Corrupted Files -- Is This Possible?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Anderson
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Bill Anderson

A few weeks ago I bought a Western Digital 250 Gigabyte hard drive, for
my WinXP system. I'm using it to backup my main data disk, and to store
..wav files I'm creating as I read the chapters of a book for my father
(who has macular degeneration). It seems to work fine as long as I
don't put too much data on it. But it seems that after the disk is
about half full, any new files get corrupted. Yesterday I read an
entire chapter into a .wav file, and afterward the file was filled with
moments of static.

How can this be? Do I need a new drive, or have I failed to format my
drive correctly? The data backup files still seem to be fine. But a
jpeg I created yesterday with PhotoShop and saved on the suspect drive
is definitely corrupted. When I try to open it today with PhotoShop, I
see a thumbnail just fine in the PhotoShop file-open screen, but when I
open the file itself, I see only a black screen.

When I booted the system this morning, Scandisk ran on the suspect
drive. I have no idea why it ran.

Another bit of info that may be helpful: I have three physical hard
drives in my triple-boot system. One 40 Gbyte physical drive contains
partitions for Win98, Win2K, and WinXP. One 80 Gbyte drive holds all my
data files. Both of these drives are FAT32. The third drive, the 250
Gigabyte drive, is formatted NTFS.

What's going on here? Do I need to take the drive back and get another?
Do I need to reformat my 250 Gbyte drive? Something else?

Help.
 
Bill Anderson said:
A few weeks ago I bought a Western Digital 250 Gigabyte hard drive, for
my WinXP system. I'm using it to backup my main data disk, and to store
.wav files I'm creating as I read the chapters of a book for my father
(who has macular degeneration). It seems to work fine as long as I
don't put too much data on it. But it seems that after the disk is
about half full, any new files get corrupted. Yesterday I read an
entire chapter into a .wav file, and afterward the file was filled with
moments of static.

How can this be? Do I need a new drive, or have I failed to format my
drive correctly? The data backup files still seem to be fine. But a
jpeg I created yesterday with PhotoShop and saved on the suspect drive
is definitely corrupted. When I try to open it today with PhotoShop, I
see a thumbnail just fine in the PhotoShop file-open screen, but when I
open the file itself, I see only a black screen.

When I booted the system this morning, Scandisk ran on the suspect
drive. I have no idea why it ran.

Another bit of info that may be helpful: I have three physical hard
drives in my triple-boot system. One 40 Gbyte physical drive contains
partitions for Win98, Win2K, and WinXP.
Click to expand...

This could be the source of the problem. Apparently, the 250 GB drive is seen
differently by W2K and XP.
One 80 Gbyte drive holds all my
data files. Both of these drives are FAT32. The third drive, the 250
Gigabyte drive, is formatted NTFS.

What's going on here? Do I need to take the drive back and get another?
Do I need to reformat my 250 Gbyte drive? Something else?
Click to expand...

Did you try playing / viewing the recorded data without leaving the Windows
section? If they get corrupted only after rebooting, or having switched the
boot OS from XP to W2k, or W2K to XP, then the cause is inconsistency between
how the drive is seen in the last two OS.

Regards, Zvi
 
Zvi said:
This could be the source of the problem. Apparently, the 250 GB drive is seen
differently by W2K and XP.




Did you try playing / viewing the recorded data without leaving the Windows
section? If they get corrupted only after rebooting, or having switched the
boot OS from XP to W2k, or W2K to XP, then the cause is inconsistency between
how the drive is seen in the last two OS.

Regards, Zvi
Click to expand...

Thanks for helping me think this through, Zvi. I hear what you're
saying about the other OS's, but I'm reluctant to believe that's it. I
seldom use Win2K anymore -- haven't booted it in months. I use Win98
occasionally, but the default OS is WinXP and that's what I generally use.

Win98 doesn't see the NTFS drive, so I can't believe it's corrupting
individual files on it. Apparently the only files that were getting
corrupted were files added after the disk was about half full. I went
back and checked files I'd added earlier -- Word documents for example
-- and they were fine. But files I created two days ago were hopelessly
corrupt.

You've asked a good question about *when* the files became corrupted --
did it take a reboot? I just don't remember for sure. I know that when
I processed some video files onto the problem drive, they were
immediately corrupt. When I processed the same video files onto my
80-gig FAT32 drive, I had no problems at all. This problem began only
when the problem drive was about half full.

Another bit of info -- my new 250-gig hard drive is a replacement for a
120-gig hard drive that was also formatted NTFS. That drive worked just
fine in my system, right alongside Win98. I replaced it only because I
wanted a bigger drive.

I didn't FDISK this drive, and I didn't use the Western Digital floppy
that came with it to set it up. I set up the drive using WinXP -- under
Disk Management. Then I formatted it using WinXP. Disk management now
reports that the drive is healthy. I've reformatted it since all the
problems started, by the way. There's nothing on it now -- no files at
all. I'm just trying to figure out what to do next.

So the question is -- has anyone else ever seen this sort of behavior?
Can it be a bad hard drive? I can still return it for another -- I
haven't owned it very long. Is there some sort of test I can run on it
to see if part of it but not all of it is damaged? What to do, what to do?
 
You need to install XP SP1. Original release doesn't support IDE drives
137GB. As soon as your data crosses 137 GB boundary, it corrupts data on
Click to expand...
the disk begin. SP1 contains support for such big drives.

If you plan to use big ATA drive as your boot drive, you also need BigATA
support in BIOS.

If you have XP recovery console installed on your boot drive, you also need
to reinstall it after you apply SP1. If you ever happen to boot recovery
console from XP CD, NEVER run CHKDSK, or it will corrupt your big drive.
 
Bill Anderson said:
Thanks for helping me think this through, Zvi. I hear what you're
saying about the other OS's, but I'm reluctant to believe that's it. I
seldom use Win2K anymore -- haven't booted it in months. I use Win98
occasionally, but the default OS is WinXP and that's what I generally use.

Win98 doesn't see the NTFS drive, so I can't believe it's corrupting
individual files on it. Apparently the only files that were getting
corrupted were files added after the disk was about half full. I went
back and checked files I'd added earlier -- Word documents for example
-- and they were fine. But files I created two days ago were hopelessly
corrupt.

You've asked a good question about *when* the files became corrupted --
did it take a reboot? I just don't remember for sure. I know that when
I processed some video files onto the problem drive, they were
immediately corrupt. When I processed the same video files onto my
80-gig FAT32 drive, I had no problems at all. This problem began only
when the problem drive was about half full.

Another bit of info -- my new 250-gig hard drive is a replacement for a
120-gig hard drive that was also formatted NTFS. That drive worked just
fine in my system, right alongside Win98. I replaced it only because I
wanted a bigger drive.

I didn't FDISK this drive, and I didn't use the Western Digital floppy
that came with it to set it up. I set up the drive using WinXP -- under
Disk Management. Then I formatted it using WinXP. Disk management now
reports that the drive is healthy. I've reformatted it since all the
problems started, by the way. There's nothing on it now -- no files at
all. I'm just trying to figure out what to do next.

So the question is -- has anyone else ever seen this sort of behavior?
Can it be a bad hard drive? I can still return it for another -- I
haven't owned it very long. Is there some sort of test I can run on it
to see if part of it but not all of it is damaged? What to do, what to do?
Click to expand...
What version of XP and SP level, do a search on Google for large disks AKA >
128Gb there can be issues with plain XP and large disks also W2K (non SPx)
does not like large disks the MS KB has several bits of info re LBA, large
disks and corruption etc.

regards
ted
 
Thanks, Alexander (and Ted and Zvi). I'm working on this angle now.
Actually I do have SP1.

I found a Microsoft KBA (Knowledge Base Article 303013) about all this.
It really does appear my system is not able to use the disk for more
than 134.22 gigabytes. I have an Asus P4T-E motherboard, and I'm
running BIOS upgrade 1005e -- I flashed to that version long ago.
According to the online documentation, 1005e does include support for
Logical Block Addressing (LBA), which is required to exceed the 137
gigabyte limit. And the BIOS reports the drive size as 250 gigabytes.

I did find that my WinXP ATAPI driver was not the version the KBA said
is required. I've now upgraded the driver to the required version.

The KBA also said I might need to edit the registry, but when I went to
the registry location described in the KBA, I didn't find the registry
value I was looking for (EnableBigLba).

What put me onto this track was a diagnostic utility I downloaded from
Western Digital. Even though WinXP has always reported the drive's
capacity as 250 gigabytes, the WD utility said it was 134.22 gigabytes.
The utility has two windows for reporting on disk size -- the top
window reports on the size of the physical drives in the system, and the
lower window reports on the size of the logical drives. And in the
LOWER window, which reports on each of my system's partitions, the
utility reports the drive size as 250 gigabytes, or thereabouts. Very
confusing.

Right now I'm copying files onto the drive to see if I can exceed the
137 gigabyte limit. I sure wish I hadn't reformatted the thing last
night. It takes a long time to copy gigabytes of data, and I need to
copy 137 gigabytes just to see if updating the ATAPI driver will enable
the drive to hold more.

I'm betting it won't -- I'm betting that utility needs to report the
physical drive size as 250 gigabytes. But how to make it do that?

* BIOS seems OK for large drives.
* WinXP reports correct size for the drive.
* Running WinXP SP1

I wonder if I should have reformatted the disk, now that I have a new
ATAPI driver? Guess I'll find out soon.

Bill Anderson
 
Are any of your drives external drives?

I've been following this thread since I recently puchased a Seagate
160GB USB2 External Drive for backups (drive images). Would the issues
presented in this thread apply to External USB2 and/or 1394(Firewire)
interfaces?

Thanks,
Harvey
 
Bill Anderson said:
A few weeks ago I bought a Western Digital 250 Gigabyte hard drive, for
my WinXP system. I'm using it to backup my main data disk, and to store
.wav files I'm creating as I read the chapters of a book for my father
(who has macular degeneration). It seems to work fine as long as I
don't put too much data on it. But it seems that after the disk is
about half full, any new files get corrupted. Yesterday I read an
entire chapter into a .wav file, and afterward the file was filled with
moments of static.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a driver problem. Half of 250GB is somewhere around
the 137GB 28-bit to 48-bit LBA transition. Sounds like the system
reads the data somehwere else than it has written that data.
 
Harvey said:
Are any of your drives external drives?
Click to expand...

No, mine are internal.
I've been following this thread since I recently puchased a Seagate
160GB USB2 External Drive for backups (drive images). Would the issues
presented in this thread apply to External USB2 and/or 1394(Firewire)
interfaces?
Click to expand...

My guess is that the 137 gigabyte limit (SP1 requirement) applies to any
hard drive, internal or external. But I don't have a history of great
guesses. I'll bet someone around here will know for sure, though.

Bill Anderson
 
Thanks. I have SP1 and all that. BUT, my ATAPI driver is only version
5.1.2600.1106 not 5.1.2600.1135. This is what concerns me.

Harvey
 
Just FYI, I don't have the problem fixed yet. I copied files onto the
disk right up to about 137 gigabytes, actually a little less, and from
that point all files were corrupt. The system has quit copying, and
won't even delete the corrupted files. They're too corrupt, apparently.

Back to the drawing board.

Bill Anderson
 
Bill Anderson said:
Harvey Gratt wrote
Click to expand...
No, mine are internal.
Click to expand...
My guess is that the 137 gigabyte limit (SP1 requirement)
applies to any hard drive, internal or external.
Click to expand...

Nope, doesnt apply to SCSI drives for example.

Its essentially an issue with the ATA driver. That
isnt used for external drives apart from SATA.
 
I just downloaded and installed on a laptop the latest atapi.sys file
with some strange results (installation was initiated by doubleclicking
on the downloaded file):

1. Properties for atapi.sys in the system32 folder do show version
5.1.2600.1135

2. Device manager shows 5.1.2600.1106 for both the primary and secondary
IDE channels.

3. I cannot enable write caching on the external drive - the setting is
not retained when I exit.

Have I done something wrong?

Harvey
 
Just to make sure I understood what you said: The >137GB issue does not
apply to an External USB2 HDD since it uses a USB2 interface and not an
ATA interface. Is my understanding correct?

Thanks,
Harvey
 
I just downloaded and installed on a laptop the latest
atapi.sys file with some strange results (installation was
initiated by doubleclicking on the downloaded file):
Click to expand...

You should have used the update driver button in the device manager.

You can still do that now.
1. Properties for atapi.sys in the system32
folder do show version 5.1.2600.1135
Click to expand...
2. Device manager shows 5.1.2600.1106 for
both the primary and secondary IDE channels.
Click to expand...
3. I cannot enable write caching on the external
drive - the setting is not retained when I exit.
Click to expand...
Have I done something wrong?
Click to expand...

Yep, thats not the best way to update a driver.
 
Just to make sure I understood what you said: The >137GB issue
does not apply to an External USB2 HDD since it uses a USB2
interface and not an ATA interface. Is my understanding correct?
Click to expand...

Only partly. Yes, the driver issue back in the PC
only applys to drives that use the atapi.sys driver.

BUT there is still the problem with the bridge in the external case
with a USB2 drive, that needs to support drives over >137GB too,
and so does whatever driver is being used back in the PC for that drive.
 
Can you elaborate on the "bridge" issue in the external case. This a new
model drive from seagate and is being used in an xp pro environment. The
properties tab reports a drive size which is greater than 137GB. What do
I need to check and/or update?

Thanks,
Harvey
 
Bill said:
A few weeks ago I bought a Western Digital 250 Gigabyte hard drive, for
my WinXP system. I'm using it to backup my main data disk, and to store
.wav files I'm creating as I read the chapters of a book for my father
(who has macular degeneration). It seems to work fine as long as I
don't put too much data on it. But it seems that after the disk is
about half full, any new files get corrupted. Yesterday I read an
entire chapter into a .wav file, and afterward the file was filled with
moments of static.

How can this be? Do I need a new drive, or have I failed to format my
drive correctly? The data backup files still seem to be fine. But a
jpeg I created yesterday with PhotoShop and saved on the suspect drive
is definitely corrupted. When I try to open it today with PhotoShop, I
see a thumbnail just fine in the PhotoShop file-open screen, but when I
open the file itself, I see only a black screen.

When I booted the system this morning, Scandisk ran on the suspect
drive. I have no idea why it ran.

Another bit of info that may be helpful: I have three physical hard
drives in my triple-boot system. One 40 Gbyte physical drive contains
partitions for Win98, Win2K, and WinXP. One 80 Gbyte drive holds all my
data files. Both of these drives are FAT32. The third drive, the 250
Gigabyte drive, is formatted NTFS.

What's going on here? Do I need to take the drive back and get another?
Do I need to reformat my 250 Gbyte drive? Something else?

Help.
Click to expand...

When you replace the 120GB HD with the 250GB HD, did you tell your BIOS to
auto-sense the IDE drive size? {I don't know what would happen if you
did not, but I'm wondering if you have somehow confused your BIOS into
thinking that your 250GB HD is still a 120GB HD, and some piece of code
that accesses HDs via the BIOS is causing a mismapping past the 120GB
limit to wrap the address or something.}
 
Well, obviously I'm not as bright as I thought I was.

I downloaded the file from the microsoft site. It was a self-extracting
compressed file. The only option I could do was to doubleclick on it.
How do I load it by way of the device manager - when I try it doesn't
know what to do.

Thanks,
Harvey
 
Can you elaborate on the "bridge" issue in the external case.
Click to expand...

There's some hardware that interfaces between the
USB2 protocol over the cable and the ATA protocol
the drive uses. Thats usualled called a bridge.
This a new model drive from seagate
Click to expand...

Which exact model and what do they say
about support for drives over 137GB ?
and is being used in an xp pro environment. The
properties tab reports a drive size which is greater
than 137GB. What do I need to check and/or update?
Click to expand...

What Seagate has to say about support for drives
over 137GB in their packaged drive in that case.

Did you install any Seagate drivers for it ?
 
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