Disk Cleanup killed my drive

[sethbest]

Just when I was thinking that the windows badmouthing was starting to get groundless (my only gripe is that everything requireing prompting, meaning i sit in front of my computer for hours pressing yes and no) I ran disk cleanup on my Seagate 250 gb 7200.8 Barracuda drive, and for once let it run, since it usualy dosnt' seem to get anywhere i normaly cancel it. After about 4 hours the comp shut off and the drive is unnaccesible.

I run windows xp pro on my 40 gig maxtor, and put applications and downloads on the seagate, but i am unable to boot windows completely while the drive is attached (it stays at the personal settings part of the startup). The scandisk just lists unreadable sectors endlessly, and hard drive regenererator just lists the first sector as bad and doesn't seem to make any progress repairing it, or scanning further. Ran the windows repair console's chkdsk and after 25% it gives up saying that the disk is un-repairable.

Disconnect the drive, plug it into an external usb ide converter and load windows (with most all of my apps dead) and run seagate disk diagnostic windows version and all the scans say the drive is unnacessable except the "long scan" which goes through about 50k sectors before saying repair failed. Seagate dos utility fails to load entirely, just giving me a prompt and a ramdrive, then hangs if i try to load it manualy from the prompt.

I figure it is likely that the drive my still be usable after a full format (thoughts?) but would also like to know before hand if anyone has any ideas to pull files off the drive, since windows see's it in drive manager but not in explorer.

Basicaly just want a second opinion before i resign myself to 24 hours of installing applications and digging through cd keys.

Thanks techspotters in advance, especialy for letting me whine about my computer problems, it's very theraputic, and the responses are helpful too.

 

[hrlow2]

Can the drive be seen by the Disk Manager? If so, right click on drive, click Open and see if anything shows on drive. If so, find files you want to save and use Send To to move them to another location.

 

[sethbest]

it can be seen in disk manager listed as 0(0) same as ;my boot drive, right clicking only gives me option to see its properties which say that the device is working properly and the drivers are up to date.

this is when the drive is loaded externaly through usb though, could it be unseen in explorer because its sharing the same location as my boot drive?

 

[hrlow2]

In Disk Manager, you go to the right side to your drive. Should say New Volume (C) or some other letter with a blue bar over top of it. That is where you right click to open. If drive is shown, but has nothing on it, it will say unallocated space with///////// lines through it.

 

[sethbest]

Oh I was looking at the device manager. The disk manager does not show the drive. That is to say that it does not display it when attached by usb, and while internaly attached to ide the system will not finish loading windows, or safe mode, just hangs when the desktop comes up, or \when booting in safemode when it finishes loading the system files.

 

[LookinAround]

Just when I was thinking that the windows badmouthing was starting to get groundless (my only gripe is that everything requireing prompting, meaning i sit in front of my computer for hours pressing yes and no) I ran disk cleanup on my Seagate 250 gb 7200.8 Barracuda drive, and for once let it run, since it usualy dosnt' seem to get anywhere i normaly cancel it. After about 4 hours the comp shut off and the drive is unnaccesible.

Doesn't sound so much like disk cleanup tool issue as you had a bad sector or corruption somewhere on that seagate that the disk cleanup program happened to find and when processing the bad data gets hung on. i couldn't imagine 250GB external taking an hour for disk cleanup let alone 4 hours. In the future best to create a ghost image backup of the disk drive to preserve it then run chkdsk <drive letter> /r from command line to validate disk formatting and sectors.

As to your problem as it stands now....You;ll find TWO drivers for (what i'm guessing) is a USB drive? A driver under disks (probably the one you've referred to) but also look under USB and rt click and see Properties of each Mass Storage Device as you'll find one for the drive. Uninstall both drivers. Then plug the drive back in and see if both drivers reinstalled and then what next

 

[sethbest]

Pretty neat suggestion, I'll give it a try.

This is an internal drive, i was just using a usb adapter since it wasn't booting with the drive plugged in. Will post an update after i try to reinstall then drivers (assuming that i dont end up making my boot drive innoperable as well during this process)

 

[krait]

J
I figure it is likely that the drive my still be usable after a full format (thoughts?) but would also like to know before hand if anyone has any ideas to pull files off the drive, since windows see's it in drive manager but not in explorer.

IMHO, your drive is at the end of its useful life. A 7200.8 is about 3-4 years old right? I think the disk cleanup simply pushed it over the edge, or it was coincidental.
I would not use that drive for anything important, if I were you.

As for file recovery, disconnect the windows drive. Use the faulty drive as the only drive in the system, and boot into the Command prompt using the XP install/repair disc. From there you can use the XCOPY command to copy the files off to an external USB thumb drive. Long shot, but worth a try. If the drive platter or head is damaged (head crash), you've probably lost all/much of your data unless you give it to a data recovery firm.

Good luck!

 

[tweaks_sav]

Just to reiterate, disk cleanup didn't cause the damage to the hard drive. Your hard drive probably has bad sectors or mechanical faults. Do not use that drive anymore, except to recover data.

Plug that HD to another machine as a slave/secondary drive, if the drive is being recognized in Device Manager or Disk Management but doesn't have a Drive Letter, your data could still be recoverable. Just depends on how faulty the drive is. My personal preference is GetDataBack. Just remember, recover the files to a separate HD, not back on itself, or you will corrupt your recovery.

Also, if you wanted to be sure that your HD is indeed faulty and not just corrupt, you can run a hard drive test.

 

[gbhall]

If the data is important, and the drive runs for a short while before giving out, put it in the freezer overnight, bang it in another PC (as post#9) and get what you can off it before it warms up. Often works long enough .....

 

[tweaks_sav]

I doubt the freezer will help any in this situation. I've actually never had the freezer trick work or help. Not saying it doesn't; I've just never had it work.
Also recovery programs generally take multiple hours to complete, so the drive would warm up in the first minute of use.
Be careful with condensation as well.

 

[sethbest]

my second seagate 7200 series to die in the last few months, may just be coincidence. I've never gotten recovery console to work very well, but ill give the xcopy a try, and that soft mentioned, thx for the tips by the way. Ive given up on large files and apps, just want to pull some small files off.

Using a different drive enclosure and plugging into my laptop the drive shows up in disk manager and says healthy, when i try to explore it though the comp slows down a while (probably attempting to page corrupt files or something) and then says unaccessable or just wont open the browser.

Unrelated:
I dont realy have a place to complain since it is my hobby to salvage parts from old comps and build new ones, lately just to give away or set up on some annoying tasks like encoding/decoding. What gets me is all my older chips and drives run forever and everything relatively new or actualy purchased seems to die, just this month- 2 fried 512 ram sticks, dead 250 gig drive, a pair of altec speakers; over the last few months, 500gig external drive, raptor power supply, and 2 keyboards, all being replaced with much older and perfectly functioning hardware pulled from scrapped pc's. Lower manufacturing standards?

 

[LookinAround]

Using a different drive enclosure and plugging into my laptop the drive shows up in disk manager and says healthy, when i try to explore it though the comp slows down a while (probably attempting to page corrupt files or something) and then says unaccessable or just wont open the browser.

Then i'll repeat you should be running chkdsk (or at least create that ghost image first) ! As long as the drive appears as a disk in disk management (regardless if it shows any drive letters or partitions there or not) you have a shot using the basic management/recovery tools

and fyi... is also worth:
1. try every usb port on your computer
2. Absolutely also try that drive on someone else;s computer
3. Be certain to also use a different USB cable
4, Check it's demand on power from your computer. If it's outside of normal (excessive) can shutdown a usb port or hub or just cause problems. (i'll have to update this post when i find my instructions in another thread how to do this so check back probably tomorrow for the edit/update)

 

[sethbest]

To the chkdsk suggestion-

The scandisk just lists unreadable sectors endlessly, and hard drive regenererator just lists the first sector as bad and doesn't seem to make any progress repairing it, or scanning further. Ran the windows repair console's chkdsk and after 25% it gives up saying that the disk is un-repairable.
QUOTE]

All good tips though, and I did try all of those things before bothering you guys with it.

Recent developement, ran the the getdataback app mentioned before, and it recognized the drive, though it took a while to do so, and started to recover it. I left it running over night, and woke up from a nightmare caused by the audible clicking of the drive (it was 3 rooms away, not loud just that sound is so ingrained in my psyche after all these years and hard drives i suppose). Though the utility appeared to still be running it would not respond to cancel so i powered down the drive. Now it isn't being recognized even in disk manager or by getdata back, and i figure the utility just put the last nail in its coffin.

Thanks for your help guys, even if it didnt work this time around i learned a lott from your suggestions.
Im shopping around for a new drive, since this is for my main comp and dont want this to be repeated in a month by using one of my other old drives. Was looking at some Wester Digitals, probably 500-750 gig range, is a 10k rpm overkill? and is 32mb cache over a 16 a big difference? I will be researching these things independantly but any insights you guys can provide would be appreciate.

Thanks again for the responses.