lost access to second hard drive after defragging drive

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I have windows xp home edition. I have 2 hard drives in my computer. I was
defragging the secondary one. After it reached 98%, a message popped up
saying that the files could not be written. I didn't know what to do so I
exited defrag. After I rebooted, I couldn't access the second hard drive. I
get an error saying that device is not ready or not accessible. If I go to
the command prompt, the error is 'system cannot find the drive specified'
 
defragged said:
I have windows xp home edition. I have 2 hard drives in my computer. I was
defragging the secondary one. After it reached 98%, a message popped up
saying that the files could not be written. I didn't know what to do so I
exited defrag. After I rebooted, I couldn't access the second hard drive. I
get an error saying that device is not ready or not accessible. If I go to
the command prompt, the error is 'system cannot find the drive specified'
Click to expand...

You probably had a malfunction in the defragging process,
causing the drive to be thrashed. Here are a few sites with
recovery tools - pehaps one of them will be of use:

http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz
http://www.runtime.org/
http://www.runtime.org/ (has a trial version)
www.acronis.com (RecoveryExpert)

In general I avoid using defraggers. The benefits are barely noticeable,
if at all, and there is a real risk of major damage. I have followed some
fierce discussions in various newsgroups about this subject. One
thing became obvious almost immediately: Those who were in favour
of frequent defragging were so purely because of their faith. None of
them had any hard evidence to back up claims of improved
performance. It seems the display of lots of contiguous files appeals
to their sense of tidiness whereas they find the multicoloured stripes
of a fragmented disk offensive. It's what I call the "Piss in the wetsuit
syndrome: It gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices any
difference."
 
Pegasus said:
You probably had a malfunction in the defragging process,
causing the drive to be thrashed. Here are a few sites with
recovery tools - pehaps one of them will be of use:

http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz
http://www.runtime.org/
http://www.runtime.org/ (has a trial version)
www.acronis.com (RecoveryExpert)

In general I avoid using defraggers. The benefits are barely noticeable,
if at all, and there is a real risk of major damage. I have followed some
fierce discussions in various newsgroups about this subject. One
thing became obvious almost immediately: Those who were in favour
of frequent defragging were so purely because of their faith. None of
them had any hard evidence to back up claims of improved
performance. It seems the display of lots of contiguous files appeals
to their sense of tidiness whereas they find the multicoloured stripes
of a fragmented disk offensive. It's what I call the "Piss in the wetsuit
syndrome: It gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices any
difference."
Click to expand...

I have my XP systems set to Ghost themselves to the local Linux file
server every 4 hours. I use XP's built in defrag utility regularly, not
because it noticeably improves performance, but because it significantly
reduces the total space consumed by the Ghost backup regime.

Are you saying XP's built in defrag utility is of poor quality, and
therefore not worth the risk?

Triffid
 
Triffid said:
I have my XP systems set to Ghost themselves to the local Linux file
server every 4 hours. I use XP's built in defrag utility regularly, not
because it noticeably improves performance, but because it significantly
reduces the total space consumed by the Ghost backup regime.

Are you saying XP's built in defrag utility is of poor quality, and
therefore not worth the risk?
Click to expand...

No, I'm not saying this at all - I would not have any evidence to
back up such a claim. I'm saying two things:
a) Frequent defragging appears to produce little if any benefits, and
b) Occasionally I see posts in newsgroups about defragging processes
chewing up drives.
You need to draw your own conclusions from a) and b) above.
 
I'm going to speculate and say the drive had a heat related death.
When you defrag, the drive is constantly active, and if the drive is
large, defrag can take a long time. The drive can get quite hot,
especially if it's stacked under the other drive, and the drives
aren't adequately cooled with a fan.
 
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