chkdsk hanging means dead disk?

Post by **4days** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 1:06 am

been given a dead machine to look at.

partitions were all buggered so did an mbr and made one big partition.

ran chkdsk on it and it sits at 51% (for a few hours, now i'm bored of checking on it). used the verification thing in ranish partition manager and it reported bad sectors. is the drive dead? or is there some utility i can run to recover it?

Post by **Tormentius** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 2:16 am

Try chkdsk /r first and if that doesn't work then low level format it with a utility from the drive vendor's site.

Post by **4days** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:06 am

tried a low level format using the seagate app and no joy. still reports bad sectors.

the seagate app didn't output anything interesting though, just said it had completed and restarted the machine. then back to square 1.

think it's toast.

Post by **Tormentius** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:08 am

Yeah if the low-level didn't help then it might be toast.

Post by **Foo** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:08 am

To my knowledge, a low level format takes hours?

Post by **CheapAlert** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:22 am

Funny, this happened on my seagate just yesterday!

It started happening when I tried to format unpartitioned space in Windows 2000. As soon as it started, Windows panicked and forced an emergency restart

GRUB reports error 17, Slax freezes when mounting the partitions on boot, and Knoppix can not see the fat32 partitions

Revealed by my win2k setup cd's partition manager, it appears that my windows partition and the partition i tried to create were permanently damaged.

however i was able to delete those partitions and install win2k on my data2 partition.

there i backed up like a platypus and redid my drive entirely starting over with fresh thorough formats. No probs so far now.

Post by **axbaby** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:05 am

chkdsk /f

if almost given up try

fdisk /mbr

checkout http://www.bootdisk.com for bootdisks, and recovery - repair tools

Post by **4days** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 10:07 am

Foo wrote:To my knowledge, a low level format takes hours?

it did take hours, but it was still going when i started the thread.

the disk is fucked. i made a partition that goes up to just before the disk errors and windows is on there so that he can finish his work (got an essay or dissertation or something), but it's only 5 gig of the original 40.

the guy bought the laptop in currys and it's still under warranty - hoping it's a manufacturers warranty. i don't fancy his chances with currys technical support team

if he does have to take it into currys, wondering if we should make the disk look completely dead, otherwise the currys people will see it running, say "computer says yes" and look at him blankly.

Post by **Foo** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 10:52 am

Yeah currys are particularly shitty.

I had overheating problems with my laptop and sent it back twice and they didnt' fix it...

The problem was the hard drive and I solved the whole thing by putting a new one in. They'd gutted the laptop several times over beforehand...