major problem

[Dan Conrad]

Desktop unit (asus MB/windows xp pro -- all updates loaded) all of a
sudden quite working and would loop in rebooting, then started saying
files were missing. 80g drive is partitioned into three drives. Tried
reformating the C drive -- NTFS format went very very slowly but
eventually finished and xp loaded (SP2 from slipstream cd). Still
running very very slowly and boots, but takes forever. Chkdsk does not
show errors but third partition on drive was no longer recognized and I
repartitioned -- trying to format, but going very very slow and may not
format.

What is happening?-- would assume HD failure but wanted to see how to be
sure. Drive (WD) is only about a year old and failure this soon would
be unusual. Thanks.

[Bruce Chambers]

Dan Conrad wrote:
> Desktop unit (asus MB/windows xp pro -- all updates loaded) all of a
> sudden quite working and would loop in rebooting, then started saying
> files were missing. 80g drive is partitioned into three drives. Tried
> reformating the C drive -- NTFS format went very very slowly but
> eventually finished and xp loaded (SP2 from slipstream cd). Still
> running very very slowly and boots, but takes forever. Chkdsk does not
> show errors but third partition on drive was no longer recognized and I
> repartitioned -- trying to format, but going very very slow and may not
> format.
>
> What is happening?-- would assume HD failure but wanted to see how to be
> sure. Drive (WD) is only about a year old and failure this soon would
> be unusual. Thanks.


You can download diagnostic tools from Western Digital's web site to
use to test your hard drive.


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Rock]

"Dan Conrad" wrote

> Desktop unit (asus MB/windows xp pro -- all updates loaded) all of a
> sudden quite working and would loop in rebooting, then started saying
> files were missing. 80g drive is partitioned into three drives. Tried
> reformating the C drive -- NTFS format went very very slowly but
> eventually finished and xp loaded (SP2 from slipstream cd). Still running
> very very slowly and boots, but takes forever. Chkdsk does not show
> errors but third partition on drive was no longer recognized and I
> repartitioned -- trying to format, but going very very slow and may not
> format.
>
> What is happening?-- would assume HD failure but wanted to see how to be
> sure. Drive (WD) is only about a year old and failure this soon would be
> unusual. Thanks.

Drives can fail at any time, so it wouldn't necessarily be unusual. That's
why you should always have a full and complete backup of important data
stored on external media such as USB drive, CD or DVD.

Download a drive diagnostic utility from the drive manufacturer's web site.
That will create a bootable floppy or CD. Boot from it and run the
diagnostics. Also if this is an IDE/EIDE drive go into device manager,
expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section, double click the IDE channel
that the drive is on, then look on one of the tabs for whether the drive is
in DMA mode or PIO mode. I don't remember which tab that would be - don't
have XP open in front of me at the moment. It should be in DMA mode. If
it's in PIO mode that means there were errors with the drive which caused
the controller to drop down to PIO mode which is much slower.

I don't know if this applies if the drive is attached to a SATA controller.

--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]