Hard drive changed file systems?

[TerminatorXPS15]

Hey guys, my Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1 TB hard drive has somehow changed file systems from NTFS to RAW. I formatted the hard drive, and I re-installed things but I noticed that all downloads to the drive were getting corrupted. Then I was playing Bad Company 2 which is installed on this drive and it froze the entire computer. I reboot, and the drive has changed file systems again, back to RAW. What should I do, because this is getting frustrating.

 

[Paperdoc]

First of all, if you re-Formatted this drive already, I have to assume you do not need to save any data on it. You can afford to lose everything on it and you can restore whatever you need later. Right?

Almost always when a HDD Partition shows its File System as "RAW", it is because some small data bits are corrupted in the HDD's Partition Table or in the Partition's File System. If the corruption is in the File System, a Format operation will solve it because the entire system is re-written. If there were an error in the Partition Table then Format will NOT solve it. You would have to Delete any and all Partitions on the HDD, then Create a new Primary Partition and Format that. That process will re-write the MBR and Partition Table before re-writing the new File System to the new Partition.

HOWEVER, from your story it also is possible that there is actually a hardware flaw in a sector near the start of the HDD unit where all those critical system files are created, and that's why the data written there is corrupted again. You should download from Samsung a Hard Drive Diagnostic utility and test it thoroughly for hardware problems. If possible, see if you can find a utility that can do a true Zero-Fill of your entire HDD. This very definitely destroys ALL data on it. But it also can force the HDD's own on-board system to detect and replace any bad sectors, eliminating them as a cause. THEN you start fresh by Creating a Partition and Formatting it.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I noticed that all downloads to the drive were getting corrupted.

This can also be caused by faulty RAM or running your memory out of spec, i.e. overclocked. Try running memtest86+ to see if you have any faulty ram. If your system is overclocked, try running at stock speeds.

 

[TerminatorXPS15]

Best answer selected by TerminatorXPS15.