Hard drive corrupt at every reboot

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

The cause of disk failure is never clear. Your symptoms have been evident on several PCs I support after recent electrical storms. Thus one concludes that there was not sufficient power surge protection for the PCs.

What is certain, sadly for you, is that your hard disk will not magically fix itself, nor will scan disk, check disk or any utility program from a 3rd party vendor.

Take the time now, before its too late to go and buy a new hard drive. Make sure its compatible with your motherboard and have your current drive imaged to the new one. Some retail packaged drives have disk imaging software that is included. I have personally used the Maxtor product with great success. It has exellent instructions and a well written manual for the noovie user.

Go for one that has a bootable CD / Floppy and will allow you to create a partition and format the drive, plus image your old drive. Do not try to do this in XP cfasue you may find errors with drive letter assignments.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

"Jon Davis" <jon@REMOVE.ME.jondavis.net> wrote in message
news:%23JmALEhOEHA.624@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>snip>

What is the cause of this? I've checked the voltage going to the power
> supply, it's 117 volts, which is fine. I have not yet checked the voltage
> going into the hard drive from the power supply, but I don't know how to
do
> that.
>
> Anything else I can do? I am stumped!
>
> Jon
>

Maybe your hard drive is, in fact, going bad?


--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Why would it work fine during normal use, but then go bad @ reboot?

Jon

"Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:%23DxpaUhOEHA.2952@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>
>
> "Jon Davis" <jon@REMOVE.ME.jondavis.net> wrote in message
> news:%23JmALEhOEHA.624@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> >snip>
>
> What is the cause of this? I've checked the voltage going to the power
> > supply, it's 117 volts, which is fine. I have not yet checked the
voltage
> > going into the hard drive from the power supply, but I don't know how to
> do
> > that.
> >
> > Anything else I can do? I am stumped!
> >
> > Jon
> >
>
> Maybe your hard drive is, in fact, going bad?
>
>
> --
> Regards:
>
> Richard Urban
>
> aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
>
>

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I not only have surge protection but in fact I have a UPS.

If you think the hard drive has "gone out", why would it work fine during
normal use for days, but then go bad at reboot?

Jon


"BAR" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6E748073-BFDD-4D98-98E9-5F7D3D41BB88@microsoft.com...
> The cause of disk failure is never clear. Your symptoms have been evident
on several PCs I support after recent electrical storms. Thus one concludes
that there was not sufficient power surge protection for the PCs.
>
> What is certain, sadly for you, is that your hard disk will not magically
fix itself, nor will scan disk, check disk or any utility program from a 3rd
party vendor.
>
> Take the time now, before its too late to go and buy a new hard drive.
Make sure its compatible with your motherboard and have your current drive
imaged to the new one. Some retail packaged drives have disk imaging
software that is included. I have personally used the Maxtor product with
great success. It has exellent instructions and a well written manual for
the noovie user.
>
> Go for one that has a bootable CD / Floppy and will allow you to create a
partition and format the drive, plus image your old drive. Do not try to do
this in XP cfasue you may find errors with drive letter assignments.
>
>

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I assume you are talking about a cold boot (power turned
off, then on) verses a warm boot (OS reboots while computer
remains powered). Upon power up, a disk drive's computer does
an automatic reset. This in response to the 5 volts rising
from 0 to 5. On warm reboot, the disk drive computer must be
issued a command to reset itself. Note the different ways a
disk drive might be initialized.

Ok. Your drive will reset itself when 5 volts goes from 0
to 5. But will not properly reset when issued software
commands to reset. This is only a possibility and not the
only reason for your symptoms.

As for that UPS - it and those power strip surge protectors
contain same surge protector circuits. Neither claims to
protect from a destructive type of surge. They simply claim
to be surge protectors and leave you to *assume* that is for
all types of surges.

Any protection effective at the computer must already be
inside the computer. Internal protection that also assumes a
destructive type of surge will be earthed before entering the
building. Note the most critical component in any surge
protection *system*. Earthing. Since neither that UPS nor
power strip claims such protection, then they also avoid all
discussion about earthing.

Then there are those who recommend plug-in surge protectors
only because of word association. Protector must be
protection. Wrong. Shunt mode protector is a device that
only distributes a surge to all other wires during that
surge. Protection is single point earth ground. Effective
protector must connect less than 10 feet to protection. Just
another fact those manufacturers forget to mention. No earth
ground means no effective protection from destructive type of
surges. Furthermore effective 'whole house' protectors cost
tens of times less money per protected appliance.

As for that disk drive, first run manufacturer's
comprehensive diagnostic (but do not execute any write
functions) to learn about anomalies in hardware. Without hard
facts, then responses can only be speculation.


Jon Davis wrote:
> I not only have surge protection but in fact I have a UPS.
>
> If you think the hard drive has "gone out", why would it work
> fine during normal use for days, but then go bad at reboot?
>
> Jon

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I have had problems similar to those you describe, though not quite so
severe, which I eventually tracked down to a bad SRAM DIMM (a number
of bits were stuck "on"). Presumably the bad RAM chip resulted in bad
data being written to the drive. Worth checking!

On Fri, 14 May 2004 17:10:40 -0700, "Jon Davis"
<jon@REMOVE.ME.jondavis.net> wrote:

>I have a workstation I built with Windows XP Pro running on it. Every time I
>reboot, before rebooting everything is a-ok, but after rebooting it starts
>up with the hard drive corrupted. I have to make sometimes as many as four
>passes of bootup disk check (a reboot each time) before I can get it to boot
>successfully without errors. Repeat at next manual reboot... !
>
>What is the cause of this? I've checked the voltage going to the power
>supply, it's 117 volts, which is fine. I have not yet checked the voltage
>going into the hard drive from the power supply, but I don't know how to do
>that.
>
>Anything else I can do? I am stumped!
>
>Jon
>

Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher