Ok I will look at those two things. I think I have a Maxtor
CD-ROM laying around. Check this page outt search on "pending
sector" w/o the quotes:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/22005
He suggests writing all the drive but where the file is with
zeros.
Sure, its not necessarily that trivial to work out where the
pending sectors are tho so you can write to them with zeros.
Thats the main advantage with using the hard drive
manufacturer's diagnostic, it can always work out where
the pending sectors are and it normally just writes to those
sectors to force them to be reallocated if the write fails.
And usually they do more than JUST try writing to that sector once
too.
Make a file with 0's in it. Not sure if I can
even do that; that would be a file 250 GB.
There's no need to do that, you cant just delete the original
file and write another file full of zeros to the drive, that wont
ensure that all the sectors that were occupied by the original
file will be written with the new file full of zeros.
But there is an app I have somewhere that can write
zeros to the drive itself is some kind of security thng.
Yep, there are quite a few of those.
And now for my brainiac idea.
In this page he says we want to write over the abused sectors.
Why don't I just do this? Tahe a file a little bigger than the
bad file in quetion. It could even be of the same file type; avi
in this case. Rename it to the name of the bad file that is on
the disk.
Then copy that renamed file over onto the partition where the bad
file is. Windows will nag me about writing over that file yes,
done. What do you think?
That wont write the new file where the old file used to be sectors
wise.
Ok so too hot is the issue. Got you. Well well that sucks.
And isnt great for the life of the drive.
So the sectors sort of lost their state
Nope, its not hot enough for that.
and now the whole thing needs to be reformatted?
Strictly speaking its not a format even tho many of the diags
call it that for simplicity.
That is what I am going to do. I turns out I can get all the
data that is on it elsewhere. No didn't back anything up but I
know how to do it.
Now why did you suggerst a deep format?
Just because that is what PowerMax calls it
The last time I did that was on a SCSI and that was the end of
that SCSI. Yes it wasn't healthy to begin with but the deep
format was the nail in its coffin.
You wont get that effect with that drive.
I have moved the disk to a cooler location and it turns
out I am getting most of the data off that partition.
Yeah, that is usually the case, so it cant be that
the sector has got to hot to retain its magnetisation.
What actually happens is that the high temp stuffs up the head
flying height and thats what sees some sectors unreadable
and readable when the temperature is returned to normal.
Some sectors that were written at the high temps will need
to be written again at normal temps to be usable again.
So since what is left is trivial I will reformat that partition.
In fact I will do whatever you suggest to fix this.
I'd use the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic. That will be
able to rewrite the bad sectors and to reallocate them if they
cant be fixed that way.
The heat problem I am working on but tell me plx how
you think I should nurse the Maxtor back to health.
Run it much cooler, best below 40C, use PowerMax to fix the bad
sectors.
"Pending sectors." What does that mean?
Those are sectors that cant be read and will
be reallocated when that sector is next written.
They arent reallocated on the read problem so you can use
whatever methods you like to try to get the data out of them.
My sectors are pending to be used
Nope, pending to be reallocated.
what more is there? Also I really don't understand the
geometry of a "Partition" as it relates to a disk (platter).
Its just the starting and ending cylinder/head/sector value in
the partition table entry.
Modern hard drives actually use the logical block numbers, not
the CHS value for access and the partition table entry format
is essentially a relic of the past.
I assume some a set oif sectors which are contiguous is what
makes up a partition???
Yes.
If that is the case my drive might be 1/2 broke?
Nope, no evidence of any problem with the partition table
entry.
What could have casused this?
What was done when the partition table entry was initially
created with those CHS values that specify the start and end of
the partition.
It was traditional to start and end partitions on full cylinder
boundarys but there isnt really any good reason to do that.
As far as I know nothing untoward happened the machine has
been running for 1 month now and this issue just came out of
thin air.
Because you are running the drive much too hot
and that is what has produced those bad sectors.
VWWall I try to give as much information as I am asked and
if not asked as much as I see the need to. Since I wam not
having BIOS troubles I didn't think to include it.
He's suggesting that the bios may be too old to support LBA48.
That isnt likely to be the problem as long as
the OS does, and you say below that it does.
True the BIOS does not see the true size of
the disk but in fact none of my machines do.
That is an entirely different problem. Hard drive manufacturers
state the size of the drive in binary GBs, 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Partitions are usually shown in terms of binary GBs,
1,073,741,824 bytes.
And everything seems to be fine for years this way.
Yeah, its an entirely cosmetic issue.
Yes Windows 2000 SP4 with the registry set correctly.
Then you have LBA48 and so it wont be due to the drive wrapping
around.
And if a drive wraps around due to the lack of LBA48, you will
see much bigger problems with the data on the drive than you
are seeing.
Rod Speed wrote:
George Hester wrote:
Ok got it the report is very big. But what I will do is
just post the parts that have to do with the drive in
question:
--------[ EVEREST Home Edition (c) 2003-2005 Lavalys,
[big snip of report]
--------[ Debug - Video
BIOS
]--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
C000:0000
[email protected] VGA
Compatible BIOS. ..f..a...
C000:0040 ....STB PowerGraph 64 Video (TRIO64V+)
Enhanced VGA BIOS. Versio
C000:0080 n 1.5..Copyright 1987-1992 Phoenix
Technologies Ltd.............
This looks like a very old BIOS. Is it?
That is the video bios. Not relevant to LBA48
Of course. The video BIOS is always at C000:0040, as anyone
knows who has used debug to find it.
With a date that
old, it's likely that the MB BIOS is also old.
Not necessarily.
Which is why I asked:
What date do you see on boot-up?
What size are the disks in question? What size are the
partitions? Looks like the WD is 60GB and the Maxtor
320GB.
A BIOS that old must be LBA28.
Nope, not when its the video bios.
See above, unless your mind reading ability is better.
See above. It isnt relevant anyway.
I'm wondering if the problem came from overwriting one of
the partitions. This can happen if you attempt to use a
drive
137GB, (128GiB), on an old LBA28 BIOS, by making smaller
partitions.
What matters is whether he has LBA48 from the 2K service
pack or not.
That's SP-4, for Win2K is it not?
Yep.
I've seen strange things happen when either the BIOS *or*
the OS is not set up for LBA48.
Not the effect he is getting which is due to the pending
sectors.
This is a good example of what happens when someone posts
without giving all the facts.
Nope, you have the facts on what effects he is getting.
That wont be due to the lack of LBA48 in the bios.
Its very likely due to the pending sectors on that drive.
