Advice on Hard Drive Error

  • Thread starter Thread starter HippyFish
  • Start date Start date
H

HippyFish

I've been having trouble booting XP (stops after XP splash
screen with Disk Error message and reboots) and I think I
have traced the problem to a bad hard drive. My WD 120GB
Video Drive appears to be corrupt (Disk Management shows it
as RAW format). I am trying to reformat it now (no critical
data on it). Basically, as XP is loading it is getting an
error on that drive and causing the system to restart. Then
it goes into a loop doing that. Oddly enough, the drive is
showing up in BIOS just fine, though.

The event log is full of stop errors referencing the Video
Drive (bad block) and I literally had to hack my way back
into XP to even get to a point where I could see the OS (used
Recovery Console to replace some start up files from the
Repair folder, got me into basic XP. I hope to be able to
copy the System Restore files to get me where I can back up
some settings and then clean reinstall XP)

What I want to know is: do I probably need to replace this
drive, or will reformatting get my OS stable again
(particularly after a reinstall)? And, how common is it for a
non boot drive to wreak such havoc on the OS?

Thanks in advance!

--
HippyFish

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm just another ten percenter
My mind is like an ocean

My mind is like an ocean
I'm hanging in the harbor

- Frank Black
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
Recently I had an error on a the slave, non sys. drive. This prevented
booting. Presumably because the o/s got an error on this when trying to
boot.
WD probably has a disk checking utility, apart from the std win.chkdisk
utility. If you are able to boot you may be able to run this.
Even if you are able to reserect this hd, you should consider it compromised
and not use for any critical data.
 
Recently I had an error on a the slave, non sys. drive.
This prevented booting. Presumably because the o/s got an
error on this when trying to boot.
WD probably has a disk checking utility, apart from the std
win.chkdisk utility. If you are able to boot you may be
able to run this. Even if you are able to reserect this hd,
you should consider it compromised and not use for any
critical data.
Click to expand...

Thanks, DL! I figured that was the case. Luckily, HD prices
continue to fall!!!

--
HippyFish

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm just another ten percenter
My mind is like an ocean

My mind is like an ocean
I'm hanging in the harbor

- Frank Black
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
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