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Hard-drive crash, or Service Pack 2 up-date?

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by Vektor, 2004/09/27.

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  1. 2004/09/27
    Vektor

    Vektor Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hey, how's it going? My name is Jim. Last nite I tried installing Window's XP Service Pack 2, (from an auto-update notification,) & I believe it may have *******-up my computer big-time.
    1st of all, it took over 2 hours for it to `up-date'. The progress-indicator was still moving & detailing the files it was backing-up or copying, tho, so I figured it was okay.
    Then it crashed & spent the next 2+ hours undoing what it had done. (In one of those blue DOS windows with the white writing where your progress-indicator is a series of periods. I swear I had a dozen rows of those things before it stopped.)
    Apparently that didn't work either, because after it restarted again I immediately received a flashing warning message from the "SMART" detection system at the bottom of BIOS screen, after it detects my drives, that a hard-drive failure may be imminent. I figured that this was just due to whatever the Service Pack upgrade had done, and hit F1 to continue.
    It started (semi-)normally. I kept getting error messages, stating that various delayed-write files were unable to be written. I clicked OK through all of them, then restarted my machine.
    Now all I get is the "SMART" message. If I click F1 to continue, it runs through the `green LED screen' for a few seconds, flashes one of those blue DOS screens with a lot of white writing, & then immediately hard-resets. I can hardly get 2-or-3 words from the blue screen before it resets. It literally flashes for a split-second.
    I've tried to use "Start Windows Normally ", "Last Known Good Configuration ", & "Safe Mode ". They all yield the exact same result.
    My only other option from the SMART message is pressing Delete to enter set-up. What's odd is that when I did enter set-up, SMART is disabled for my hard-drive... Turning it on did nothing.

    So now I'm thinking that my only option is to attempt to re-install Windows XP in hopes of undoing whatever it is that the Service Pack may have done. I don't want to lose all of the data I have on the hard-drive, (of course,) so I'm wondering if this will even work.

    I know most of this seems to point to the idea that my hard-drive is actually faulty, but I just find that difficult to believe considering it was running fine, Windows did start & run normally (for the most part) after I 1st received the message, & I didn't experience any problems until this Service Pack tied-up my computer for several hours & failed to install properly.

    If you have any suggestions, they would be extremely welcome. I don't really have a clue what I'm doing, &, as of right now, my computer is completely useless, & I'm worried about losing everything that's on it.

    This is my current configuration:
    Intel P4 2.2GHz "NorthWood" CPU
    ASUS P4S333-M ACPI BIOS revision 1007 mother-board
    512MB's RAM (Kingston)
    80GB IBM DeskStar MIC mobile rack hard-drive
    GeForce XFX 5200 AGP8x 256MB DDR RAM
    &, of course, WindowsXP (Home Edition)
     
    Vektor,
    #1
  2. 2004/09/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    Hello Vektor,
    welcome to the Windows BBS ...... :) ...... !

    This sounds like a harddisk problem. It can either be the harddisk itself or what SP2 wrote to it.

    All (?) manufacturers have diagnostic tools for their harddisks. On a working computer, go to their site and find that tool. You will probably download an "*.exe" which will create a bootable floppy with the tool on it to run from DOS. Create the floppy on the working computer and put it in the problematic one to see what it finds out. (You need to check that the bootorder is Floppy - CD - HDD.)

    Important: Don't let it fix anything at all!

    If You are told that the harddisk is faulty or sectors are corrupt, then I personally would buy a new harddisk and reinstall my system from square one. If You have a Windows XP CD without any SP or with SP1/1a, then I would install SP2 immediately. That would be the cleanest way, apart from slipstreaming.

    I would do that with the old harddisk removed. When the new harddisk is up and running a fresh system, then I would shut down and install the old harddisk as a slave. It is likely that the corrupt sectors are in the system area and that You will be able to copy Your personal data from the old to the new harddisk.

    Christer

    Edited:

    I just noticed:

    Can You elaborate on that!

    Do You have a single harddisk mounted in a mobile rack?

    If that's the case, try hooking it up directly to the cable!
     
    Christer,
    #2


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  4. 2004/09/29
    Vektor

    Vektor Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hey, Christer. Thanx.

    I did what you suggested & obtained a "fitness test" boot-disk from the official site (which has now been turned-over to Hitachi, apparently...) But all that did was serve to confirm the SMART analysis. It wouldn't even run a full diagnostic, I can only assume because it believes that the hard-drive is about to crash & doesn't want to crash it by running a diagnostic.

    So this begs the questions:
    Is there some sort of utility out there that can attempt to repair what damage may have been done to my disk? Even if it found bad sectors, the only thing the fitness test I have will do is reset them all to 0's. I think that might do more harm than good at this point.
    Am I just going to have to wait to purchase a new hard-drive, re-install, then do a disk-recovery?
    Is there any sense to re-installing Windows XP over itself, is that even possible, or will that erase all of my personal files?

    What is "slip-streaming "?

    I did think to try connecting the hard-drive directly, without the use of the mobile-rack, & it yielded the exact same result, unfortunately.

    Here is the info from a data file I was able to write from the fitness test:
    Model : IC35L080AVVA07-0
    Serial no. : A4L10U2A
    Capacity : 82.35 GB
    Cache size : 1864 KB
    Microcode level : VA4OA52A4O
    ATA Compliance : ATA-5

    Ultra DMA
    Highest mode : 5
    Active mode : 5

    Settings
    Write cache : Disabled
    Read look-ahead : Enabled
    Auto reassign : Enabled
    S.M.A.R.T. operations : Disabled
    ABLE : Disabled
    AAM : Disabled
    Security feature : Supported
    Password : Not Set

    Thanx again for all of your help.
     
    Vektor,
    #3
  5. 2004/09/29
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    Vektor,

    That should be a IBM 120GXP, right?

    This story will probably not cheer You up but two days ago, I decided to defragment my BackUp harddisk. It is/was a IBM 60GXP, which some six months ago had been replaced as the Primary. I installed Diskeeper Lite and defragmented one out of two partitions. All went seemingly well but the next day, the computer didn't boot. It nagged about "non-system-disk ".

    I let WinXP do a disk check, which it automatically suggested when it didn't boot as it should. It found errors on F: but when it, at last, got started, it was slow and sluggish.
    With the BackUp drive powered off in the mobile rack, the Hitachi 7K250 booted normally.

    I ran the IBM DFT and it found corrupt sectors. I did an "Erase Disk" and it came out green and healthy. The system booted normally with the "blank" 60GXP connected. I continued to repartition as before and reformat. Towards the end of the procedure a red message came up, saying that format didn't complete but a few seconds later, it came up as 100% and healthy in Device Manager.

    Still no luck in having a normal boot and this time, WinXP found errors in G:. A renewed DFT followed and a renewed "Erase Disk ". This time, it ended with error 0x75 - Defective Device. Component Failure.

    Now, to Your questions:

    Each harddrive model has it own firmware which makes the utilities specific for a certain harddrive (or manufacturer). To my knowledge, there are no "general" utilities to do this. If IBM DFT can't do it, no other utility can.

    That would be a "Sector Repair" which will affect files that include one or more bad sectors. If You want to "save" the contents, a "Sector Repair" would give You some hope of critical files not being affected but from Your description, it doesn't seem likely. What I did, "Erase Disk ", is the worst You can do but may be the only thing there is to do in order to save the harddisk.

    If my "sweet story" came through, then You have come to the conlusion that saving that drive is not worth the effort. Leaving it as it is, may give You the opprtunity to connect it as a slave and retrieve Your data.

    Slipstreaming Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Create Bootable CD

    Finally, my recommendation is to buy not one but two new harddisks. One primary with at least two partitions for operating system and data. One slave with at least two partitions for backups and images of the system partition.

    I won't make any recommendation on which harddisk(s) to buy but I bought another Hitachi 7K250. Why did I do that? Am I asking for trouble or what?

    Well, reliability of obsolete models is a history lesson and all manufacturers have hade their ups and downs. I have built a few systems during the recent months, with varying hardware and the performance of the 7K250 is worth the risk ...... :confused: ...... if the risk is higher than for any other brand.

    Christer
     
    Christer,
    #4
  6. 2004/09/30
    Top Dog

    Top Dog Inactive

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    Personal Opinion on HD's

    I have had considerable bad experience (and I think Newt has also) about using IBM/Hitachi Deskstar HD's. I have personally had three home failures with these lemons. Thank goodness I kept full ghost backups.

    As far as I am concerned, I would never buy anything named DeskStar again.

    Good Luck
    Top Dog
     
    Top Dog,
    #5
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