HDDTestingAndRecovering

Overview

Hardware is the physical falure of the drive itself. Broken heads, bad sectors, a strange noise, are all signs of a hardware falure. Software is a error in the filesystem. The old FAT filesystem is known for not being relible, causing faults and errors, and requiring a scandisk run and/or a defrag. Modern filesystems like NTFS seldom have problems and don't require a lot. if any of maintance. Generaly, it's best to assume that it's a hardware falure, and test for that first, then assume software.

BACK UP

You have a backup right? If you don't, then the first thing you need to do after suspecting a HDD problem is backup all your data right NOW. Don't reboot, don't install stuff, just get the data off. A failing drive may not survive the reboot. Removable USB drives are cheap now days. Don't install any of the included software, just plug it in and drag and drop all your important files to it. And make sure you got everything.

S.M.A.R.T

All moderen drives have built in self checking. The idea was that the drive would figure out it was starting to fail, then notify the user before the failure. Good idea in consept, but in reality, it does not work. I have drives that have a massive falure (as in taking the covers off), more bad sectores then I can count, and SMART still says the drive is good. But SMART does provide some nice error logging and self testing. And the best part is that all the tests can be done without taking the drive offline. http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/qual/featuresSMART.html

SMART on Windows

I have yet to find a free SMART utility for Windows. Tons of shareware ones exist.

SMART on Linux

A Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org) boot CD has SMART tools (http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net) on it and makes it easy to check a drive.

Step 1, Boot the CD

Download the Knoppix ISO, burn it to a CD, then boot from that CD on the computer with the problem drive.

Step 2, Welcome screen

At the inital welcome screen, before the CD boots, type "knoppix 2", then press enter. This will skip loading any fancy GUI and get right to a command prompt. You can use the GUI if you want, but the basic command line works better on slower systems.

Step 3,

more stuff here. Need screen shots

SpinRight?

Assuming SMART looks good, the next best tool in the any techs toolbox is SpinRite? . http://www.grc.com It's not free, but worth every peny. Buy a copy now and keep it handy. SpinRite? has helpful guides that tell you what everything does. The different levels of scans will probe the drive harder and fix any errors it finds, but will also take longer. This is also good matiance to do on little used backup drives or just any drive in general. It will read every sector on the disk, correct any errors if it can, and rewrite it.

-- PorchLight - 17 Oct 2007