OT - Hard Drive Woes

TomG wrote on 4/14/2004, 8:30 AM
Hi Everybody,

My dedicated WD 200GB Video drive is causing me fits. About 65GB are unaccessible. My defragger (O&O Defrag V6) reports that the clusters are all at the end of the volume and are marked as "exclusively locked" by the system. The entire area is referenced as "\$BadClus:$Bad:$Data"...

Anyone ever had that problem before? Is there any way to fix this short of a reformat?

Thanks in advance,
TomG

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 4/14/2004, 9:10 AM
In XP, you can select the "Scan for, and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option in Scandisk.
rmack350 wrote on 4/14/2004, 9:38 AM
Sounds to me like your system won't support a disk larger than 137 GB. That's common in all but the newest systems. You may be able to divide it into two partitions? I don't really know but you should look around for posts on this issue. Look at the WD website. They must have some notes there.

Rob Mack
donp wrote on 4/14/2004, 9:51 AM
XP SP1 will support greater then 137 G. I use a Maxtor 160 and have also down loaded the "large Drive Enabler" from the Maxtor web site. also at the Toshiba/IBM web site you can get a program called "Drive Fitness Test" (DFT). I have it and have used it on numerous occaisions with no complaints.

Hope this is helpful.
patreb wrote on 4/14/2004, 10:19 AM
Or get RAID card -- it will extend your HD capability by 4 extra connections.
riredale wrote on 4/14/2004, 10:41 AM
I've been going through this ">137GB" issue too.

The very simplest solution is to buy one of those ATA controller cards that plugs into an empty PCI slot. Then plug your 200GB drive into it, instead of the ATA connection on your motherboard.

Look for text on the controller card box that says something like "48 bit LBA addressing" or "enables large disk support." These cards are very cheap, and in fact may large hard drives come bundled with such cards. The cards also allow for faster data transfers from card to disk, typically ATA100 or ATA133.

Otherwise, you will need to ensure that:

(a) your motherboard can handle >137GB drives,

(b) your BIOS can handle >137GB drives, and

(c) you have SP SP1 installed.

At least that's how I understand this stuff.
busterkeaton wrote on 4/14/2004, 10:41 AM
It may be a BIOS tweak that fixes it too. You should go the support web site of the hard drive and see what they say about drives over 137 gigs. It may send you to the Windows site, but it's something that should be fixed.
TomG wrote on 4/14/2004, 11:31 AM
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.... When I first installed the HD I was able to recognize all 200GB. I do have XP/SR1. It wasn't until just recently (around Feb and I got the HD last April) that I noticed the drop in free space.

When I run Scandisk and try to recover damaged sectors, I get a message stating that it could not complete the task (during Phase 5). I've never seen the "$BadClst.$Bad.$Data" reference before but it appears that something is screwed up with the FAT (or whatever NTFS calls it nowadays).

I'll try the drive/fitness test but I have already used the WD Data Guard utilities and it reported no problems although I think it is looking more at the physical rather than the logical properties.
Jameson_Prod wrote on 4/14/2004, 12:18 PM
Maybe I am missing something here......but why not copy the data from it and re-format? I have had crazy things happen from time to time and re-formating the disk has fixed 99% of them.....as long as the disk itself is not bad.

Have you scanned it with virus software? Just a thought.......

Good luck.
TomG wrote on 4/14/2004, 12:38 PM
Thanks, Dave

That's what I will try next. I did discover that I did not have the most recent fix to mky ATAPI.sys file to support 48-bit LBA so maybe I never really had full access to the 200GB HD. I do have SP-1, BIOS that will support the 48-bit LBA, and now the ATAPI fix. Unfortunately I have 110GB on that drive and my other HD only had 50GB free space. I guess I'll have to do some serious housekeeping, move the files, and they try the reformat.

TomG
TomG wrote on 4/15/2004, 7:04 AM
I fixed my problem and thought I would post in case someone does a future search.

While I THOUGHT I had a full 200GB on my WD available, I only had access to the first 137MB. After spending a day trying to find out why, and after many useful tips above, I discovered that the IDE controller that came with my HD did NOT have the XP driver loaded on my system. After reinstalling the proper driver, I had access to all but 76MB on the drive.

Good luck to anyone else experiencing the 137MB ceiling!!!

TomG
donp wrote on 4/15/2004, 11:50 AM
I believe I would still use the DFT to test the drive but since the bad cluster are at the end and not the front it may not be real critical.
BillyBoy wrote on 4/15/2004, 12:50 PM
If its not some issue witth the 137GB barrier, running ScanDisk would be my first choice to given Windows a chance to fix itself. Several months ago my system was very slow to boot, once it did it reported 'recovered from serious error' Howevery in recovering it erased some of my cookies, broke icons on the destop, annoying stuff like that. Anyhow I started up scandisk and while I forgot what exactly Windows said (something I never saw before) it reported something similar to what you saw then asked if it should try to fix it. I said go for it, and then it went into a screen I never saw before, the files were listed as it scanned them, this went on for a few seconds, then an even more weird messages came up, it appeared the system, hung but watching the drive access light every few minutes it binked, so I didn't bail out. Over an hour later Windows 'fixed' the problem How long it takes depends on the size of your drive, how full it is, etc..

Try Scandisk. Go to Windows Explorter, right click on the offending drive under properties, tools select error checking check BOTH options once the little window pops up then go to lunch or bed.