Cluster Problems

[Manthis]

I´m having a big problem with my hard drive, here´s what happend:

I was installing a somewhat old program on my comp. (Win 98, Pentium III 667 Mhz, 256 MB Ram, and a 30 GB hard drive partitioned with drives C: 20 GB and D:10 GB).
During installation I got the blue screen of death, I had to restart comp but before entering windows I got a message saying I had some errors in a couple of sys files and that I had to restart comp again so that way those files would be corrected.
I did so, but then I couldn´t enter win98 because i had errors or something with the display.sys, and himem.sys files.
Then I used a Boot disk, putting some commands so all sys.files would be replaced. I restarted again and found that this time I had a I/O problem and couldn´t do nothing without the boot disk.
I decided to Format the C: drive (I didn´t have any important files in it) but for some reason I couldn´t do it in Dos.
After that I installed an old hard drive (3.0 GB), that also had Win98 and i put it as master and the problem HD as slave.
I entered Win98 with no problem (in the 3.0 GB HD), and then went to format the D: drive (the 20 GB drive), I formated the D: drive copying only the system files in it with no problems, and not “touching” the E: drive (the 10 GB drive).
Then again I put the problem HD as master again, and disconnected the other for the moment. In Dos I went to the 10 GB drive where I had a Backup of Win98 and started to install Win98 again on the 20 GB drive but again I got a message saying I had an error in some clusters or something.
Afterwards I reinstalled the 3.0 GB HD, put it again as master and used scandisk on the 20 GB drive. After some scanning scandisk found problems with some clusters, and simply halted, it just stopped working.
Finally I went to Dos, put dir d:/p and found a VERY large number of files and directories even though I had formated the disk. The directories have names like dir00001, dir00002...and there are files with names like file000E3A.chk.
When I try to Format d: this time I get a msg saying Insufficient Memory when the format reaches 13%.
I´ve tried using format d:/u, but i get the same msg.
Please help I don´t know what to do now!

 

[nightowl17]

I had the same problem with a 30GB Maxtor HD , What I did was go to

http://www.maxtor.com

and download MAXBlaster, It is a program that will put your hard drive back into factory condition , I believe it will work on other HDs because there is a teb in the program for other type of Hard Drives , This process will take some time But whin you are done your HD will work Like new and all the bad clusters will be taken out

 

[ANFPS26]

There is the possibilty that this drive is dying on you. I just had to replace one with similar problems. Finally the bad clusters were all over the place. It wouldn't finish scan disk or format. I replaced it-problem solved. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[dinosnake]

Wow! A lot of hard drive issues around here. And hard drives that look like they have physical / electrical problems, to boot.

Reformat the drive again, in DOS only. Use the /C switch to force FORMAT to look over every single, solitary sector, including the ones it previously marked as 'bad'. See what happens.

If that doesn't help both nightowl17 and nobrain are giving great, wonderful advice - try resetting the drive using MAXBlaster. It could be the diagnostic cylinder is a mess. Otherwise you may have to replace it.

The directories and files you found on the drive are what ScanDisk leaves when it finds errors - it saves what it can to those structures, number sequentially. For the normal user they're useless. You have to go in by hex and pull out any useful data structures, as the original file's data order was destroyed.

What clusters did it report errors on? If the errors were in the boot, partition or FAT areas those aren't repairable. The OS needs those structures in EXACT locations. If that is where the error are you can make a empty, 'dummy' first partition that you won't use just to lock out the bad areas from use. Then use the rest of the space. Your mileage may vary...

 

[prajapat]

Good advices already given but I add one thing,
Just check RAM of your PC (easiest by disabling Fast Boot option in Advanced Setup). If you are overdriving the system, disable it, run the system on normal frequency.