data was written to. Today's hard drives have moved away from the Cylinder/Head/Sector model and now just use a translation factor to make the hardware appear continuous when used by a computer. The cylinder term is still relevant, but I do not think it is truly hardware related anymore other than to go from one section of the disk to another using the translation factor. You can read about how the hard drive is laid out in hard disk basics (NTFS)

Basically, the file record segment refers to how your files are laid out, whereas the cylinder is more of a matter of how the physical hard drive is managed.

thanks again writh. It appears it may be tomorrow before I know the verdict. its about 30% through the process at this point. it was a good use of a machine, however :) ... an old dell optiplex that nobody wants. impossible to sell desktops in this collapsing market! it will end up going to recycler..

zapp22 said:

thanks again writh. It appears it may be tomorrow before I know the verdict. its about 30% through the process at this point. it was a good use of a machine, however :) ... an old dell optiplex that nobody wants. impossible to sell desktops in this collapsing market! it will end up going to recycler..

Alright, keep us updated. Hope all goes well. :)

ok, so about 38 hours into the process, chkdsk forced to bail:
"16% complete ... [file info]
An unspecified error occurred <696e647863686b2e 4a8>
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50."

I am guessing I need to reboot and give it another shot?

zapp22 said:

ok, so about 38 hours into the process, chkdsk forced to bail:
"16% complete ... [file info]
An unspecified error occurred <696e647863686b2e 4a8>
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50."

I am guessing I need to reboot and give it another shot?

Give it another chance. If you continue to have issues, let us know and we will try to come up with other solutions.

otay