The second ntfs boot sector is unwriteable - Please help.

Hi,

I have a pc running XP Pro SP2. Two days ago I converted the file system from fat32 to NTFS. The conversion was successful.

Today when my wife was converting an AVI to MPeg, using honestech VHS to DVD 3.0. the program only did a part conversion, producing an mpeg which plays, but is incomplete - although the progam appeared to have completed it's task. She deleted the incomplete file.

When I later came to use the pc it was running very slow. I restarted and it was no better. I tried rebooting 'last known good configuration' but still the same. I tried running chkdsk from the command prompt in windows. It warned me that I hadn't chosen 'f' and was read only. It reported that it had moved a couple of .tmp files I think. I re-ran the chkdsk/f and it ran at restart. It completed the 3 stages and then reported 'The second ntfs boot sector is unwriteable'

I presume that this is a problem ( I haven't run chkdsk before since converting the file system), and would like to know if there is any utility program that can fix this. Although the computer is running painfully slow - it is not malfunctioning in any other ways. I feel sure that it is related to the recent file conversion - or is that a coincidence. Reformatting the HDD (as Microsoft.com advises) is really a last resort.

I read that someone ran the repair option from their Windows disk to fix this, but I only have a recovery disk

Can anyone please help?

Thanks,

Yorks.

 

How old is the Hard drive? It is possible that it went Tits up if you have had the computer for sometime. Mechanical devices do wear out and go bad after time. If anything, try and download and run SeagateTools to test the drive.

 

Thank you for your reply.

I have downloaded Seatools for windows and have run both the SDT and LDT. Both passed. Are there any further tests that I should do with this program - to determine if the fault is physical?

Regards,

Yorks.

 

S.M.A.R.T. test. A Knoppix LiveCD can help with diagnosing Disk problems.

 

Thank you for your reply. My pc is an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 1GB ram purchased in 2003.

I found that my hdd is a Western Digital, so downloaded Western Digital DLG Diagnostics. Tested drive - ok.

Computer was still running painfully slow, so wondered if it could be the processor. Tested CPU speed using cpuspeed.exe - again ok. :confused

Used Everest to to test read and write speed - again according to the benchmark it seemed ok.

Everest reported motherboard manufacturer MSI.

Went to website and used online tool to check for updates.

Found update for mainboard bios.

Updated. Had to reactivate 'Windows' on reboot.:***:mad , but ..............

speed returned.

I have retried the AVI to mpeg conversion progam, and it completed the task.

I still have the report 'The second ntfs boot sector is unwriteable' when I run chkdsk - so can only presume that this is a legacy of the conversion and a seperate issue to the speed problem. I have tried Fixboot - still the same. As the pc's performance is back to normal I think I will leave things alone now - unless you has a solution.

Incidentally - I have since converted my Acer laptop from fat32 to NTFS without any problem - and no reference to second ntfs boot sector when I run chkdsk, and no speed issues.

Regards,

Yorks

 

"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable." - chkdsk

I struggled with this for about a week, trying different things to fix. Considered returning the two 2TB Seagate Barracudas because of this (each had this same error - suspicious, eh?), but decided to try them for a week and see how things go.

Tried using Acronis 2013 to clone data to the new drives. Tried EaseUS for formatting and copying. In each product, I ran into errors stemming from the 2nd boot sector being unwritable. I DID eventually manage to format and copy the data to the 2 new disks.

After copying GB upon GB among the disks, and seeing that the "SmartPlacement" in Perfect Disk would just hang and not process, I ran the WinXP defragger at bootup several times, along with chkdsk. Yesterday, the chkdsk runs were successful! I had scheduled chkdsk to run on both the new drives when rebooted, and each run did NOT show this error.

I went back and tried the SmartPlacement defrag under PerfectDisk, and it worked normally. As far as I can tell, all is working OK now.

Perhaps by exercising the drives, the file systems marked the bad sectors as bad and skipped them? And yes, I performed low-level formats in trying to fix the disks. Did nothing to fix them.

I'm happy now. I'm not happy that I had to waste hours of time in dealing with the issue, though. Oh well, at least I don't have to mail the drives back to Seagate. What a waste of time that would be.

I'll bet that most people would have returned the drives and purchased another manufacturer's drives. My 25 years in the I/T world has made me stubborn in getting PCs to function properly.