NTFS drive repair

On 09/15/2010 08:16 PM, SC Tom wrote:

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...

"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
I suspect the hard drive of this (ancient) Toshiba Satellite laptop.
At any rate WinXP (SP3) ScanDisk will not complete: craps out at
Phase 2.
Would some third-party tool provide either repair or information?

Open a Command Prompt window, and type in chkdsk /r and press enter.
It will tell you that it can't run now, do you want to run it on
reboot. Type in y, press enter, and reboot. If there are any drive
errors, it will (should) find them and take care of it.

Bingo !
scandisk /f did the trick (repairing indices at end of phase 2).
(It's no good being a DR-DOS maven in 1990 if you forget in
2010 what you used to know . . . )

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)



Good deal! Glad it's working now!



Not so fast

chkdsk /f (not scandisk) can fix logical errors on the drive

but it cannot repair a drive that's failing

"philo" wrote in message
...
On 09/15/2010 08:16 PM, SC Tom wrote:

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...

"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
I suspect the hard drive of this (ancient) Toshiba Satellite laptop.
At any rate WinXP (SP3) ScanDisk will not complete: craps out at
Phase 2.
Would some third-party tool provide either repair or information?

Open a Command Prompt window, and type in chkdsk /r and press enter.
It will tell you that it can't run now, do you want to run it on
reboot. Type in y, press enter, and reboot. If there are any drive
errors, it will (should) find them and take care of it.

Bingo !
scandisk /f did the trick (repairing indices at end of phase 2).
(It's no good being a DR-DOS maven in 1990 if you forget in
2010 what you used to know . . . )

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)



Good deal! Glad it's working now!



Not so fast

chkdsk /f (not scandisk) can fix logical errors on the drive

but it cannot repair a drive that's failing

This is true. Actually, *nothing* can fix a drive that's failing, but it
will allow him (hopefully) to start his system and make a backup of it. Then
he can get a new drive, PC, or whatever he plans on doing.

(There is no 'scandisk' in XP.)
--
SC Tom
-There's no such thing as TMI when asking for tech support.

On 09/17/2010 06:03 AM, SC Tom wrote:

"philo" wrote in message
...
On 09/15/2010 08:16 PM, SC Tom wrote:

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...

"SC Tom" wrote in message
...

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
I suspect the hard drive of this (ancient) Toshiba Satellite
laptop.
At any rate WinXP (SP3) ScanDisk will not complete: craps out at
Phase 2.
Would some third-party tool provide either repair or information?

Open a Command Prompt window, and type in chkdsk /r and press enter.
It will tell you that it can't run now, do you want to run it on
reboot. Type in y, press enter, and reboot. If there are any drive
errors, it will (should) find them and take care of it.

Bingo !
scandisk /f did the trick (repairing indices at end of phase 2).
(It's no good being a DR-DOS maven in 1990 if you forget in
2010 what you used to know . . . )

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)



Good deal! Glad it's working now!



Not so fast

chkdsk /f (not scandisk) can fix logical errors on the drive

but it cannot repair a drive that's failing

This is true. Actually, *nothing* can fix a drive that's failing, but it
will allow him (hopefully) to start his system and make a backup of it.
Then he can get a new drive, PC, or whatever he plans on doing.

(There is no 'scandisk' in XP.)


I agree, even though sometimes the manufacturer's diagnostic
can re-assign bad clusters...I never really trust the drive after that...
though once the drive is replaced...I always keep the old one as an
emergency backup.

Some folks swear that the utility Spin Rite can actually recondition a
problematic drive.
Whether that's true or not...I don't know...
but since Spin Rite coats more than a new drive...
it's one experiment I will not be making!