Strange problem with D: partition

[severaven]

Hi guys,

I've been googling all day to resolve an issue I have with my laptop. I am using Windows XP Pro. I can install files into my D: partition but everytime I try to access it, the computer just hangs for about 5 minutes and then displays an error message (the common one where you have to select 'send' or 'dont send'). I first formatted the drive within XP. The computer just hung. I then tried the recovery console - format d: /fs NTFS. The progress indicator just stayed at 0% after an hour and the CPU busy light didn't flicker even for a bit. It just stayed on the whole time.

I think it has something or everything to do with what I did a few days ago. I had Ubuntu and XP back then. When I got the blue screen of death from XP and after troubleshooting, I had no choice but to format XP. During the XP install, at the part where I'm supposed to select a partition, I saw the partition for Ubuntu and since I had wanted to get rid of Ubuntu and especially the GRUB loader, I hastily deleted the Ubuntu partition hoping that there would've been no complications.

XP installed successfully. At this point, I had 4 partitions. I immediately saw a problem with the partition which I believe had previously been assigned to Ubuntu. After trying several things, I thought it would be a quick fix to just delete all the partitions and repartition them and reinstall XP for the second time. This time I made 3 partitions (I did all this in XP setup) and reinstalled XP. However, one partition (D) now still has the same problem. The last thing I tried is what I said above, i.e., trying to format with the XP recovery console. C: and E: drives are working properly at the moment.

I read up some more after some google searches, it seems fdisk is the way to go. But I don't want to complicate things more, so I decided to ask for help and here I am.

I'm really lost on this one. Please help! Thank you in advance and sorry for the long post.

 

[SNGX1275]

What you did should have been sufficient. Have you confirmed the drive itself is fine by using something like Seatools?

 

[severaven]

Thank you so much for replying.

If you say what I did was 'sufficient', does that mean that this is a hardware problem? Because all I tampered with was the software, as said above. Is this enough to trigger a hardware issue? Or am I asking the wrong questions? I want to give you the best info possible, but it's really hard to ascertain. Perhaps you could ask me more questions?

Also, I'm not sure what Seatools will do. What information am I supposed to get from it... I'm not questioning your methods, but if you tell me what to 'ask' of Seatools, I could give you the info.

Thanks.

 

[SNGX1275]

Seatools is a hd diagnostic tool, you can run a Long DST on the drive, if it passes, you can be fairly confident the drive itself is good.

When I said what you did was sufficient, I meant that deleting all the partitions and recreating them during XP's installation would have taken care of any partition related issues caused by linux.

 

[severaven]

Okay, so I ran the Seatools tests. Wasn't sure which was the right one so I ran them all (except the advanced tests). I don't think this is good news, right?

--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.2.0.5 ---------------
10/7/2011 10:20:15 AM
Model: FUJITSU MHZ2160BH G2
Serial Number: K60HT8A2NB43
Firmware Revision: 00000009
Long Generic - Started 10/7/2011 10:20:14 AM
Long Generic - FAIL 10/7/2011 10:20:55 AM
Short DST - Started 10/7/2011 10:21:34 AM
Short DST - FAIL 10/7/2011 10:22:05 AM
Identify - Started 10/7/2011 10:24:30 AM
SMART - Pass 10/7/2011 10:25:41 AM
Short Generic - Started 10/7/2011 10:31:22 AM
Short Generic - Pass 10/7/2011 10:33:07 AM

So, what now?

 

[SNGX1275]

Yep. Bad news, failing the short DST and long generic means the drive is on its way out. You can check and see if its under warranty, if it is you can RMA it. Otherwise, you'll just have to buy a new drive.

 

[severaven]

Isn't there any other way? All my files are backed up, so I don't care about losing data.

 

[SNGX1275]

Afraid not. I mean, you could avoid using the D partition since that seems to trigger problems. But that drive is dying, and it can't be fixed.

The drive may continue to function for quite some time, or it could completely quit now, its impossible to tell. So, if you can't replace, or don't want to replace the drive right now then I'd say there is no harm in continuing to use it. Although, I will say that you should regularly make backups of anything you want to keep.

You may be able to clone the drive with something like Easeus Disk Copy, that way you wouldn't have to reinstall everything, but it sounds like you've got a fresh install anyway so I probably wouldn't mess with cloning.

 

[severaven]

Tsk, that's too bad. I guess I'll avoid using the D partition for now. SNGX thank you so much. You've been such a big help.

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