A disk read error has occured

[rwc1969]

First of all Hello!

My system will not boot. I was having problems w' Yahoo and Outlook and after deleting several important messages I slammed my lid closed on the laptop. Dumb move!

Upon opening the lid and taking the system out of Standby, I received a fatal error 0x00000006 BSOD message, then upon reboot "a disk read error has occured" message. I did some Googling and was led to believe either the MBR or HDD is damaged.

I've tried rebooting, removing the HDD and reinstalling it, I tried fixboot in Recovery console using my XP Pro setup disk, and finally have tried chkdsk /r using recovery. chkdsk is still running after 10+ hours and appears to have stalled out 5 hours ago at 61% complete.

I rebooted between each step and so far get the same results, disk error. I'm still waiting for chkdsk to complete, but I'm not holding my breath. Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, this is an Acer 5670 laptop runnning SP3 on a 100GB HDD. Thanks!

 

[gavinseabrook]

You need a new harddrive. The only computers with "Smart Drives" are toshiba laptops. What these do is if there is any abrupt virbation or shock, it quickly shoots the actuator arms in the hard drive to the very end as to not damage the disk itself. A chkdsk should at MAX only run about 45 minutes. What probably happend is that when you slammed the lid, it might have scratched the surface platters of your hard drive, causing those parts to be unaccessable. Best bet is to go on ebay, find a 2.5" hard drive, and replace it, run your recovery disks and take it from there....sorry.

 

[rwc1969]

OK, thanks. I was told that even if the drive was damaged that chkdsk, or possibly some low level formatting tool may be able to fix it.??

 

[LookinAround]

You need a new harddrive. The only computers with "Smart Drives" are toshiba laptops. What these do is if there is any abrupt virbation or shock, it quickly shoots the actuator arms in the hard drive to the very end as to not damage the disk itself. A chkdsk should at MAX only run about 45 minutes. What probably happend is that when you slammed the lid, it might have scratched the surface platters of your hard drive, causing those parts to be unaccessable. Best bet is to go on ebay, find a 2.5" hard drive, and replace it, run your recovery disks and take it from there....sorry.

=> I agree the disk drive has damage. (probably on the physical disk surface)
=> But running chkdsk /r can definitely take longer then 45 minutes especially when applied to large storage drives (as we have today) and have chkdsk check for bad sectors (the /r option) which adds even more time to complete. Tho 4 hours is still on the high end (i.e. it's probably hanging on something)

I'll agree your best (and safest) bet is to get (and rely on) a new hard drive. Though there may be some useful options for the old drive. I forget off hand. Will have to check and post sometime later

 

[rwc1969]

I would appreciate it very much. Thanks to both of you.

What's strange is now the chkdsk says it's 50% complete??? Yesterday it was 61% complete.

The HDD is only 100GB and I was considering upgrading both it and the RAM. the system has 1 GB of RAM.

I found a link yesterday that stated even if the sectors are damaged you can use a low level formatting tool to fix them. I can't find the link now. Has anyone heard of this?

 

[rwc1969]

Update:

chkdsk /r finally finished this morning and said "found and repaired one or more errors on the disk".

Upon reboot I now get the following message on a black screen.
SMART failure predicted on hard disk 0
Warning: Immediately back up data and replace HDD. A failure may be eminent.
Press F1 to continue

When the system reboots I get that message and upon pressing F1 it reboots again and the Windows error screen comes up and allows for the following advanced startup options, none of which work. Safe mode, Safe mode w' networking, safe mode w' command prompt, LKGC or normal startup.

I first tried LKGC w' no luck, I figured that much. Then I tried safe mode and a long list of multi(0)disk(0)part(1)windows/system32/ etc.etc lines came up always hanging at multi(0)disk(0)part(1)windows/system32/TDI.SYS. Then I would get the safe mode wording bordering my screen as if it were entering safe mode but it never would make it, instead it would BSOD quickly enough that I couldn't read the error message and reboot to the SMART warning screen. Endless cycle!

I can get into Recovery console using the XP setup/ install disk and it appears nothing else???

 

[adweston]

Often Acer uses Toshiba hard drives. I've seen dozens of them fail this year. I'll place money that you'll have to replace it.

 

[gavinseabrook]

Just replace your drive. It is shot! There is no need for you to look a gimp horse in the mouth. Just quit while you are ahead and buy a new one

 

[rwc1969]

I believe you are right. The one it came w' was a 100GB, 5400rpm SATA drive and I believe it was a Toshiba Travelstar.

Any good tips on selecting a replacement?

Are there different form factors?

Will my BIOS need to be flashed if I upgrade to a larger or faster drive?

I'm looking at a 2.5" sata Western Digital 320GB at Amazon.

Again, thanks for the tips.

 

[gavinseabrook]

as long as the drive is 2.5" you should be fine. Most laptops do not have size restictions, unless it was made in 1995 lol. Make sure that is has the correct amount of pins and such and you should be fine.

 

[rwc1969]

I appreciate it, Thanks!

BTW, the drive was a Hitachi Travelstar 5400rpm SATA150 100GB and I'll be upgrading to a Hitachi Travelstar 7200 rpm SATA300 320GB.

Surprisingly enough, most of the reviews I've read on these HDDs state they have great shock resistance. LOL! I guess I must have really put a womping on the old 100GB then.

 

[adweston]

We've been using the Seagates with great success. We've got a few bricked Hitachis, lots of dead Toshibas and a few of the WD Scorpios.. But no dead Seagates yet....

 

[rwc1969]

So, is there a way I can get the data off this HDD and onto a new one?

 

[adweston]

Yup, get a SATA to USB adapter, plug it into any other PC and start copying through My Computer. Go to the Documents folder first and rip as much as you can before the drive goes belly up. After that, set your coffee on it or give it to your dog for a chew toy. lol

 

[rwc1969]

a coffee holder, nice. Thanks for the tips. I'll order a sata to usb adapter when I order my new HDD.