Hard Drives

[intrigued]

I have a few questions about the process of using a diagnostic tool to test my hard drive, as I received an "HDD error" early this morning that led me in circles and wouldn't boot my computer. Because I remembered a few things I've been taught, I removed my boot disc, rebooted, and windows loaded again. (Wouldn't do it the other 30 times I tried, when the disk was in the drive.)
Anyway, I went to the manufacturers website and they have a tool that tests the health of your hard drive. I winged my way through it, but wonder if I should test more than one drive? I tested C. Also, after it installed the tool, it asked me where to "unpack" it (folders??) I chose C drive. So, when it tested, it said to highlight what I wanted to test, and the only option it gave me to highlight was "Physical Drive O" Did I test the right thing? And should I test some other drive? It said I passed, and that my HD was functioning properly, yet these incessant problems keep occuring!

Thank you.

PS: in the process of trial and error this morning, when I gave the command to list the directory of C, Windows wasn't in it. (This was when windows wouldn't load.) Shouldn't it be there?

 

[ma_guy]

Drive letters are assigned by the Operating system (Windows in your case). The letters represent "logical" drives. i.e. what you see as representations of seperate drives. You can actually have several drive letters assigned to one physical drive.

The physical drives (the piece of hardware you can hold in your hand) are assinged Physical Drive Numbers by the BIOS. The 1st hard drive is assigned the number "0" (zero).

Most people only have one physical hard drive and only have one partition so Physical drive "0" and logical drive "C" are one in the same. You should run periodic tests (every 6 months or so..) on every hard drive in your system if you have more than one. You only need to run it on hard drives though. Not on floppies or CD-ROMs.

And umm.. Yes, you should have a "Windows" or "WinNT" folder on your boot drive. The directory on your drive may have been corrupted so the Windows directory wasn't showing. Since the PC couldn't find it in the directory, it couldn't find the programs within that folder to run and start Windows for you. Apparently in rebooting at some point the corrupted directory was fixed and you were able to kick into Windows.

 

[DarkAngel]

Well intrigued,

The answer to this would depend on many different parts of questions needed to be asked.

the first question to ask before trying to explain how to locate and fix the problem is what versionof windows are you running on that machine?

 

[estevie]

That drive from Michigan to Florida that one year was a freakin' bitch.

 

[intrigued]

Thanks...I'm running 98 SE.

I'm trying to get it to test another drive, but can't remember how to change it.

Trail reminded me that in the wee hours of the morning, we think I saw Windows in B drive, but I just can't remember. Ugh!

estevie, yeah, that drive is kicking me in the butt!

 

[DarkAngel]

Thanks...I'm running 98 SE.

I'm trying to get it to test another drive, but can't remember how to change it.

Trail reminded me that in the wee hours of the morning, we think I saw Windows in B drive, but I just can't remember. Ugh!

estevie, yeah, that drive is kicking me in the butt!

So I take it that you have to physical hard drives.

(1) Being used now
(2) You wish to test?

 

[intrigued]

So I take it that you have to physical hard drives.

(1) Being used now
(2) You wish to test?

No, I only have one. And heck if I know what I want to do, and heres why. I think what ma_guy said in his last paragraph is probably what happened because this morning, Windows was not in C drive, yet when I looked right now, it was.
What is so odd to me is that a few weeks ago when it lost its boot record, I had to use the boot disk and enter a command to get it to reboot. I have had the disk in the computer all this time, and its worked fine.
Last weekend, it was removed so my son could load a story from his computer to mine, and thats the first time it was removed. All week its been fine without it.
Yesterday the computer started PMSing and I had to shut down. When I rebooted, it took several attempts because it would start to boot then stop, so I kept rebooting. Finally, it loaded in Safe Mode, which wouldn't allow me to connect to the internet. It was then that I remembered the disk was out so I put it back in. The rest of the evening, it did fine. When I went to bed, everything was still open (sites, etc.) but ofcourse, I was not connected. At 4 am, the groaning and grinding noises it started making woke me up, and when I looked at the screen, it was the black screen you get whern you turn it on, and it had a message that basically said "HDD error, press F1 to resume". Thats when I listed the dir for C, and windows was not there. Trail told me to take the boot disk out, and thats when all of a sudden, it booted and loaded windows.

I have no clue.

If I have a HDD error, why does the diagnostic test say my hard drive is functioning properly? (Well, on C)

 

[His_kitty]

I hope that he hasn't already left Intrigued, because he knows what he's talking about.


(hugs) I hope that it gets fixed.

 

[intrigued]

Thank you, kitty! I really don't know what to think anymore, nothing makes sense. I do everything I can think of to maintain it and yet it keeps up with these black screens and blinking cursors, not loading windows, telling me I have errors then telling me I don't.
Its like everything else lately...I'm at the mercy of something else. Ugh.

Thank you, again. Lovely av! (And a new ID. This isn't part of this twilight zone I'm in, is it???)

 

[His_kitty]

Thank you, kitty! I really don't know what to think anymore, nothing makes sense. I do everything I can think of to maintain it and yet it keeps up with these black screens and blinking cursors, not loading windows, telling me I have errors then telling me I don't.
Its like everything else lately...I'm at the mercy of something else. Ugh.

Thank you, again. Lovely av! (And a new ID. This isn't part of this twilight zone I'm in, is it???)

If he's already gone and you don't get help from anyone else over the weekend, I'll remind him about this thread on Monday.

lol.. I'm sentimental and silly, I joined Lit a year ago today so I changed clothing for the occasion. Tomorrow I go back to being just plain ole kitty again.

 

[intrigued]

If he's already gone and you don't get help from anyone else over the weekend, I'll remind him about this thread on Monday.

lol.. I'm sentimental and silly, I joined Lit a year ago today so I changed clothing for the occasion. Tomorrow I go back to being just plain ole kitty again.

lol, no what I meant was more like "I'm not imagining the new ID, am I???" Congratulations, and whatever the reason, thats a beautiful av.



I ain't fit to post!!

 

[His_kitty]

lol, no what I meant was more like "I'm not imagining the new ID, am I???" Congratulations, and whatever the reason, thats a beautiful av.



I ain't fit to post!!

LOL

I understood what you said, I'm the one who has trouble communicating today.

Clothing as in Id. The av I took last week along with a few others for my pic thread thingamiiggy. But thank you.

K I think I need to go take a nap or something.. lol

 

[ma_guy]

The disk diagnostics looks at whether or not the hardware is functioning properly. In your case it seems that the drive is working correctly from a mechanical and electrical perspective however, some of the data stored on the drive is corrupted and the diagnostics won't catch that.

You are using a boot disk because your Master Boot Record (which is a part of the directory structure on the drive) is corrupted. The first thing you need to do is get that fixed so you can quit using that boot disk.

With your system up and running go to the C:\windows\command\ directory and run type in "fdisk /mbr"<enter> (leave the quotes out.) That will rebuild the Master Boot Record and you should be able to boot off of the hard drive without the boot disk at that point.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=69013

btw, I'd guess that all that grinding you heard in the middle of the night was due to a power bump. If you left the system on and power dropped out for a few seconds the system was trying to restart itself and you heard it grinding through all the drives and trying to boot off of your boot floppy.

From the sound of things the long term solution to your problems are to reformat that hard drive and reinstall your software. Windows isn't graceful at recovering after system crashs. You'd think Microsoft could do better after all these years.

 

[intrigued]

LOL

I understood what you said, I'm the one who has trouble communicating today.

Clothing as in Id. The av I took last week along with a few others for my pic thread thingamiiggy. But thank you.

K I think I need to go take a nap or something.. lol

We seem to be in the same place tonight. I think its time for the only thing I'm fit for...Rum.

I didn't realize you had a pic thread, cool! I sure do miss mine.

 

[intrigued]

The disk diagnostics looks at whether or not the hardware is functioning properly. In your case it seems that the drive is working correctly from a mechanical and electrical perspective however, some of the data stored on the drive is corrupted and the diagnostics won't catch that.

You are using a boot disk because your Master Boot Record (which is a part of the directory structure on the drive) is corrupted. The first thing you need to do is get that fixed so you can quit using that boot disk.

With your system up and running go to the C:\windows\command\ directory and run type in "fdisk /mbr"<enter> (leave the quotes out.) That will rebuild the Master Boot Record and you should be able to boot off of the hard drive without the boot disk at that point.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=69013

btw, I'd guess that all that grinding you heard in the middle of the night was due to a power bump. If you left the system on and power dropped out for a few seconds the system was trying to restart itself and you heard it grinding through all the drives and trying to boot off of your boot floppy.

From the sound of things the long term solution to your problems are to reformat that hard drive and reinstall your software. Windows isn't graceful at recovering after system crashs. You'd think Microsoft could do better after all these years.

Ok, I've done the mbr command thing, about a month ago. Thats what my last computer thread was about that Trail started. Once we did that, all was well, until yesterday. And what I'm saying is that once I took the disk out this morning, it rebooted and loaded windows on its own, no commands needed.

The HD is about three years old, and has been reformatted once, about 8 months ago. It was a very painful thing. I didn't do it myself (obviously, lol) so I have no clue how to do it, but it seems I'm headed that way again. And I have nothing to back up anything on here with.

*waves bye bye to all my pics"

 

[ma_guy]

Sweet Jesus! NOT THE PICS!

CD-ROM burners are pretty cheap...

 

[intrigued]

Sweet Jesus! NOT THE PICS!

CD-ROM burners are pretty cheap...

*snort*



LOL, that is not what I expected!!

I know its silly, but the pics and the thread, all of it, well, it just became special to me.

Are they easy to use?

 

[Soblue]

Hi girly

Why don't you upload the pics into a yahoo or MSN account so you don't lose them. You can store other files there too as a back up.

Or you can email them to yourself or someone else for safekeeping.

Sounds like you might need a new hard drive Intrigued, but good luck either way

 

[ma_guy]

[BAre they easy to use? [/B]

Very easy to use. And you can find them for under $40. If you can use a floppy disk you can use a CD-burner.

 

[Spenser41]

Hi
I read your post and I just wanted to say I am a computer tech and I might be able to help you but, to be honest, the best thing you should do, is back up your files to a CD or floppies and take it into a shop where they can run a test on the drive. It could be many reasons for this and just to be honest, unless you really know how your computer is setup, you have to be careful what you are doing with the hard drive. But if you would like for me to talk you thru some stuff, PM me.

 

[intrigued]

Hi girly

Why don't you upload the pics into a yahoo or MSN account so you don't lose them. You can store other files there too as a back up.

Or you can email them to yourself or someone else for safekeeping.

Sounds like you might need a new hard drive Intrigued, but good luck either way

Hi blue! I've done that already...I have 3 sites that I store pics on, but its only some of my faves and they were picked a long time after I started my thread. (The thread is gone now, so all I have left to pick from is on my HD) But theres atleast a couple hundred more on my HD that I need to sort through just to decide if I want to keep them or not, and then load them. I was kind of hoping for an easier way, without going through each and every one. I was hoping to save them all.
Every time Trail resizes a pic for me, I save the email, but thats something I only started doing in the last couple months. So, its not so bad, I do have probably 50 saved elsewhere, its just that I've lost so much of them already, and I dread all the work involved. I'm just thankful I got back in, and for now, I've been saving some here and there.
Nice hearing from you, I hope you're doing well!

ma_guy, well that sounds perfect, thank you! And thank you for sharing your knowledge and time with me. I've been at this all day, and now I can't even concentrate on it anymore. I'll start on it again tomorrow, providing it lets me back in.

Thanks everyone for the help.

 

[intrigued]

Hi
I read your post and I just wanted to say I am a computer tech and I might be able to help you but, to be honest, the best thing you should do, is back up your files to a CD or floppies and take it into a shop where they can run a test on the drive. It could be many reasons for this and just to be honest, unless you really know how your computer is setup, you have to be careful what you are doing with the hard drive. But if you would like for me to talk you thru some stuff, PM me.

Hi Spenser, thank you! I'll try the CD's, and I'm planning on allowing someone to just replace the HD for me. I went through all this because I wanted to be certain that is what I need to do, and that its not some other problem. But now I'm so confused that I'm just surrendering.
If I may contact you during this process, well, that would be wonderful.

Thanks very much.

 

[sufisaint]

hi

 

[intrigued]

hi

Hi, sweet thing.

Doing good?

 

[sufisaint]

Better...finally..you?