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Repairing Hard Disk Problems

By: Brien M. Posey, MCSE

Whether they occur on a server or on a workstation, hard disk problems are never a welcome occurrence. Unfortunately, when hard disk problems do occur, many people simply use Scan Disk to try to repair the problem. While Scan Disk isn’t a bad tool, it may not always be the right tool for the job. Remember that there are many different types of hard disk failures ranging anywhere from extremely minor to a total loss situation. Even if Scan Disk does prove to be the right tool for the job, you can actually make your problems worse by using Scan Disk incorrectly. In this article series, I’ll discuss some of the various types of hard disk failures. As I do, I’ll explain how to go about repairing them.

Before You Begin

Before I get started with the various repair procedures, there are a few things that I need to point out. First of all, this article assumes that you’re working in a Windows 9x environment (windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME), and that none of the system’s damaged partitions are formatted as NTFS. The article also assumes that you’re system uses IDE hard drives. If you are working with a different version of windows, an NTFS partition, or a SCSI hard drive, then the repair process may be very different from those described in this article. Therefore, in these situations, don’t try to repair the system using these procedures or you’ll risk making the existing damage even worse.

Physical vs. Logical Failures

The first step in recovering from a hard disk failure is to diagnose the nature of the failure. There are two basic types of hard disk failures, physical failures and logical failures. Physical hard disk failures are the type of failures in which something is physically wrong with the hard drive itself. Symptoms of such a failure may include a grinding or clicking sound. It’s also possible that the hard drive may not make any noise at all or that the computer doesn’t even acknowledge the hard drive’s existence.

A logical failure is the type of failure in which there’s nothing physically wrong with the drive itself. However, the information stored on the hard drive is in bad shape. This is the type of failure that you’d normally repair by using a tool such as Scan Disk.

Physical Failures

When you get ready to repair a physical hard drive failure, the first thing that you need to determine is whether or not your system acknowledges the drive’s existence. If the failed drive happens to be the second drive in a system and Windows is still functional, you can check to see if the system can communicate with the drive by simply going into My Computer and taking a look. Normally you won’t be that lucky though.

In a physical failure situation, the first thing that you’ll want to do is to turn the failed system off. Remember that if the drive is physically damaged, then there may not be much life left in the drive. You will want to preserve the drive as best you can for the recovery task at hand.

The next step in recovering the drive is to go to a different PC and create a boot disk that you can use to repair the failed system. To do so, boot the system to Windows, insert a blank, formatted, floppy disk, open a command prompt window, and enter the following commands:

SYS A:

EXIT

Entering these commands will tell Windows to make the disk bootable. Once you have a bootable disk, you need to copy a few files to it that will aide you in the recovery process. I recommend copying the following files from the \WINDOWS\COMMAND directory:

FDISK.EXE

FORMAT.COM

XCOPY.EXE

SCANDISK.EXE

SCANDISK.INI

SCANDISK.ALT

ATTRIB.EXE

When you’ve copied the necessary files to your boot disk, take the boot disk and insert into the failed machine. Now, power up the failed machine and allow it to boot from the floppy that you created. The system will boot to a DOS prompt. At this point, enter the FDISK command. If you’re unfamiliar with FDISK, then be sure to follow my instructions exactly. The FDISK program has the ability to completely destroy what ever information might be left on the ailing hard drive. In this particular operation, we’re using FDISK simply to gather information, not to make any changes to the hard drive.

The exact process that you’ll use with FDISK depends largely on how many hard drives that the system has. When FDISK starts, you’ll be asked if you wish to enable large disk support. Answer Yes (remember that we’re not making any changes to the hard drive). At this point, you’ll see the FDISK program’s main menu. The first thing that you’ll need to check for is the existence of a menu option number 5. If option 5 exists then your system contains multiple hard drives. In such a case, select option number 5 and select the hard drive that you want to work with.

Now, select option number 4 to display the partition or logical DOS drive information for the failed drive. If you are able to get some partition information through this option, then there are a few things that you can safely assume. First, the system is able to communicate with the failed drive. Second, the partition structure is still intact. Finally, the logical drive mappings still exist.

If, on the other hand, FDISK didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the hard drive, let alone display partition information, then the problems that you’re having are communication related. For what ever reason, your computer is completely unable to talk to the hard drive, and for all practical purposes, doesn’t even know that it exists.

To repair such a problem, turn off and unplug your computer and remove the cover. There are two wires going to the hard drive. The first is a power cord and the second is a data ribbon. Be sure that both of these wires are securely attached to the hard drive. Many times the vibration from the hard drive can cause a loose cable to vibrate off (or partially off) causing a hard drive failure. You should also make sure that the data cable (also known as an IDE cable) is securely fastened to the system board. If the IDE cable is disconnected, then you’ll have to make sure to reconnect it in the right direction. You’ll notice that one side of the cable has a stripe on it (usually red). The stripe matches up to the pin marked Pin 1 on the system board. On the hard drive itself, the stripe faces the power cable.

Once you’ve checked the cables, be sure that you’re clear of the system, plug it back in and turn it on. Listen for the hard drive to spin up. If you hear the hard drive making noise, it’s a good indication that the drive is getting power and that the motors are still good. If the hard drive doesn’t spin up, try using a different power cable. Most computers have at least one spare power cable that you can use. If you don’t have a spare power cable or if the drive still refuses to spin up, try temporarily placing the drive into a different computer. If the drive spins up in a different computer, then you’ve got a problem with the power supply in your original computer. If the drive still refuses to spin up, then your hard drive is either cracked, or has a bad motor. There are data recovery labs that can repair such a problem, but they are extremely expensive. Therefore, unless your data is absolutely critical, you’re usually better off cutting your losses and getting a new hard drive.

Now, let’s assume that your hard drive spins up, but your computer still doesn’t recognize it. There are a couple of things that could cause such a problem. The most common cause is that the IDE cable is loose or is facing the wrong direction. Verify the snugness and polarity of your IDE cable and try it again. If the system still doesn’t recognize the hard drive then the problem could be a bad IDE cable or a bad IDE controller. Most computers have a second IDE controller, so try plugging the drive into an alternate controller to see if things go any better. If you can’t seem to get results with a spare cable or an alternate controller, check the system’s CMOS settings. Some older computers require you to manually specify the number of heads, cylinders, etc. for a hard disk. If everything seems to be OK, but the drive is still failing, then try checking the drive’s jumpers to make sure that the hard drive is set for the appropriate role (master, slave, or stand alone). Finally, if all else fails, try inserting the hard drive into a different computer. It could be that the hard disk itself is fine, but there may be a problem with the system board on the failing system.

OK, so now Windows is recognizing the hard drive’s existence, but what if you’re having one of those other physical problems that I described, such as a scraping or grinding sound? That sound that you’re hearing is metal scraping against metal. It’s usually caused either by the hard drive experiencing a shock or by the aging process. If the sound is a grinding or a scraping, it’s usually the noise of the heads moving across the drive’s readable surface. If the sound is a clicking then it can be the sound of the drive’s gears stripping out. In either case, the sound isn’t good news. These sounds are usually an indication of inevitable, total, and unrecoverable failure. Therefore, you’ll need to move any salvageable data off of the failing hard drive and onto a new hard drive as quickly as possible.

The best method of making this move is to daisy chain a new hard drive to the failing one. Remember that you’ll have to set the jumpers to indicate each drive’s master / slave role. Once you’ve connected a new hard drive to the old one, boot the system using the disk that you created earlier and enter the FDSIK command. When FDISK starts, tell it that you want to enable support for large hard drives. Now, use option number 5 to select the new hard drive. After doing so, use option number 1 to recreate the partition structure found on the old drive. There must be at least as many partitions on the new hard disk as the old one, and each partition must be at least as large as its counterpart on the old hard drive. When you’ve created the new partitions, make note of the drive letters that FDISK has assigned to them, and reboot your system.

Now, use the FORMAT command to format the new partitions. For example, if a new partition was mapped as the D: drive, you’d enter FORMAT D:.

When you’ve formatted your new partitions, it’s time to move the data from the old drive to the new drive. To do so, you’ll use the XCOPY command. For the purposes of this example, I’m moving data from the C: drive to the D: drive. If your drive letters are different then you’ll substitute the drive letters that I’ve used here. To move the data use the following commands:

ATTRIB C:\*.* /S -S –H -R

XCOPY C:\*.* D: /A /S /E

It’s important to point out that this process can take a really long time to complete. The number of files on the old drive and the level of fragmentation play a big part in the amount of time that it will take. Soft sectors also play a big role in the process. Soft sectors are sectors that aren’t completely bad, but that require numerous retries to read successfully. It’s also possible depending on the amount of damage to the drive that you may have to manually press a key to retry the copy process or ignore damage within a severely damaged file. Therefore, make sure that you occasionally check up on the copy process since it may occasionally require user intervention.

When the copy process completes, remove the old hard drive and set the jumpers on the new hard drive to make it the master drive. Boot off of the boot disk, run FDISK and use option number 2 to make your primary partition active (this partition is now the C: drive). Now, try booting your system from the new drive. If the system won’t boot, reboot from your boot disk and enter the following command:

SYS C:

Now, the system should be able to boot from the hard disk.

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve introduced you to some of the various types of hard disk failures. As I did, I explained some troubleshooting methods that you can use to recover after each type of failure. In Part 2, I’ll discuss some additional methods that you can use to recover from a hard disk failure.

Read Part 2

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