HD Repair Tool From Bootable CD

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Engineerly, Mar 9, 2012.

  1. Engineerly

    Engineerly Private E-2

    Is there a tool that will boot from CD and do a low level sector repair on a WD hard disk. This is for a laptop computer with a totally broken operating system and possibly bad disk. After I "fix" the hard drive (I hope by permanently locking out all bad sectors), I intend to use the factory default repair disks to reinstall Win7. I have the WesternDigitalDataLifeGuard, but it requires a functioning OS to run. I need it to work off of a bootable CD.

    This is an effort to save the existing hard dive. If this fails I will have to go buy a new one.

    Thanks, Ron
     
  2. sach2

    sach2 Major Geek Extraordinaire

  3. Engineerly

    Engineerly Private E-2

    Thanks for that link. And yup ... error/status code 0255 "too many errors found" -> new WD Scorpio Black 320GB ordered. Acer says my Restore DVDs I made on day 1 will put the OS back on but not the recovery partition. Lesson learned.. don't drop your laptop onto a hardwood floor while it's running. *doh* Eventhough it seemed to work, the head thrashing got progressively worse over two months to the point now were it would not even boot in safe mode.
     
  4. Engineerly

    Engineerly Private E-2

    Interestingly, after deciding that the installed HD in the laptop was dead and after ordering the new one, I ran Active KillDisk on the dead one zero it. Then I re-ran the WD Extended Test since I had nothing to lose. Guess what ... it came out perfect ... so I'm going to try and use it as an external drive. That's the same drive that said "too many errors". Has anyone seen that before?
     
  5. sach2

    sach2 Major Geek Extraordinaire

    I use WD drives exclusively and find their diagnostic works well in that it can usually put a drive back into "good" condition. But it does seem to work rather erratically.

    I just had a one year old drive that failed both short and long tests in both the Windows and DOS versions of the diagnostic. The long test wouldn't even run with an error code probably same as yours. I was getting ready to do a warranty replacement since I found the box and receipt. I figured I give it one more try to rule out a bad data cable. The CD version aborted after 2 minutes into the test with an error code. I ran the Windows version which went further but eventually quit and said try the CD version. This time the CD version went all the way through fixed the errors and now both Windows and DOS say the drive is fine.rolleyes So it took 5 or 6 tries to get the DOS version to run and that was only after using the Windows version a time or two in between.

    Makes me wonder how good the utility really is? But the drive does seem to be working and I didn't have to zero out the drive which I didn't want to do since I had so much data on it.

    I've often used "bad" drives after a low-level format. I've had them last years for data purposes. I don't think I would trust one for my primary OS drive but for data they seem fine. As long as you just got errors and the drive didn't disappear from BIOS or have a crunching/clicking sound which would indicate a mechanical error you should be fine for quite some time (going from my personal experience).
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2012
  6. Engineerly

    Engineerly Private E-2

    A year later and that original 5400 rpm, 640GB drive (wd scorpio blue) has been hummin' right along as a dependable backup drive in a nice little external enclosure. Apparently some software had screwed it up but there was nothing wrong with it physically. I should have decrapified it the day we got it.

    Also, I didn't think it would make any significant difference, but the laptop is MUCH peppier with the faster, 7200 rpm (WD scorpio black) drive. It probably uses more power, but the laptop is almost always plugged in so that does not matter.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2013

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