DMA troubles

[Truthpursuer42]

My HDD has been doing weird things lately, not to mention I found over 400 bad clusters...anyway, DMA mastering is supported by my HDD, and it was previously enabled. Recently, however, I discovered that the box was no longer checked, and that I could not re-enable DMA. Could this be caused by the bad clusters or be related to the event that caused the bad clusters?

 

[Accessdabbler]

If the DMA box is greyed out, that usually means your motherboard doesn't support DMA for IDE drives. If your HDD is suddenly showing bad clusters it's definitely time to back up ALL your data!

If you're sure your mobo does support DMA then I'd be doing a virus-scan and re-installing your motherboard drivers (maybe even consider a BIOS upgrade).

 

[Truthpursuer42]

Ok, I'll take all that into consideration. One thing you might find interesting...I found those bad clusters running Scandisk, but scandisk never completes...it seems to freeze on a cluster. Low-level format time?

 

[Accessdabbler]

First, get your data off the drive. Once you've done that you can try a low-level format but the drive may already be pooched. You'll need a low-level formatting utility from the HD manufacturer. It's been a long time since I've done one.