Hard drive problem

[Guest_imported]

I have a hard drive which has 3 partitions in it. I have been using the HD for almost a year. Now i'm having a problem with the HD. The first symptom I encountered was that the HD ran very slow (it appeared to freeze but its didnt). when i scandisk-ed it (using win scandisk and NDD), the HD was said to have bad sectors in the 1st partition, and "BAD" boot sector in the 2nd partition. the third partition seemed to be ok. So i fixed the bad sectors using NDD on the 1st partition, but i couldnt fix the "bad" boot sector on the 2nd partition (the NDD freezed). After that I re-scaned the HD again and the 1st drive was said to fine and so was the 2nd one (except for the boot sector). after I reboot my computer, the HD was still very slow. Any suggestion what i should do? Someone suggested me to perform low-level on the HD.
Thnx in advance.

 

[edfair]

Low level shouldn't do anything for you. It lays down new track/sector information, which by your definition has no problem on partition 1. It might also recover some bad sectors, but they would be ticking time bombs waiting to fail again.
You might try deleting the stuff out of the temp directory, removing the directory, then recreating it. Saves searching through a multiple sector directory.
You might also do a defrag, which puts files together, rather than scattered all over the disk.
More memory might also help. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks edfair,

I dont think the problem was just the file management. I maintain my system quite thoroughly. I defrag my drives periodically. I empty my temp folders (in C:\ and windows\) every day. I'm guessing its more of physical problem of the HD that I'm encountering. and everytime i scan my 2nd partition it always gives me error on the boot sector.
And if i open the windows explorer, it takes lots of time to load as if the HD was having difficulty displaying the drive information.

 

[Guest_imported]

I'm sure this is "been there done that" for you, but what about a virus causing the problem? Failing that, I'd say it was an operating system problem. You could try running some good diags on the hard disk, but I've generally found that drives don't usually start to fail in this way, particularly as you tell us you carry out regular disk maintenance.


ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[ceh4702]

Try fdisk d:/new

See if you can build a new partition for the second drive.

Note: If you are using a program for the second drive like EZ-Max or EZ-Drive sometimes it will be reported as a bad fat table. Especially if you have Virus detection turned on in the BIOS. Most people turn off the virus detection in the BIOS. A lot of the time it gives bad readings.

You might want to right click on the My Computer Icon and look at properties and see if you are in MSDOS compatability mode. The easiest way to fix that is to reload windows. It is usually caused by a damaged or missing system file. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thank you for your replies,
I decided to delete all partitions and rebuilt it (with 3 partitions: 6.5GB, 3.5GB, 20GB). I successfully formatted the first partition with some difficulty (the message "Trying to allocate unit xxxxxx" appeared but in the end it was successful). I installed win98 and it ran fast as its supposed to. Then I formatted the 2nd partition with no problem. Next, I formatted the third partition but it failed. First, the "Trying to allocate unit xxxxx" appeared then after a while it stopped the process with the message "Format is not ready". I've tried this process several times then I decided to perform low-level format on the HD which failed half way of the process
Does it mean that my HD cant be rescued at all??

 

[Guest_imported]

Sounds like the drive has a problem... Try running some good disk diags on this drive. You said initially you'd had this hard disk almost a year - if it's still under warranty I'd take it back a.s.a.p and demand a replacement.


ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[LHCB]

Sounds similar to my problem but I'm getting a not ready format terminated when trying to format a 60gig drive Learn something everyday or you wasted a day of your life.