HDD unallocated space problem

[pandr]

Hello,
please could you give me an advice with my following problem:
I have 200GB SATA Seagate HDD. When I restart computer, sometimes the scandisk shows up after WinXP boot, and it control the HDD and it repair some records.
Than about 40GB of space disappears and its shown as unallocated space (exactly the same amount all the time it happens). When I resize it to the full capacity in Partition Magic, its ok, but than it happens again after few days.
I tried chkdsk, tried full scan, scan for bad sectors, also tried SMART checking, and official tools from Seagate. Everything is ok, it doesnt report any problems.
I have 2 other sata hdds connected to the same motherboard.
Can anybody give me an advice, please?
Thanks.

 

[garebo]

Win98 has a place where you can turn scandisk off so it doesnt do that, i imagine win xp has that feature too. I have likely already found it and turned it off, just dont remember. I will see if i can find out where to do that in win xp if you are running xp.
I turn it off because i absolutely hate scandisk and never use it. I think scandisk causes more problems than it fixes and i feel chkdsk is much better. But i am probably wrong as others dont agree with me.
But until you get the problem fixed turning scandisk off is a good start.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

Sorry, looked everywhere, i cant find the place where you turn off scandisk at bootup in win xp.
As for your problem, it seems the drive is ok, its just that windows is not happy with it for some reason.
Try checking all jumpers to make sure they are correct and have a look in bios to see if they are reported ok.
Thats about all i can think of short of reformatting the drive.
Im not sure if installing a newer bios would help you.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[pandr]

I dont think its caused by scandisk - when I simple skip it, when it offers me the check, I cant even read the drive (drive not found error).
I tried to change the SATA cable now and tried to plug it onto another connector. I wonder if it helps.

 

[Freestone]

What service pack level your XP is at?

 

[pandr]

I have WinXP SP2 with newest updates.
Replacing of the cable didnt help - it has happened today again.

 

[pandr]

One more thing - I ran HDD Health and I noticed two UltraDMA CRC Errors count. Other SMART values are still OK.