harddrive probs

I dropped my laptop recently (XP home) and have been having problems with my user profiles since (corrupt file).

I think I am having problems w/ a sector of my hard drive. How can I repair this, I made a previous post about my profile problem and as a result, realized it is a hard drive problem.

 

Hi drecollet.

More than likely the head bounced off the surface of the hard drive and damaged a sector. That can't be repaired but it can be set aside and not used. I would run scandisk and initiate a surface check. Any bad sectors will be set aside and not used and any information that can be recovered will be moved to another sector. The system still might not run because the data that was recovered may be unusable to the system properly. You may have to reestablish the users and recreate the profiles.

Usually in this type of problem I recommend backing up all the data possible and format with a surface scan and reinstall everything. That way you get rid of all the problems except where user data has been damaged and that can be rekeyed.

giles

 

This may seem like a dumm question, but how do I run a scandisk from Windows.

(I know what scan disk is and I normally would do an improper shutdown but because of the harddrive problems, it doesn't load scandisk on startup)

 

Scandisk in XP

Johanna

 

Or my preference (I love typing stuff)

start~run~cmd followed by
chkdsk c: /r and answer all the questions to have it run at next boot then boot. The /r switch forces a surface check as well as a file check and will mark any bad spots so they are no longer used.

If you have drives/partitions besides C: then run it for each of them.

 

Newt made a point there on something that went right by me.

Most hard drives have multiple platters and each platter has a head on the top surface and a separate head on the bottom surface of each platter. If the drop created g-force enough for one head to touch the surface then it more than likely caused the other heads to touch the surface of other platters. If the hdd is split into partitions then running a surface scan only of the C: drive would skip possible damage on the other platters.

Do indeed run a surface scan on all the partitions of that hard disk.

Thanks Newt.

giles