Serious Hard Drive Problem! HELP!!

ok, so about a week or so ago i converted 4 of my drives to NTFS from FAT32 using partion magic, they're all 250 gig storage drives. For some reason now almost every time i restart it does a chkdsk and scrolls a huge list of stuff for those 4 drives. It's never really done anything bad until the last restart(today) and one folder, ironically the one with ALL of my work(im a graphic designer), magically is no longer there. I have it backed up as of Tuesday but I'm trying to figure out what the hell its doing and WHY! why is it doing a chkdsk on every restart and how can i prevent this from happening again. and most importantly, is there a way to get my folder back?

Now instead of enjoying my weekend i'll be writing emails to my clients and working for the next three days straight to get caught up. THANKS WINDOWS!

 

im now also getting this...

a popup that says windows delayed write file, save elsewhere

 

Please tell us more about your system and more specificly how these 4 drives are connected.
Are they IDE (PATA) or Serial (SATA)? Are they in any RAID configuration or are they all standalone? Are they all internal drives(IDE/Serial) or external (connected to the PC via USB2 or Firewire)?
Does your BIOS see these drives? Has there been any updates to BIOS or Windows prior to this problem surfacing?

 

no updates to BIOS...im not sure if the BIOS sees them cuz im running a recovery program thats going to take multiple hours...

Here's what it is
its a drive case(coolgear) with 4 IDE 250 gig WD caviars, no RAID, connected by firewire. I was told by a friend to recover what i can, format ALL of the 4 drives and LEAVE THEM as FAT32...is this correct?

also, I have Ghost, and have them all backed up to Tuesday pm...so basically im loosing a half weeks work at the most, which still really sucks. How can i format these 4 drives to be stable and not do the chkdsk every boot?

 

So this is an external drive casing, right? Not too sure then but similar to other external drives, depending on your chipset and the BIOS, you might experience problems too. Check your mobo vendor's website to see if there is a BIOS update (if your BIOS version is not the newest, updating could help). If your system sees the case's capacity as 1TB, then the fact that they are IDE is irrelevant as it boils down to how the case is connected to the mobo.
Assuming that each drive is in good working condition, when you run Ghost and it sees and recognizes the drives properly, then when you restore an image, it'd automatically run the necessary formating and partitioning necessary to match the image.

I would connect each one of these drives to the system directly then using the free WD Hard Drive tools available on their site, run a full diagnostic on each drive to make sure nothing is wrong. Further more if the drives are older than a year, you could try running a low level format to get rid of all previous MBRs, etc. before restoring the Ghost image. WD had a tool called WDClear which you can use for low-level partitioning.

Uh, one other thing, if the drives check out OK when connected directly to the mobo, then there might be a problem with the case you are using!

Good luck.

 

so i managed to save everything from previous backups...

NOW, I formatted the drive that messed up and it only shows up as like 41mb? I would assume it's toast right? is there anyway i can clear up the bad sectors or whatever is wrong with this thing?

 

so got everything so show up in partition magic, formatted and everything LOOKS fine...but it looked fine the first time i did this. Obviously something went wrong last time and i don't want it to happen again thats why im spam posting this...

Tell me if this looks right...any tips would help

So here is what partition magic says about the drive AFTER the format

Local Disk (F
Type - NTFS
Size - 238,472.7
Used MB - 71.7 (is that normal?)
Unused MB - 238,400.9
Status - Active
Pri/Log - Primary (should it be Logical?)

 

Primary is fine, used MB looks fine also, usually it's the MFT or something.
The only other real way to figure out it long term or to use another hard drive scanner. Go third party not windows scan utility. Have it search for bad sectors.

I have this problem with my external drive every once in a while. It'll say delayed write file, that's because the system disconnects power to the harddrive before it's done transferring the files. There's a problem with the USB in my system that's why it does it for me.

Also it shouldn't matter whether it's NTFS or FAT32. Neither should cause problems.

 

ok now my music drive(one of the four) is not showing up...

"File record segment ***** is unreadable"

theres roughly 20-30 of those displayed in chkdsk...

I'm lost here...and ready to destroy this damn thing!

 

You have to run an indepth scan disk to find out if there are any bad sectors. If there are low levelling the drive may cure it but it's not a 100% fix. If the drive is physically damaged you may be out of luck.

Have you ever dropped the enclosure while it was running?

 

no its never been dropped or touched for that matter in months except to turn on. It's the size of a small tower...

I don't think this is anything physical as now the same problem is occuring with another drive in the enclosure...I get the feeling it has something to do with transferring mass amounts of data...like it can't handle it or something because to format/convert each drive i have to move ~50gigs or more in cases just to do it.

Also, when i converted the drives(originally) there was data on the drives...maybe that messed them up. I read you can do it without problems but maybe that was it.

first problem drive checks out fine now with diskeeper and chkdsk and partition magic...

 

My last suggestion on this would be using the drive vendor's own diagnostic tools to check for bad sectors or to do the partioning and even formatting. Sometimes using 3rd party partitioning utilities could get the mbr all screwy (it happened once or twice to me too especially when I used PartitionMagic 8 on a standalone Serial drive and also one a SATA RAID-0 setup with 2x250GB Maxtor HDs. Vendor's own drives do see and work without issues so there is no compatibility issue unlike 3rd parties which normally work but sometimes...

Anyhow, if the casing is not the fault (imo it could be defective and to eliminate that, you will need to connect each drive directly to the mobo by itself and run the diagnostics on it!), the I say visit link below to d/l the free HD utility from WD site to get started:

Western Digital HD Utilities
PS. Selet your Drive from the list on the left, then click on the corresponding 'Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools for Windows' on the right.

Hoep this helps, good luck! :cool