Hard Drive "Corrupt" but files still work

[KSchrief]

Hey guys.

So this morning I went to turn on the computer, everything booted up normal, but one of my drives (My external drive) is being read as having some bad sectors. Windows explorer won't open the drive, and asks to reformat it, losing over 800GB of data in the process.

I'd REALLY rather this not happen. I downloaded the demo of GetDataBack for NTFS file systems. It read the drive, and not only can it see the files, it can access them and read them no problem. As far as I can tell, everything is there, yet Windows reads it as corrupt.

I've tried this on two machines with the same result, both running Win7.

Is there any hope for it, or do I have to copy the files with GetDataBack, and reformat the drive?

 

[Golden]

Hi,

If you can use GetDataBack to copy your files off this drive, I would do that straight away.

There is a chance we can restore the disk, but right now we have no idea if it is about to fail - be safe first, get your data off it before we try anything else.

Once you have done that, post back here and we will see what we can do about that drive.

Regards,
Golden

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Hi,

If you can use GetDataBack to copy your files off this drive, I would do that straight away.

There is a chance we can restore the disk, but right now we have no idea if it is about to fail - be safe first, get your data off it before we try anything else.

Once you have done that, post back here and we will see what we can do about that drive.

Regards,
Golden

+1

Agree, your hard drive could completely FAIL At any moment, get anything off the drive you can ASAP then we can go further after that is complete.

 

[KSchrief]

Okay, GetDataBack wants $70 to copy the files. All of my important stuff (Pictures, music, etc) are on at least 3 other machines around my house, so they're safe.

It would stink to re-download everything again, but I'd rather spend a day or so getting my stuff back when I get back to campus then pay $70 to do it now. So yes, I'm willing to risk the loss of my files.

I've also contacted Western Digital, and they can and will replace my HDD free of charge, as it's only a year old.

So I guess my question is what can I do to hopefully spare myself the need of dealing with getting a new drive?

 

[Golden]

So yes, I'm willing to risk the loss of my files.

Ok. In that case, are you able to find the diagnostic tools from the external hard drive manufacturer? Probably located on the WD website?

Lets use that first to look at the drive's health status.

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Have you ran chkdsk? It will scan the bad sectors and hopefully remove your files to good sectors, however if it has too many bad sectors the drive will have to be replaced immediately. Bad sectors can not be repaired they're always going to be there (to some degree)

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?wdc_lang=en
Enter model number to find the diagnostic tool

 

[KSchrief]

WD Support / Downloads / My Book / My Book Essential

This is mine, but it looks like there's no Diagnostic Software. It came with the SmartWare Utilities CD on a partition, which appears to work fine. On the toolbar it's telling me it's fine with 100% free space, but when I open the program, it's not reading the drive at all.

I started to run chkdsk, but at the rate it was going, it would have taken at least 24 hours to complete. If that's what I need to do, I'll do it.

 

[TonyTiger2004]

WD Support / Downloads / My Book / My Book Essential

This is mine, but it looks like there's no Diagnostic Software. It came with the SmartWare Utilities CD on a partition, which appears to work fine. On the toolbar it's telling me it's fine with 100% free space, but when I open the program, it's not reading the drive at all.

I started to run chkdsk, but at the rate it was going, it would have taken at least 24 hours to complete. If that's what I need to do, I'll do it.

I would Recommend running chkdsk, as it can repair and move files accordingly

 

[KSchrief]

Got it. I'll do that.

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Got it. I'll do that.

Thanks for your help guys!

Get back with us on the progress while we think about other options.

- Tony

 

[Golden]

Hi,

The chkdsk will just check for errors, but not repair them. In order to do that, we need to run chkdsk /f

However, continue with the current chdsk, don't stop it now : lets see what it throws up first.

Also, whilst you wait for that to finish, can you also download this:

CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World

It will allow us to check the SMART attributes of the disk to see what sort of health issues it has. We can run that once you have finished the chkdsk run.

Regards,
Golden

 

[KSchrief]

Ow wow. It's done.

"Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode."

I'll run chkdsk /f now, and see what happens. If nothing good happens, I'll try CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Hi,

The chkdsk will just check for errors, but not repair them. In order to do that, we need to run chkdsk /f

However, continue with the current chdsk, don't stop it now : lets see what it throws up first.

Also, whilst you wait for that to finish, can you also download this:

CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World

It will allow us to check the SMART attributes of the disk to see what sort of health issues it has. We can run that once you have finished the chkdsk run.

Regards,
Golden

Or

chkdsk /f /r

as /f fixes errors
/r checks for bad sectors and recovers readable information.

But do continue with just running chkdsk first!

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Ow wow. It's done.

"Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode."

I'll run chkdsk /f now, and see what happens. If nothing good happens, I'll try CrystalDiskInfo.

Yes now hopefully chkdsk /f will repair those and continue reading further.

 

[Golden]

OK.

Run CrystalDiskInfo anyway, since eletro-mechanical errors (if they exist) cannot be fixed by chkdsk - I'm interested to see how much life this disk has in it. The SMART attributes will tell us that.

 

[KSchrief]

Hey. Here are the results from both Chkdsk /f and CrystalDiskInfo

The drive now gives the name of the drive, and the format "NTFS" but upon trying to open says "I:\ is not accessable. Access is denied"

 

[Golden]

That drive still looks reasonable to me.

What happens when you turn it off, and turn it back on? Can you access it then?

 

[KSchrief]

Same thing. "Cannot access I:. Access is Denied."

However, there are no more errors about formating, etc. The "SmartWare" partition still loads just fine.

 

[TonyTiger2004]

Wow, that drive should be working fairly well, there isn't any bad bad things going on. Only 8kb in Bad sectors. By no means perfect... I may run that application on my drives, did not know about it. chkdsk /f did fix some errors though.

Try running chkdsk /r to check the bad sectors. Now

 

[Golden]

Hi,

I just thought of something to try after you finish with the chkdsk /r:

If you right-click on I:, are you able to get the Properties option? If so, can you get into it at all?

Regards,
Golden