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You should also try the HDD manufacturer's site for their tool, and check out what warranty they give. It would not be the first time I have found a drive with a three year manufacturer's warranty in a PC that only had a one year warranty ;)
I believe that the Gateway tool can be used to just do an analysis. It will only attempt write tests and overwrite with zeros if you tell it to.
all right,
i managed to get the windows up and working
"IN YOUR FACE PCWORLD"
"WHOS YOUR DADDY"
used this tool from seagate.
now for the results,
it did find a lot of errors in the hhd. i mean a lot of them....
ran the scan disk, surprisingly it ran with the windows running. usually it asks for a restart and then runs. it went all the way till phase 4, never had seen it go past phase 2 before. it gets stuck in the middle of phase 4. guess its trying to repair or do something there. but still gets stuck.
still trying to isolate/ repair the bad sectors
any tools, anybody?
got loads of info from the antionline archives on how to deal with bad sectors
they suggest a couple of things
try.....
windoctor
hhd regenerator
anybody tried them?
Personally, I'd look into finding a cheap replacement HDD and save what I wanted off of the old one before it bit the dust.
full back up already taken.
its all coming clear to me now
windows+bad sectors=shutdown+total loss of data
gateway people told me to run "format C: \s\c" saying that it will format everything again and put the bad sectors in one corner. thus preventing windows to write on it.
this command line was not there in the archives (can help in the future)
Hi there bagggi , I did suggest that the HDD manufacturer's tools are frequently the best option?
Have you checked the HDD manufacturer's warranty? I have had at least a dozen cases of the HDD still being under warranty when the PC was not ;)
As you are in the UK, please remember that it is frequently cheaper to use "Special Delivery" than "Insured Post" as SD has an automatic insurance up to £150..............I come from Yorkshire, so if I can save the price of a pint of beer, I will.
Now, to your question: HDD Regenerator is good software and works pretty well. It is rather expensive and really is only justifiable for people such as myself, who do this sort of thing fairly frequently.
It takes a long time to run, but uses complex algorithms to correct "magnetic write errors" which a lot of software would incorrectly identify as physical damage. It is my favourite tool if the HDD problems have come after a thunderstorm, power out, spike or brownout............what I generically refer to as "electronic events". They frequently cause crap to be written to the HDD, which is then misinterpreted as physical damage.
If your drive actually does have physical problems then the only solution is to replace it; as this sort of thing is just going to keep repeating itself. :(
Cheers,