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#1
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Can't format second partition
Running XP Home SP3, fully up to date. System has two IDE hard drives,
master and slave no RAID (hardware doesn't include it.) Master drive is 40gb and slave is 120gb. I have both drives split into two more or less equal partition halves. XP and programs are installed to the first partition on the master and backed up on the slave's first partition using a program named XXClone. Lately, the second partition on the master had started giving me serious problems. Whenever I'd try to copy or move something to it, the system would lock up with the hard drive light remaining on steadily. I'd shut the system off using the power button (last ditch tactic) and reboot. The computer would come back on as if nothing had ever happened. I was able to access the data on the second partition, but since I never tried, don't know if I could move stuff around on it. The second partition was just a data storage area for me. Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I decided to remove and recreate the master's second partition. That part went well. However, when I tried to format the newly recreated second partition on the master drive, it went all the way to 100% done but the red light came on and stayed there. I powered down and when I rebooted, the partition was still there but it's unformatted. I tried quick formatting it but it gave me a BSOD eventually. Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors? TIA -- John Corliss |
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#2
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Can't format second partition
John Corliss wrote:
Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors? The bad sectors are probably too severe for the system to read/write. It usually take a number of retries before finally decides whether it's acessible (good) or inaccessible (bad). You might want to use a linux LiveCD to format it, since you may configure the number of access retries. For disk/platter based drives, bad sectors can be either weak sectors or physical damage (scratches). Weak sectors can be fixed by writing the sectors a number or times, but they may appear again on different sectors. This may indicate that the drive has reach its usage limit or it's just a bad design (usually on specific model only). Physical damage however, is not fixable. In fact, they can spread due to disk being rotated. Scratch particles can stick to the disk head and as the head being moved to other tracks, it can scratch those tracks too. For any type of bad sectors, I suggest you make a backup of the files on that drive which aren't already backups and get a new drive. |
#3
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Can't format second partition
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:57:25 +0000 (UTC), JJ
wrote: John Corliss wrote: Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors? The bad sectors are probably too severe for the system to read/write. It usually take a number of retries before finally decides whether it's acessible (good) or inaccessible (bad). The OP mentioned BSOD's when attempting to format this partition. How common is that? I do computer repair as a side business and have seen a lot of failed and failing hard drives, but I don't remember off hand if I've ever seen BSOD's in conjunction with a bad drive. Is that fairly common, at least outside of my circles? |
#4
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Can't format second partition
Char Jackson wrote:
The OP mentioned BSOD's when attempting to format this partition. How common is that? I do computer repair as a side business and have seen a lot of failed and failing hard drives, but I don't remember off hand if I've ever seen BSOD's in conjunction with a bad drive. Is that fairly common, at least outside of my circles? It's a rare case and mostly lead to hardware fault, but not all BSOD are hardware related. |
#5
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Can't format second partition
JJ wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: The OP mentioned BSOD's when attempting to format this partition. How common is that? I do computer repair as a side business and have seen a lot of failed and failing hard drives, but I don't remember off hand if I've ever seen BSOD's in conjunction with a bad drive. Is that fairly common, at least outside of my circles? It's a rare case and mostly lead to hardware fault, but not all BSOD are hardware related. Well, the strange thing about it is that of the four partition (2 per drive) that are on this system, the one involved was that which only (very) rarely was used. As for the data which was on it, I already described in the OP how I have it backed up: Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I used a program named XXCopy to do this manually and had done it recently before I removed the partition. As I said, I lost no data. Just a copy of it, but I have it backed up fully regardless so that's not an issue. By the way, I tried using Chkdsk /f on the partition and got the following results: __________________________________________________ ____________________ Microsoft Windows XP Checking file system on D: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is partition. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... Security descriptor verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 3 percent completed. __________________________________________________ ____________________ at which point the system hung and I had to do a hard reboot. I then tried using Chkdsk /r by booting off of my XP installation disc (a slipstreamed with SP3 copy, which I've verified is good) but of course, at that point the system was unable to even see the second partition. By the way, here's info about the drive under discussion: Manufacturer Seagate Model ST340014A Size 40.0 GB Firmware Version 8.54 Interface Parallel ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-6 | ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D version 2 Transfer Mode (Current / Max) Ultra DMA-100 / Ultra DMA-100 Features S.M.A.R.T./ 48bit LBA Temperature 26 C (78 F) Drive Letter(s) C: D: Controller Buffer Size on Drive 2048 KB Removable No SMART Support Yes You might want to use a linux LiveCD to format it, since you may configure the number of access retries. Worth a try. I'll give it a go. I also have some third party boot discs (like http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd, a little dated but will work for me I'm sure.) -- John Corliss |
#6
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Can't format second partition
John Corliss wrote:
JJ wrote: Char Jackson wrote: The OP mentioned BSOD's when attempting to format this partition. How common is that? I do computer repair as a side business and have seen a lot of failed and failing hard drives, but I don't remember off hand if I've ever seen BSOD's in conjunction with a bad drive. Is that fairly common, at least outside of my circles? It's a rare case and mostly lead to hardware fault, but not all BSOD are hardware related. Well, the strange thing about it is that of the four partition (2 per drive) that are on this system, the one involved was that which only (very) rarely was used. As for the data which was on it, I already described in the OP how I have it backed up: Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I used a program named XXCopy to do this manually and had done it recently before I removed the partition. As I said, I lost no data. Just a copy of it, but I have it backed up fully regardless so that's not an issue. By the way, I tried using Chkdsk /f on the partition and got the following results: __________________________________________________ ____________________ Microsoft Windows XP Checking file system on D: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is partition. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... Security descriptor verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 3 percent completed. __________________________________________________ ____________________ at which point the system hung and I had to do a hard reboot. I then tried using Chkdsk /r by booting off of my XP installation disc (a slipstreamed with SP3 copy, which I've verified is good) but of course, at that point the system was unable to even see the second partition. By the way, here's info about the drive under discussion: Manufacturer Seagate Model ST340014A Size 40.0 GB Firmware Version 8.54 Interface Parallel ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-6 | ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D version 2 Transfer Mode (Current / Max) Ultra DMA-100 / Ultra DMA-100 Features S.M.A.R.T./ 48bit LBA Temperature 26 C (78 F) Drive Letter(s) C: D: Controller Buffer Size on Drive 2048 KB Removable No SMART Support Yes You might want to use a linux LiveCD to format it, since you may configure the number of access retries. Worth a try. I'll give it a go. I also have some third party boot discs (like http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd, a little dated but will work for me I'm sure.) Forgot to add thanks for replying and your suggestion! -- John Corliss |
#7
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Can't format second partition
John Corliss wrote:
John Corliss wrote: JJ wrote: Char Jackson wrote: The OP mentioned BSOD's when attempting to format this partition. How common is that? I do computer repair as a side business and have seen a lot of failed and failing hard drives, but I don't remember off hand if I've ever seen BSOD's in conjunction with a bad drive. Is that fairly common, at least outside of my circles? It's a rare case and mostly lead to hardware fault, but not all BSOD are hardware related. Well, the strange thing about it is that of the four partition (2 per drive) that are on this system, the one involved was that which only (very) rarely was used. As for the data which was on it, I already described in the OP how I have it backed up: Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I used a program named XXCopy to do this manually and had done it recently before I removed the partition. As I said, I lost no data. Just a copy of it, but I have it backed up fully regardless so that's not an issue. By the way, I tried using Chkdsk /f on the partition and got the following results: __________________________________________________ ____________________ Microsoft Windows XP Checking file system on D: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is partition. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... Security descriptor verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 3 percent completed. __________________________________________________ ____________________ at which point the system hung and I had to do a hard reboot. I then tried using Chkdsk /r by booting off of my XP installation disc (a slipstreamed with SP3 copy, which I've verified is good) but of course, at that point the system was unable to even see the second partition. By the way, here's info about the drive under discussion: Manufacturer Seagate Model ST340014A Size 40.0 GB Firmware Version 8.54 Interface Parallel ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-6 | ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D version 2 Transfer Mode (Current / Max) Ultra DMA-100 / Ultra DMA-100 Features S.M.A.R.T./ 48bit LBA Temperature 26 C (78 F) Drive Letter(s) C: D: Controller Buffer Size on Drive 2048 KB Removable No SMART Support Yes You might want to use a linux LiveCD to format it, since you may configure the number of access retries. Worth a try. I'll give it a go. I also have some third party boot discs (like http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd, a little dated but will work for me I'm sure.) Forgot to add thanks for replying and your suggestion! If you wanted to map the bad spots on the drive, you could try this package. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk "The best method: Antonio Diaz's GNU 'ddrescue' ... # first, grab most of the error-free areas in a hurry: ./ddrescue -n /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log " What that version of disk dump (dd) does, is keep track of which sectors it has processed. Normally, it would be used for copying as many sectors as possible, from one disk (/dev/old_disk) to a second disk (/dev/new_disk). In Linux land, you can specify /dev/null as a raw device which is the bit bucket. Meaning, "please throw away all the writes" attempted to this device. The syntax for /dev/old_disk, depends on what you find in the /dev tree. sudo ls /dev In there, if I had two drives, each having one partition on them, I see things like this. SD probably stands for (Pseudo) SCSI Disk. HD stands for something else. Without rhyme or reason, I can see either format detected, depending on the Linux distro being used. /dev/sda /dev/sda1 --- sda1 is the first partition of sda /dev/hda /dev/hda1 --- hda1 is the first partition of hda You would seek to identify the appropriate drive. One way of doing that, would be: sudo fdisk /dev/sda p --- print partition table, including size info q --- quit, make no changes From a couple runs of that command, I'd look at the size of sda, sdb, hda, hdb drives, to figure out which is my bad drive. The letter on the end, is the instance of hard drive. Then, once I know it's say /dev/sdb, I'd "generate the log file", which would show the bad sectors. I'll slap a sudo in front of this, as normally using a Linux LiveCD, the user isn't the admin, and uses the "mother may I" method of running commands. Sudo is the equivalent of "mother may I". It's unlikely Linux would let you access a raw device, without admin privileges. Sudo is a way to elevate privileges. sudo ./ddrescue -n /dev/sdb /dev/null rescued.log What that *should* do, is scan /dev/sdb and create "rescued.log" in the current working directory. The disk copying step is effectively nullified, by dumping all the just-read data, into /dev/null. It's always possible for a hard drive to "go insane" in mid-session, upon hitting a bad section. That copy of ddrescue, is supposed to handle timeouts better than some other programs, and it may simple give up on recovery and tell you that lots of sectors are missing. When in fact the disk just stopped responding, and all the missing sectors are just timeouts. Once you had a map of the disk (either a "got it" map listing all the accessible sectors, or a "don't got it" map listing all the yet-to-be-obtained sectors), you can plan your re-partition activities around the bad area. You can copy the rescued.log file, onto a Windows partition, via drag and drop, or use cp cp rescued.log /media/WINXP/rescued.log which would work if I'd clicked my drive labeled "WINXP" in the Places menu (which mounts the partition and place it in the /media tree). Anyway, you wanted *a* possible solution, and as an experimenter, that's what I'd try. A quick check on here, shows a version 1.16 is available. http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/nongnu/ddrescue/ ddrescue-1.16.tar.lz 11-Jun-2012 14:15 60K Compression format, as usual, is always changing. The uwaterloo page has a README that says to use this to unpack it: lzip -cd foo.tar.lz | tar xf - Make a directory to work in, in a terminal session, then follow the rest of the build recipe on the cgsecurity page. cd ~ --- You should already be in the home directory --- So this is just a "null" kinda command. mkdir mybuild --- Make a place to hold the files cd mybuild wget http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/no...ue-1.16.tar.lz lzip -cd ddrescue-1.16.tar.lz | tar xf - cd ddrescue --- source files should be in this sub-directory ./configure --- configure may return errors. Do as a separate step. --- use "ls" command in the ddrescue directory, to --- confirm a copy of "configure" is present. make --- "make" is part of the Linux OS LiveCD Some compile messages will appear. ./ddrescue --help --- Run it. On first run, review today's syntax for usage --- After the "make" step, an object file by the name "ddrescue" should have been put there by the compiler. --- No "sudo" is needed this time, since we're not accessing a raw disk. sudo ./ddrescue -n /dev/sda /dev/null rescued.log After that last step, the current working directory should have a text file named "rescued.log" in it. As the first pass, all the "easy-to-copy" sectors, will have been transferred into /dev/null (i.e. a null operation), and the "side effect" of the run, is to fill the rescued.log file with some kind of text info, on what are the good and the bad sectors. If the list seems to go "constantly bad", like 5,6,7...last_sector, the disk may have hung after successfully getting sector 4. If you were using ubuntu, you might attempt to read the rescued.log file like this. head rescued.log --- read the first ten lines... tail rescued.log --- read the last ten lines... gedit --new-window rescued.log & --- fork a text editor session... The toughest part of the new Ubuntu, is dealing with Metro interface. Gone, are many of the familiar menus. To get to the "terminal", click the icon with an "orb" on the upper left. A "search box" should appear slightly to the right of the "orb" icon. Type in "terminal", and it should show you a program which makes a terminal. Click the terminal icon. Then, you can carry out much of the above recipe. When you're done, one of the icons in a corner some where, should hide a "shutdown" option. You want to use an orderly shutdown, so no mounted partitions are damaged. *Don't* just turn off the power, just like I'd tell you if you were running Windows. ******* Checking the IDE disks I can see for sale today, as a replacement for the bad drive, my supplier has WD1600AAJB 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer $ 81.71 And I don't see anything smaller than that. That particular drive, doesn't seem to have a "clip" jumper setting. On older computers, some could not handle big drives, and a fix for the BIOS hanging up, was to insert the "clip" jumper, giving the drive a fake size of 33GB. If your equipment can handle 160GB of storage, then just go ahead and use it all. I think I have one computer in the house here, that needs the "clip" jumper to be used, but that was so long ago, I don't remember which machine. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/...jb,-wd1600aabb) ******* The above "ddrescue" approach is experimental, so Have fun, Paul |
#8
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Can't format second partition
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:18:53 -0700, John Corliss
wrote: By the way, I tried using Chkdsk /f on the partition and got the following results: _________________________________________________ _____________________ Microsoft Windows XP Checking file system on D: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is partition. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)... Security descriptor verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... Usn Journal verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)... 3 percent completed. _________________________________________________ _____________________ at which point the system hung and I had to do a hard reboot. It wouldn't surprise me to hear (eventually, after additional testing) that the drive is fine and the system to which it's connected has a problem. |
#9
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Can't format second partition
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:18:53 -0700, John Corliss wrote:
[Big snip] By the way, here's info about the drive under discussion: Manufacturer Seagate Model ST340014A Size 40.0 GB Firmware Version 8.54 Interface Parallel ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-6 | ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D version 2 Transfer Mode (Current / Max) Ultra DMA-100 / Ultra DMA-100 Features S.M.A.R.T./ 48bit LBA Temperature 26 C (78 F) Drive Letter(s) C: D: Controller Buffer Size on Drive 2048 KB Removable No SMART Support Yes Do you have SMART running on your Windows system? If so, what does it report. You might want to use a linux LiveCD to format it, since you may configure the number of access retries. Worth a try. I'll give it a go. I also have some third party boot discs (like http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd, a little dated but will work for me I'm sure.) Also, if you format the drive with Linux in a native Linux filesystem like ext2, do a badblock check, too. Then try to reformat it under Windows with NTFS. If this doesn't work, I'd say you hard drive is bad. Replace it. Stef |
#10
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Can't format second partition
Well, there's no need to reply at this point. That hard drive took a
dump completely this afternoon. I yanked it and set the slave up as master, am running Windows from it as I type this. Thanks to everybody who replied though. John Corliss wrote: Running XP Home SP3, fully up to date. System has two IDE hard drives, master and slave no RAID (hardware doesn't include it.) Master drive is 40gb and slave is 120gb. I have both drives split into two more or less equal partition halves. XP and programs are installed to the first partition on the master and backed up on the slave's first partition using a program named XXClone. Lately, the second partition on the master had started giving me serious problems. Whenever I'd try to copy or move something to it, the system would lock up with the hard drive light remaining on steadily. I'd shut the system off using the power button (last ditch tactic) and reboot. The computer would come back on as if nothing had ever happened. I was able to access the data on the second partition, but since I never tried, don't know if I could move stuff around on it. The second partition was just a data storage area for me. Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I decided to remove and recreate the master's second partition. That part went well. However, when I tried to format the newly recreated second partition on the master drive, it went all the way to 100% done but the red light came on and stayed there. I powered down and when I rebooted, the partition was still there but it's unformatted. I tried quick formatting it but it gave me a BSOD eventually. Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors? TIA -- John Corliss |
#11
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Can't format second partition
Paul wrote:
If you wanted to map the bad spots on the drive, you could try this package. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk "The best method: Antonio Diaz's GNU 'ddrescue' Is there a program to use ddrescue log (loged bad sectors) to mark NTFS bad sectors? Checking the IDE disks I can see for sale today, as a replacement for the bad drive, my supplier has WD1600AAJB 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer $ 81.71 Is that a retail one (boxed)? And in US Dollars? At my place, an OEM SATA3 WD Green 500GB costs $81 USD. And an OEM IDE WD 160GB costs $48 USD. |
#12
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Can't format second partition
Stefan Patric wrote:
Also, if you format the drive with Linux in a native Linux filesystem like ext2, do a badblock check, too. Then try to reformat it under Windows with NTFS. If this doesn't work, I'd say you hard drive is bad. Replace it. If the problem is bad sectors, reformatting it under Windows would hung the system again. The ext2 with marked bad blocks should be converted to NTFS and bad blocks record should be kept (converting them to NTFS bad clusters record). |
#13
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Can't format second partition
JJ wrote:
Paul wrote: If you wanted to map the bad spots on the drive, you could try this package. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk "The best method: Antonio Diaz's GNU 'ddrescue' Is there a program to use ddrescue log (loged bad sectors) to mark NTFS bad sectors? In principle, NTFS can mark its own bad clusters. But in this case, if the drive hangs the computer or crashes something, it isn't going to work. The $badcluster information is stored in a metafile. What are the odds that the OS will allow you to write to the same file that the file system currently has open ? Only if there was an API that said "update your bad clusters here", could you do it. And then the file system could write out the new info. You'd need the source code of CHKDSK, to understand how it works. And whether the API is "public". Defragmenter programs can manipulate metadata files. The defragmenter API provided by Microsoft allows it. But I don't think that supports "open for write or write append". It's more for moving sectors around. And I don't know if the details are published anywhere. I suppose they must be, for so many defragmenter programs to use them, but perhaps the details are covered by an NDA. Checking the IDE disks I can see for sale today, as a replacement for the bad drive, my supplier has WD1600AAJB 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer $ 81.71 Is that a retail one (boxed)? And in US Dollars? At my place, an OEM SATA3 WD Green 500GB costs $81 USD. And an OEM IDE WD 160GB costs $48 USD. Newegg didn't have any IDE drives listed, so I used my local supplier numbers instead. That's what I'd be paying, if I needed a drive in the next ten minutes. To me, it wasn't the price, it was the fact that I could find a product listed. I was worried at first, when Newegg didn't have any. Of course, my supplier also has a tendency to leave garbage entries in the web site, so I have to phone and ask whether an item is "for real or not". But that's Canadian businessmen for you. Everything works like that here. If someone can figure out a way to screw up your order, they'll do it. A lot of our sellers here, will tell you delivery is in "two days to two weeks". But you can still pay for next day shipping. In other words, they're not really sure they have product, or the product is coming by mule train from South America. You would think, if any stock existed, it would be two days from source to vendor, plus two days more from vendor to me. Paul |
#14
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Can't format second partition
John Corliss wrote:
Well, there's no need to reply at this point. That hard drive took a dump completely this afternoon. I yanked it and set the slave up as master, am running Windows from it as I type this. Thanks to everybody who replied though. I've had that happen. The time from "warning" to "death", can be short. So short, that if you get a "warning", don't go to bed :-) Stay up until you finish the backup. That's the lesson I learned. I went to bed instead, because I was tired. And didn't get to save any of my data. Paul |
#15
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Can't format second partition
Paul wrote:
I've had that happen. The time from "warning" to "death", can be short. So short, that if you get a "warning", don't go to bed :-) Stay up until you finish the backup. That's the lesson I learned. I went to bed instead, because I was tired. And didn't get to save any of my data. Paul "Wisdom came from experience, not from books or diploma". At least, that's what I think. _____ Peace |
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