Andy: thanks for the input. Am using Western Digital Caviars, a 180 and
200gb; W2K crashed on both. Sometimes I have other ~200gb disks connected
through a Promise UltraTX 100 IDE controller card. Motherboard is an ASUS
P4C800-E.
Funny coincidence, the first two large drives I purchased were Western
Digital 200GB and 180GB drives in early 2003.
2. Always use Windows to format, a single partition. Sometimes I started the
format from the Windows install disk, other times formatted the disk in
Windows as a secondary drive while running Win2K from another disk. In all
cases, used NTFS, the default sector size etc.
Windows 2000 setup is limited to 28-bit LBA (for the chipset
interface), so if you use Windows 2000 setup to partition a disk
connected to the motherboard ICH5R interface, the largest partition
that can be created is 131,000 MB.
3. Intriguing: what do you mean by "fail to configure it to properly access
For Windows 2000, SP3 or SP4 plus EnableBigLBA = 1 in the registry.
For Windows XP, SP1 or SP2.
(In response to Dave's reply above, I just started doing the EnableBigLba
regedt32 tweak described in /kb/303013; why isn't this included in the latest
service pack or hotfix?) In the past, >137g disks have run fine on this
machine and same OS.
With the disks fully loaded with data?
4. This sounds like what's happened: it's after I populate the disk with my
data files, which probably load it up past that limit. If that's the case,
are you saying that the EnableBigLba tweak should fix this?
Yes.
EnableBigLBA is only needed and only works for large disks connected
to the motherboard south bridge (ICH5R) interface. If you want to see
its effect, connect a large, UNPARTITIONED disk to the ICH5R
interface. Run Disk Management with EnableBigLBA = 1, and check the
capacity of the drive. Repeat with EnableBigLBA = 0, and the capacity
of the drive will be limited to 128GB.
If the large disk is connected to an interface other than the
motherboard chipset interface, then the Windows driver for that
interface solely determines whether or not there is a 137GB
limitation.
drive on my desktop PC computer
running Windows 2000 SP4 with latest updates, firewall/virus etc installed.
At least 4 crashes / complete formats/reinstalls in as many weeks. Same
standard hardware & software (other than the latest Windows Updates) as when
it ran fine, for years; do have many new files for My Docs, however. Tried
installing on different hard disks, do a slow NTFS format beforehand, etc.
Recovery Console and Emergency Repair Disks have consistently been
unsuccessful in salvaging the installations.
A detailed description of SW/HW/processes would be overly long; the
following is a summary in the hopes some of you recognize one of three
conditions described below as being definitely related to the crashes.
After reading your other replies, I am still hazy as to what kind of
disks you're using, what controller they're connected to, and how
you're installing Windows 2000.
One scenario that guarantees disk corruption is as follows:
1. start with a disk larger than 137GB in capacity
2. use software other than Windows 2000 setup to partition (to its
full capacity) and format the disk
3. install Windows 2000, but fail to configure it to properly access
past the 137GB point on the disk
4. start using the disk and filling it up; once Windows tries to
access past the 137GB point, the lack of 48-bit LBA capability causes
disk access to wrap around to the beginning of the disk, resulting in
corruption.
Typical incident is a couple of days or so after reloading all software and
about 120gb data files (about 20,000 digicamera jpgs, numerous mp3s, etc,
some with longish filenames), suddenly middle of doing something seemingly
unrelated, pop-up windows appear saying "C: drive [or folder therein] is
unreadable / corrupt. Run chkdsk."
Have to reboot of course to run chkdsk, when it runs it finds thousands of
orphan file records to delete and index entries to fix, then the disk is
unbootable and lots of data and program / system files are missing; some are
recovered by chkdsk. One time a "C:\$Mft is corrupt and unreadable" message
precluded the crash.
I think I have it narrowed down to 3 possible causes. Knowledgeable sorts
out there, please review and advise on which one you think it might be. I'm
going to avoid all three on my next reinstall, which I'm in the middle of,
until I hopefully get a consensus from you:
1. Outlook 2002 (along with its required Office XP service packs) installed
on a system otherwise running Office 2000 Premium. On at least one crash (the
most recent), Outlook 2000 had been inadvertently installed coincidental with
Outlook 2002. (I need v.2002 so that I can synch my Outlook contacts with my
iPAQ PocketPC 2003 PDA). A problem initially starting that program after
installation led to a corrupt web access profile error for which MS KB
provided a fix. And during that latest crash, concurrent with the corrupt C:
drive message boxes popping up were boxes asking for the Outlook 2002
installation CD, thoroughly irrelevant for what I was doing at the time.
2. Long filenames. I've found a few data files that have long names locked
up in Windows 2000, unable to delete or rename them from Explorer and having
to run arcane commands/switches from the Command window to get rid of them.
These files include some mp3s, possibly some photos, and also some Windows
Update files downloaded to disk from Microsoft Update Catalog (not Windows
Update), which inexplicably appends a long string of alphanumeric characters
to many of its update downloads, some of which have already long filenames.
Restoration of data files from backup hard drives during re-installation
initially entailed copying directly from drive to drive in Explorer, most
recently using the Win2K Backup program.
3. Reorganizing the disorganized plethora of shortcuts in the Program
shortcuts folders (C:\Documents and Settings\...\Start Menu\Programs)
resulting from a reinstall so that all are in the \All Users\ folder under a
handful of categorized parent folders. A little prior to one recent crash,
the system locked up when I moved one such folder group there that it
mistakenly thought were program files. And during the most recent crash
yesterday, the folders were reorganized successfully a few hours earlier, but
when the system crashed that was the first symptom noticed: copies of those
shortcuts (MS Office ones) placed in the Quick Launch toolbar started losing
their icon images; shortly thereafter the corrupt folder / C; drive messages
started popping up (along with the Outlook 2002 install disk requests) and
the system went down and out.
That's it; already verbose. Obviously a major malfunction. Quick reactions
from the experts out there please: any of these situations ring a bell for
correlation with sudden NTFS disk corruption?
