Is Fixing a broken Hard Drive possible?

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Guest

Hey all, I have an 80 and 60 Gig Maxtor Hard Drive. The 80 Gig one has my
system files and works okay, the 60 gig one is a data disk. If I try to boot
up with the 60 gig drive in as a slave (like I have done for years) the
computer fails to start and tells me that it cant read from the slave drive.

I heard about HDD Regenerator, and Hirens Boot Disk...but not sure about the
legality of either. Either way, I downloaded HDD Regenerator but my floppy
drive doesnt work, and the iso couldnt be burned onto a bootable cd. When I
tried in nero to make a bootable cd it asked me to instal a "bootable
diskette" into drive a:

I have been experiencing system failures recently, and my motherboard, cpu,
ram and graphics card are all new, so I suspect my master hd could have
errors too.

Basically, is there any legal and trustworthy program available to help me
fix a hard drive of any make? The maxtor utilities didnt specify any such
software...and max blast 4 couldnt detect any maxtor hds...but I think it was
just a hard drive installer utility.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.
Alex
 
Al said:
Hey all, I have an 80 and 60 Gig Maxtor Hard Drive. The 80 Gig one
has my
system files and works okay, the 60 gig one is a data disk. If I try
to boot up with the 60 gig drive in as a slave (like I have done for
years) the computer fails to start and tells me that it cant read from
the slave drive.

I heard about HDD Regenerator, and Hirens Boot Disk...but not sure
about the
legality of either. Either way, I downloaded HDD Regenerator but my
floppy drive doesnt work, and the iso couldnt be burned onto a
bootable cd. When I tried in nero to make a bootable cd it asked me to
instal a "bootable diskette" into drive a:

I have been experiencing system failures recently, and my motherboard,
cpu, ram and graphics card are all new, so I suspect my master hd
could have errors too.

Basically, is there any legal and trustworthy program available to
help me
fix a hard drive of any make? The maxtor utilities didnt specify any
such software...and max blast 4 couldnt detect any maxtor hds...but I
think it was just a hard drive installer utility.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.
Alex
Click to expand...

AFAIK, you can't fix physical problems with software. You might want to
look at Spinrite though. I've never used it, but it has been around for
years. You should get the Maxtor diagnostic utility, make a bootable
cd, boot with it, and do a thorough scan of both your hard drives. If
you get physical errors, you should replace the drives.

http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

Malke
 
You can't fix a hardware type problem with software. It takes screw drivers
and wrenches. If your drive is actually bad (physically defective) there is
no software in the world that is going to fix it.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I heard that HDD Regenerator actually somehow fixes physical problems. Has
anyone used it? I read a ton of reviews about it and everyone seemed amazed
that it could erase bad sectors. Some people said it took over 3 days to
scan a 100 gig hard drive, but afterwards managed to get the drive working
again with 90 gig of space free.

If its a myth it's pretty unusual that so many people claim that it works.

Al
 
Al

In the interests of reliability, it is best to replace a drive that is
exhibiting bad sectors.. while the Win 9x family would tolerate errors, XP
is far less forgiving..
 
Try it and report back to the news group with your findings.

How about a link to some of ton of reviews you have read? I would like to
read them also.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Just went to their web page for a look see. Their utility does not do
anything that Spinrite does not do. Spinrite has been around for over 15
years now. I would trust Spinrite.

Neither one of them will repair a physically damaged sector/cluster. A new
hard drive will do that.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
snip
If its a myth it's pretty unusual that so many people claim that it works.

Al
Click to expand...

People make computer software "claims" all the time, and most of them don't
have a clue as to what the real problem was in the first place.
Super-terrific software will often reset some input parameter to its
default, and PRESTO - the problem is "solved". The funny thing is, the user
could have done that himself without additional software and without
spending a dime. In this and similar cases, there was nothing at all
physically wrong with the hardware to begin with.

As many have said in this thread, true physical damage to a hard drive will
never be "repaired" with software.

By the way, did you ever get your floppy drive to work?
 
Thanks for all of the responses. No I didnt get my floppy drive to work,
which is a problem, and the reason that I can not try HDD regenerator and
report back. I am going to buy a new one in a few days, and I may try it
then, but first I will try spinrite and hope that it's a problem that can be
fixed

Here is the software outline I read:

"HDD Regenerator 1.51

HDD Regenerator is a unique program for regeneration of
physically damaged hard disk drives. It does not hide bad sectors,
it really restores them!

Program features

Ability to detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface.

Ability to repair physical bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard disk
surface.

The product ignores file system, scans disk at physical level. It can be
used with FAT, NTFS or any other file system, and also with unformatted or
unpartitioned disks.

Bootable regenerating diskette allows starting regenerating process under
DOS automatically.

Bootable regenerating CD can be created from the program and used to
automatically start regenerating process.

Main benefits

Hard disk drive is an integral part of every computer. It stores all your
information. One of the most prevalent defects of hard drives is bad sectors
on the disk surface. Bad sectors are a part of the disk surface which
contains not readable, but frequently necessary information. As a result of
bad sectors you may have difficulties to read and copy data from your disk,
your operating system becomes unstable and finally your computer may unable
to boot altogether. When a hard drive is damaged with bad sectors, the disk
not only becomes unfit for use, but also you risk losing information stored
on it. The HDD Regenerator can repair damaged hard disks without affecting or
changing existing data. As a result, previously unreadable and inaccessible
information is restored.

How it works

Almost 60% of all hard drives damaged with bad sectors have an incorrectly
magnetized disk surface. We have developed an algorithm which is used to
repair damaged disk surfaces. This technology is hardware independent, it
supports many types of hard drives and repairs damage that even low-level
disk formatting cannot repair. As a result, previously unreadable information
will be restored. Because of the way the repair is made, the existing
information on the disk drive will not be affected!

Can the HDD Regenerator repair your drive?

Almost 60 % of damaged hard disks can be repaired by regeneration. You can
always download free demo version and try to regenerate the first found bad
sector. The main purpose of the unregistered demo version is to display a
report which contains information about the possibility to regenerate the
entire disk by means of the registered full version. If the first found bad
sector has been successfully regenerated, you can buy the product to
regenerate all bad sectors on your hard drive. If the first bad sector has
NOT been successfully regenerated, then replace your hard disk drive as soon
as possible.

Important notes

Since the program does not change the logical structure of a hard drive, the
file system may still show some sectors marked earlier as "bad", and other
disk utilities such as Scandisk will detect logical bad sectors even though
the disk has been successfully regenerated and is no longer damaged by
physical bad sectors. If you want to remove these marks, repartition the hard
disk drive."

And here are some of the reviews/feedback:

"this is a wellknown program to but used for physical damage NOT ordinary
windows mess ups. ;) spinrite is another story, it doesn't fix physical
errors it just recovers lumps of crashed data."

"It's not a bootsector virus or anything like that...i just made cdrom image
because who has diskettes anymore? =) I "repaired" my 40gb ibm drive with
HDD...so it's worth of try if you had problems." (wish I knew how he made a
CD rom image from the floppy image)

"I have tested HDD Regenerator (but not this download) on a 120GB IBM drive
and it repaired all bad sectors on the drive and it has worked great since
that repair (1.5 years ago)"

"This prg. have just saved my 80 gb HD !!!! it takes some time but its sure
works !!!!!"

So yeah, I understand that physical errors in nearly all cases can not be
fixed with software, but is it not possible to fix magnetic errors in a hard
drive with software? "We have developed an algorithm which is used to repair
damaged disk surfaces." is that fact or fiction?

Alex
 
So yeah, I understand that physical errors in nearly all cases can not be
fixed with software, but is it not possible to fix magnetic errors in a hard
drive with software? "We have developed an algorithm which is used to repair
damaged disk surfaces." is that fact or fiction?
Click to expand...

I would not believe it unless I tested it in my own lab.

If a low-level format doesn't fix it, neither will their product. The
seem to have a low-level formatter that saves the data instead of wiping
it all.
 
Al said:
Hey all, I have an 80 and 60 Gig Maxtor Hard Drive. The 80 Gig one has my
system files and works okay, the 60 gig one is a data disk. If I try to boot
up with the 60 gig drive in as a slave (like I have done for years) the
computer fails to start and tells me that it cant read from the slave drive.

I heard about HDD Regenerator, and Hirens Boot Disk...but not sure about the
legality of either. Either way, I downloaded HDD Regenerator but my floppy
drive doesnt work, and the iso couldnt be burned onto a bootable cd. When I
tried in nero to make a bootable cd it asked me to instal a "bootable
diskette" into drive a:

I have been experiencing system failures recently, and my motherboard, cpu,
ram and graphics card are all new, so I suspect my master hd could have
errors too.

Basically, is there any legal and trustworthy program available to help me
fix a hard drive of any make? The maxtor utilities didnt specify any such
software...and max blast 4 couldnt detect any maxtor hds...but I think it was
just a hard drive installer utility.

Thanks for any help and suggestions.
Alex
Click to expand...

The best available product for repairing/recovering bad sectors on a
hard drive is Spinrite from Gibson Research (www.grc.com) However
purchasing Spinrite will probably cost as much or more than a new hard
drive so unless there is some critical information that you need to
recover from the 60 gb drive you are probably better off purchasing a
new drive.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
 
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