Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

[Logistics]

Well, I was playing MP3's while allowing 7zip to unpack a HUGE file onto the desktop. (probably 2 or 3 gigs) and the system locked, but was stuck in a continuous read or something. So I reset it and now I can't enter Windows even in Safe Mode. The only reason this worries me is that I had alot of stuff on the desktop. I can't remember if you can access what is on the desktop if you stick the drive in another system. I would try it right now, but I don't think this old BH6 supports the 60GB drive or whatever it is.

Anyway, anyone else had something like this happen?

[dingo99]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

Assuming it's not a hardware problem, I have seen cases where the filesystem gets corrupted in such a way that the system becomes unbootable. You could try booting into the recovery console using your Windows CD, then running chkdsk on the drive. Or put the drive into another system and run chkdsk from there. That's usually enough to get the system booting again.

[Logistics]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

Sweet, thanks! I'll give it a try and see what happens.

[Tom41]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

If you do put the drive in another system, Windows based systems can usually be set to ignore the user permissions on drives that are not the boot drive. You should be able to go into the desktop folder on that HDD if you put it in another machine as a secondary IDE HDD.
Just be glad it's not a UNIX-based filesystem; the permissions and user name privileges carry over if you put the HDD into another machine! I had problems with that when I put the IDE HDD from my old web server into the new Mac server - I couldn't access the files on the old HDD without being root due to the UID groups being different. Eventually I had to create new user accounts with the same names and UID numbers so I could access the files through the GUI, rather than having to use sudo all the time

Did your HDD make any unusual noises before the system froze? Was it 'clicking' and spinning down, then spinning up again in the middle of Windows? That happened once to a server of mine, and the HDD itself crashed (scraped platters) a few days later. Sorry about the low quality; it was taken with a webcam

[Paul S]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

You could download and run a Linux "Live" CD. You would boot from the disk, and if the hard drive is still readable, it should be able to read it.

A small Live CD is SLAX
http://www.slax.org/

[starfury1]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

I hate it when things like this happen

So sounds as if 2 things trying to access the hard have gotten confused in the OS and wamo
normally I never trust doing things like that, ideally they should work but a lot of time its results in whats happened to you.

in short if I am unpacking I let it unpack especially a big file like that anyway

I am a bit surprised widows didn't jump into a chkdsk/scandisk (and thats what I would run first) when you re booted but since it didn't and you cant boot it I am thinking a more serious file error may have happen to the HDD structure.
(not a guru so don't know whats liable to have gotten corrupted)

Also was it winXP (I think thats what you run) and if so what was the file system FAT32 or NTFS


If you have anything really critical you dont want to lose
(and probably may not work due to the corruption)

I would try it in another system and if you have anything important get it off if you can before running any repair proggies

it may not work and you may be stuck having to try a repair first....it might be fine after the repair but will probably have some corruption somewhere and some files lost. might have cross linked file or lost chains

Sometimes rewriting the MBR "master boot record" fixes them.
(how you do that now... fat32 ...Fdisk /mbr)
but I vaguely remember some controversy from people about using that
(can't recall the story now or exactly what it was in reference to)

Anyway quote from the site below and do at your own risk! if nothing else works like a chkdsk/ scandisk first

The simplest way to repair or re-create MBR is to run Microsoft's standard utility called FDISK with a parameter /MBR, like

A:\> FDISK.EXE /MBR

FDISK is a standard utility included in MS-DOS, Windows 95, 98, ME.

If you have Windows NT / 2000 / XP, you can boot from startup floppy disks or CD-ROM, choose repair option during setup, and run Recovery Console. When you are logged on, you can run FIXMBR command to fix MBR.

anyway got my fingers crossed for you and Hoping a chkdsk/ scandisk will sort it for you .

really hope its not a HW fault but got a feeling most likely some sort of SW file corruption. like dingo99 said

I think these days its a very good option to do an image of the drive and keep data and program separated for easier backup

Here's a site on file systems so you know what I am talking about, I found it on a quick search seems to have what you would need to know about them

Lastly if the drive has seen a lot of action it might be time if the recovery works to image it to a new one and retire it

Now was this the one you not long ago reinstalled everything on...think it was you but I could have the wrong forum member here

HTH Cheers and good luck

[bgavin]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

I strongly encourage you to put the drive on the secondary IDE channel, to avoid confusing windows when it finds multiple paging files on different drives.

The ideal way to do this, is build a BART-PE cdrom, leave the drive in the machine, and fix it there.

Some volumes get so trashed, that BART (and Windows) will not run. The solution is NTFS4DOS, and use their Chkdsk program.

[nag]
When you get it all running again... this is a wake-up call to add a 2nd drive for data backups.
[/nag]

[Logistics]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

Yay, I put it in the project system and it was able to recognize the 80GB. I guess BH6's are not that old. Anyway, chkdsk'ing it fixed it and although the file it crashed on got corrupted, the original file pack wasn't damaged at all so I just unzipped the file over again. (>^_^)> <(^_^)> <(^_^<) Party with Kirby, everyone!

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Oh, schnapps! HD Crash.

Test it with HDAT2 and see if there are any bad sectors. You can also read the SMART log and see if there were any read errors or reallocated sectors.