Problem With Second Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Si
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Si

I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive. When
I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character names
(lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half full.
Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Cheers.

Si
 
I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive. When
I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character names
(lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half full.
Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Cheers.

Si
Click to expand...

Do you have,"System Restore" enabled?If so try a backup?



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I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive. When
I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character names
(lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half full.
Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Cheers.

Si
Click to expand...


first thing to do is check the ide cable on that drive to see if it's just
loose (unplug and replug it)
next run the hard drive test utility which should be avail from the mfg of
your drive to see if the drive has failed.

if there is no physical problem...run chkdsk on the drive
but do not use the chkldsk /f option...at least not yet...
report back with what that shows.
running chkdsk /f will repair logical errors...but you may loose data
 
I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive. When
I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character names
(lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half full.
Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.

Can anyone shed some light on this?
Click to expand...

Sounds like a font table corruption. Get Tweak UI (assuming it is
available for XP) and do a font repair. The other possibility is
defective memory. Do you have enough power for all those drives? What
about heat dissipation?

My version of Free Agent has always had a font problem. After using it
for a while it starts making some fonts bold. Really nutty.
 
Si said:
I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive.
When I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character
names (lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half
full. Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.

Can anyone shed some light on this?
Click to expand...

happens on my main drive sometimes. Think its a loose IDE cable prob.

go into bios and set up disk params manually and it should read it.
 
Si said:
I have 4 hard drives in my PC (C, D, E and F). When I switched my PC on
today, Windows XP loaded fine but something has happened to my D drive.
When I click on it a bunch of folders appears with unintelligible character
names (lots of squares and symbols). The drive is a 120GB one which is half
full. Up until today, my PC has been rock solid for a very long time.
Click to expand...


Happens on my main drive, probablhy a loose IDE cable

check cable and go into bios and set up disk parameters manually which may
fix it.
 
Are you talking about 4 separate physical drives or 4 partitions?

If you have 4 separate drives(which is strange) then the partition on that
drive might be corrupted.
 
Are you talking about 4 separate physical drives or 4 partitions?

If you have 4 separate drives(which is strange) then the partition on that
drive might be corrupted.
Click to expand...

Why is that strange? The guy knows you can never have enough hard
drives. My son has 3 and he still needs a couple more. He'd have 4 if
it weren't for the DVD burner. I told him his MB can handle 2 SATA
RAID 1 disks, so maybe he will set that up.

You can never have too many hard drives. Unfortunately the operating
system limit is 24.
 
It is not strange in a server type settin but in 16 years of doing this
work I have never seem a custemor with 4 seperate internal h.drives, in a
standard pc,except external drives. He should get bigger hdrives and
partition them. I myself once used 3 but it becomes a bit of a problem
with only 2 ide chains.
 
If the drive shows folders with unreadable characters, reason shows the
drive is corrupt, or damaged. As I often say to folks. Download the test
tools for that drive (from maker), and run the tools to prove the integrity
of the drive. you can then go on from there. best wishes..J
 
The problem with that jon is all the tests show is that there is something
wrong with your hard drive......well duh! Anyway, I managed to get most of
my stuff off the drive and then formatted it. It seem to be working fine
except I can't get it to run in DMA mode. The master drive is DMA but this
slave is only PIO.

Cheers.

Si


--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me then a frontal lobotomy.
old jon said:
If the drive shows folders with unreadable characters, reason shows the
drive is corrupt, or damaged. As I often say to folks. Download the test
tools for that drive (from maker), and run the tools to prove the
integrity of the drive. you can then go on from there. best wishes..J
Click to expand...
 
The problem with that jon is all the tests show is that there is something
wrong with your hard drive......well duh! Anyway, I managed to get most of
my stuff off the drive and then formatted it. It seem to be working fine
except I can't get it to run in DMA mode. The master drive is DMA but this
slave is only PIO.

Cheers.

Si
Click to expand...

What O/S?
And have you installed/re-installed your mother board drivers pack?



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
It's Windows XP Pro. No I didn't re-install my mobos drivers. I didn't think
I needed to. Shows how much I know!

Cheers.

Si
 
It's Windows XP Pro. No I didn't re-install my mobos drivers. I didn't think
I needed to. Shows how much I know!

Cheers.

Si
Click to expand...

If you buy a mother board as a separate Item as a builder they always
come with a Mother board drivers disk.These are the 1st drivers you
install as a builder as they allow other programs/drivers to install
correctly.
If you buy a,"Shop-bought" system they may well supply the CD but
don't mention the importance of these driver packs as they
assume,"Their" system they have sold you will never need to be
re-installed or they supply a,"Restore" CD that resets everything back
to the way it was when you bought it off them but of course that also
deletes all your downloads and everything you have done on the system
so back things up.
Their,"Restore" disk is usually just an .ISO image with all
the correct things for that hardware already installed and it
basically,"Re-formats" the drive and plonks the image onto the hard
drive with no care for anything else.





--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
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