XP is destroying my hard drives?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Angelfood MacSpade
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Angelfood MacSpade

I can't explain what is going on but this is driving me crazy. A
couple of weeks ago I used XP's (XP SP2) Disk Management to reformat a
180GB WD IDE drive as a single NTFS partition with 64K clusters (as
recommended for use with video recordings). All appeared fine after I
copied backed up data back onto the drive. However after powering
off/on, XP sees the drive as empty with no operating system (status is
seen as "Healthy"). Partition Magic and other disc utilities see the
drive as having no problems at all but XP is what counts. When I
attempt to access that drive in XP, the error message "An error
occurred reading folder. The file or directory is corrupted and
unreadable." OK, that would be expected I guess if XP doesn't see a
file system. I had used this drive for 1.5 years with no problems
before I changed cluster size.

I tried to reformat a couple of times (still 64K clusters) and the
same problem would occur after powering off/on. Before giving up, I
tried the drive in another computer running XP and this time the drive
couldn't even be formatted. So I have RMAed that drive and am awaiting
a replacement.

However here is where things get interesting. I just installed a new
Seagate 120GB SATA drive. Again I formatted it using Disk Management
with 64K clusters (full format). I copied some data onto it and it
seemed fine. But after I had powered off/on a few times, once again XP
sees the drive as 100% empty with no file system. Again, Partition
Magic doesn't see any problem with the drive. HOW CAN THIS BE
HAPPENING? This is an entirely new drive, using SATA instead of ATA on
an entirely different controller! The only thing in common is that
both were formatted with 64K clusters. Is there any known problem with
64K clusters that would cause XP to not recognize the NTFS file
system???

I don't yet know if my new drive is also dead but I'm becoming
downright paranoid. Any help here is greatly appreciated.
 
Angelfood MacSpade said:
I can't explain what is going on but this is driving me crazy. A
couple of weeks ago I used XP's (XP SP2) Disk Management to reformat a
180GB WD IDE drive as a single NTFS partition with 64K clusters (as
recommended for use with video recordings). All appeared fine after I
copied backed up data back onto the drive.
Click to expand...

I'm no expert on this but...

Does it matter if the backup was created when the cluster size was
different?

What happens if you reformat with the old cluster size and restore the data?
 
OK. I tried again (quick format) with 32K clusters and the file system
was gone on next power off/on. I then tried with default clusters and
thus far the drive has survived 3 power off/on cycles. I can only hope
this continues and I will never attempt to change cluster size
again...

BTW, virus definitions are up to date and a full scan finds nothing.
Is there any known virus that can delete the file system?

I'd really like to get to the bottom of this - for my own sanity.
Thanks.
 
It seems hard to believe this might have something to do with it but
one of the few things in common with all the file system failures was
that I would copy some of the original (when the drive was still 4K
clusters) data back onto the newly formatted partition...
 
Angelfood MacSpade said:
It seems hard to believe this might have something to do with it but
one of the few things in common with all the file system failures was
that I would copy some of the original (when the drive was still 4K
clusters) data back onto the newly formatted partition...
Click to expand...

How were you copying the data back? A File by file copy or some kind of
"restore image" or "sector by sector" copy?
 
Tod said:
Seagate and Western Digital have Windows versions of their software.
Click to expand...

So? Windows has quite adequate facilities for partitioning and formatting
disks for most purposes.
 
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