Hard drive failure

[pscraja1]

Hardware/ Hard drive

Just after a year's life, suddenly my primary master Seagate 8Gb hard disk drive developed problems.

To start with, it was taking a long time to seek.
On the second day, I was not able to read one of the partitions.
On the third day, I was not able to read one more partition.
Since the problem started spreading, I went to a service engineer to check the condition of the disk if it is infected with any virus and restore the disk.

He told me that it has a lot of bad sectors and advised me to replace the disk,which I did. If the system had developed bad sectors, will it spread to the entire drive even when the system is idle at such a fast speed? From my old drive, I could restore only 20% of the contents of the disk in MSDOS mode using NC. It was unable to read the rest.

I tried to reformat using fdisk and Disk Manager of Seagate but it was not responding. Is there any possibility to get that the drive reformatted again and use it? What software should be used.

Can someone throw some light on how to restore the disk

[Gallaeglagh]

It should still be under warranty - return it from where you bought it, if not you're probably out of luck

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Indecision may or may not be my problem

[diurnal]

R. Hard drive recovery: www.startdisk.com (http://www.startdisk.com)
S. Connectivity: 1.hard drive error
2.no fixed disk present
3.HDD controller failure
4.no boot disk available
5.drive not found
T. Cmos errors: 1.CMOS configuration mismatched
2.No boot disk available
3.Drive not found
4.missing OS
U. Fixing problems: 1set CMOS setting to Auto detect
2.New HDD
3.drive needs to be connected
4.cable bad
5.New hard drive controller
V. Partitions: 1.Invalid drive specification
FIX: repartition
W. Format: 1.drive inaccessible
2.invalid media type
FIX: reformat hard drive
X. Corrupted Data: 1.following file is missing or corrupt
2. Download location is damage
3.unable to find file
4.Corrupted core boot files: 1.cannot find command.com
2.error loading OS
3invalid(boot .ini)
FIX: run check disk and should recover data (scandisk) note: turn off screen saver while scanning
Y. Finding config files(ex: missing Olepro32.dll)
1:set to dos prompt
2: type in extract/Y/A Win98_21.CAB OLEPRO32.DLL
Z. Finding config files in Windows 2000:1 Get to command prompt by START/RUN and type in CMD missing MWWDM.SYS
2.Type in (Expand x:\1386\*. CAB-F: MWWDM.SYS C:\)
3.when locates it finds it and expands it to /c: drive
A. Bad boot sectors: 1. Invalid partition
3. Bad or missing command interpreter
FIX: 1. Run anti virus software
3. Make a backup with ultimate boot disk, then simply boot off the disk and reinstall the MBR
4. Lastly you can get to a: prompt and type in FDISK/MBR
B. Corrupted data on bad sectors: 1 still getting errors
FIX: 1. Run Spinrite utility from Gibson Research
2.Spinrite marks all sectors that are bad and recovers data lost
3.other programs wipe out bad sectors yet erasing all data
C. Bad Drive: 1. Hard drive makes no sound
2.Spinrite keeps on locking up

Letters mean problem, numbers are fixes

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Sledgehammer will save the day!

[mjc]

If that drive has developed bad sectors then there is physical damage to it and if the damage is still increasing then it will not be useable again.....

Replace it, under warranty....

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.