Cluster Bomb.

[TrojanSquirrel]

I've got a friend's Pc in for repair (bad idea!), and it going from bad to worse. I backed up all the data from his C: to my main PC and formatted the drive. Unfortunatly bad clusters were a plenty, and I've lost 1.5Gb from the drive (a 40Gb Maxtor). It has also started making a nasty "clunk" type noise when formating.

When I reinstalled his OS I had no problems except for the fact Windows would not restart (although it would shut down without a problem). As the problems continued after a couple of fresh installs and a full bios check I decided to use his old 6Gb drive as the master to install Windows on and use the 40Gb as the slave. Sadly I can't seem to see this drive in fdisk (although it shows up in bios and Windows). As far as I know it has always been a FAT32 drive without problems (until now!).

The old drive seems to work fine and I have no problem with shutdown or restarts. Any Ideas as to the cause? It is quite a decent system (Athlon XP2000+, 512Mb Ram, GF4200) and most components are under a year old (except for the 6Gb drive obviously).

Rob.

 

[edfair]

Time for the maxtor diagnostics. Shouldn't have a clunk.

This isn't a cluster bomb, just one device. More like a ticking time bomb.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[etarhan]

You are describing a dead HDD. No use at all trying to revive it. A clunky HDD is fit to be a good souvenir only. An HDD with an increasing number of bad clusters is the indication of a good rope to hang yourself by. If I were you, I'd try to format the HDD in a different machine (to be sure that it really is the HDD which is creating the problems) and if the problems persist, throw it as far away as possible.

Looks like youve received your first lesson (bad idea!) of being an amateur computer techie. Don't worry, we all started alike.

Good luck,
Engin

 

[TrojanSquirrel]

Thanks guys,

The 40Gb is now in as a slave to the 6Gb, formated and running fine (for the moment). The nasty clunk only happens when formating the drive and trying to recover the bad clusters, under normal operating conditions there is no sign of any problems. Unlike my own IBM Deskstar that makes strange squeek/beep noises every now and then!

I'm wondering just how this drive got into this state, perhaps a few knocks and bumps in transit?

My first few lessons in being an "amateur computer techie" were quite nice! Five complete systems built with only minor inconveniences, I suppose I was due a problem! I just wish I was a "professional computer techie" as these type of problems couldn't happen to them! ;-)

Cheers.

Rob.

 

[edfair]

You really believe that. We deal with that stuff every day, day in and day out.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[TrojanSquirrel]

No not at all Ed I was just being sarcastic (it comes across so well in text, eh!)

I manage to screw something up every day, and I only have four PC's and a router to cope with! The eight HDDs alone keep me busy, not to mention the different OS's, drivers, monitors, etc. Me and my colleague are quite competent "amateur computer techies", so I dread to think what it's like working with a big corporate network with a large proportion of muppets as users! Hell, I should imagine.

 

[edfair]

It is like swimming in cesspools. When you get done with one , you jump right in another.
Some people thrive in the mess, others drown and get out. Me, I stay to see what stupid thing happens next. If they had quit trying to improve things after they got DOS3.2 right then we wouldn't be in the mess we are.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[edemiere]

You said that most parts are under a year old, I would contact Maxtor and request an advanced replacement to copy over the data from one drive to another and go from there.

Maxtor technical support are not bad folks, I've had them send me a few advanced replacement drives for drives that were slightly out of warranty (within 90 days of warranty end).

I believe most of their drives, like Western Digital, are warranted for 3 years.

Give them a call and see what they say.

Good luck!