HDD wont save anything

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  1. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
       #11

    Also- OP is having this problem on the spinner, if I read that first post correctly.
    Can the SSD affect it?
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  2. Posts : 2,752
    Windows 7 Pro x64 (1), Win7 Pro X64 (2)
       #12

    TVeblen said:
    Also- OP is having this problem on the spinner, if I read that first post correctly.
    Can the SSD affect it?
    I would think these are unrelated.

    I "built" a Lenovo M93p, adding an internal SSD to go along with the delivered 1TB spinner, copying the contents of the delivered spinner over to the SSD and changing drive #1 in the BIOS boot sequence to point to the SSD instead. The copied "system reserved" partition now on the SSD was marked ACTIVE, same as things looked originally on original spiiner.

    I also then deleted all partitions from the spinner (thus erasing the previous "system reserved" ACTIVE partition along with the C-partition and Lenovo recovery partition), and re-partitioned into two normal "data" partitions.

    No problem at all even with legacy (non-UEFI) BIOS, but as you point out the absence of a second ACTIVE partition on a second drive could be the answer. But, clearly there are many variables here, and this is a VERY RARE symptom being described so who knows what the explanation is.
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  3. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
       #13

    That is for sure! I am baffled by the symptoms as described.

    It almost sounds like the files are being saved to RAM, then lost when the power is cut out. I can't imagine why a physical hard drive would lose data on restart.

    mitis3: Is it doing this on restart, or only when shut completely off?
    And what size are the files you have saved to the drive? Large or small?

    Here's what I'm thinking now: if the files written are small enough to fit on the drive's cache, could it be that the drive is not writing the cache?
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  4. Posts : 2,752
    Windows 7 Pro x64 (1), Win7 Pro X64 (2)
       #14

    TVeblen said:
    That is for sure! I am baffled by the symptoms as described.

    It almost sounds like the files are being saved to RAM, then lost when the power is cut out. I can't imagine why a physical hard drive would lose data on restart.
    Interesting point.

    Samsung SSD drives come with Samsung Magician software, to provide improved performance of the drive. One of the Samsung Magician optional features (which I myself use on two machines, both of which use Samsung Pro SSDs, one 256GB along with a 1TB second spinner data drive, and the other 512GB in my laptop all by itself) is something called "rapid mode". This functionality uses a portion of machine RAM (assuming you have a lot of it, with much of it typically unused) as an in-memory cache buffer, to improve SSD performance, handling of deleted files, etc.

    Now I'm not pointing fingers at "rapid mode", but your mention of in-memory cache and potential loss if the machine powers off before any unwritten buffers can be flushed out to the SSD, well it does seem potentially possible in concept.

    Of course I don't have this problem on either of my own two machines when I restart or shut down, both of which use Samsung 840 SSDs with "rapid mode" enabled. Actually, both machines also use "over provisioning", which is a second function of Samsung Magician that uses about 10% of the drive capacity (which remains unallocated to partitions, but rather is allocated to the "over provisioning" performance improvement feature) to again improve overall SSD performance and especially with respect to deleted files.

    In other words, in my own limited SSD experience, I've never seen "loss of data" on either SSD or in the case of the M93p with a second spinner drive, no "loss of data" on that second drive either.

    It would be interesting to see if data was "lost" using some other bootable media, say to a command prompt from a standalone Windows installation DVD, to see if a file that got copied or renamed or updated or deleted had that action "retained" or lost. This would point to or exculpate Windows and/or Samsung Magician (if being used) as directly complicit in the symptom.
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  5. Posts : 10,796
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1
       #15

    Reboot from some linux live cd and put a few files on the disk. Those files are gone as well after reboot?
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  6. Posts : 10
    windows 7 proffesional 32 bit x86
    Thread Starter
       #16

    @dsperber: i didnt change the partion to D my self it did automatic i think.

    i tried using partion wizard and removed the partion but when i restart it just resets
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  7. Posts : 2,752
    Windows 7 Pro x64 (1), Win7 Pro X64 (2)
       #17

    mitis3 said:
    i tried using partion wizard and removed the partion but when i restart it just resets
    Do you mean you deleted the partition LETTER of D using Partition Wizard? Or did you use Partition Wizard to actually delete the D partition? That's not what I had talked about.

    I wanted you to use DISKMGMT.MSC to REMOVE the D-letter from that partition.

    Surely you didn't actually delete the partition itself, else you wouldn't have been able to boot after that since that's the ACTIVE partition where Boot Manager lives. Couldn't have done that.

    Can you please use DISKMGMT.MSC and right-click on the D-partition, select "change drive letter" from the popup menu to get the CHANGE dialog which shows D as the existing drive letter, and then push the REMOVE button to remove the D letter but keep the partition (-> producing un-lettered "system reserved").
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  8. Posts : 10
    windows 7 proffesional 32 bit x86
    Thread Starter
       #18

    used it on the E hard drive, but i got i gone but now i need to format the E drive to start using it but evrytime i try to format it, it says cannot finish it i put an image of my disc management with the post maybe that also helps.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails HDD wont save anything-naamloos.png  
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  9. Posts : 2,752
    Windows 7 Pro x64 (1), Win7 Pro X64 (2)
       #19

    Well, at this point I'd have to say it's the hard drive itself which is simply failing.

    You described it originally as "an old 220GB laying around" (it's actually probably a 250GB drive, but when formatted only provides about 232GB available as your screenshots show). Is this a SATA drive, or an IDE drive? SCSI drive? Do you know the manufacturer/model of the drive? Age of the drive?

    At this point, your original "all files previously written to the drive mysteriously disappear at restart" suggests that the drive itself is either (a) write-protected, which seems impossible unless it's a hardware jumper that might have come loose and fallen off or (b) simply failing hard so that it is no longer capable of having data written to it.

    Specifically, if the file system records on the drive (i.e. the complete "Table of Contents" of all files on the drive that you see with Explorer) cannot be written, then it may only APPEAR that your files have been written to the drive as long as the current Windows session is still up and running. But actually nothing got written. In other words, the in-memory cache of that drive's supposed Table of Contents could show up in Explorer giving the appearance that the files were written to the drive, at least until the next re-boot. But at restart time the drive itself is now truly read for its "Table of Contents" when it is discovered that in fact there are no files on the drive, so it now shows in Explorer as empty.

    Has to be a hardware problem on the drive. My suggestion would be to just scrap it at this point, and not spend any more time trying to get it to work. New drives are inexpensive and are 100% reliable.


    Just out of curiosity, what are you using to try and FORMAT it to NTFS... DISKMGMT.MSC or Partition Wizard?

    I'd recommend that you at least give try Partition Wizard to do the FORMAT to NTFS (not FAT32), if you haven't already. But if the drive itself is simply failing then nothing is going to succeed trying to FORMAT it. And if you can't FORMAT it, you obviously can't write to it.

    And if you can't even FORMAT the drive at this point, I think it's just a certainty that the drive is now dead.

    Cut your losses and buy another drive.


    NOTE: if you look at my earlier posts, I was asking you to "REMOVE THE DRIVE LETTER OF D" from that small 100MB "system reserved" partition on your 120GB SSD. You don't seem to have done that yet.

    It's not really harmful to have a drive letter for that partition, but it does make it more likely and possible for you to accidentally and unwittingly write to it or do damage to it, which will be a bad thing. Certainly Windows itself would not give a drive letter to it normally, so I still don't know how that happened.

    I still recommend you use DISKMGMT as described previously, to REMOVE DRIVE LETTER OF D. Don't delete the partition itself!! Just remove the drive letter of D from it.
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  10. Posts : 10
    windows 7 proffesional 32 bit x86
    Thread Starter
       #20

    i have removed the letter D and now my E drive is D but what i think the problem is that the hard disk makes widows thinks that there is a OS on there. i tried diferend ways formatting it to NTFS and it is a SATA drive, but thanks for the help anyway! i think i'll buy a new one or see if i can recover a wiped harddrive from a friend but that is an other topic.
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