[BBLISA] windows disk diagnostics

[Scott Ehrlich]

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Eric Smith wrote:

> So.... I just booted my Windows XP system and it decided that one of
> the disks is corrupted.  So it ran chkdsk/scandsk, splatting text on
> the screen.  Luckily I was actually at my computer and saw the text
> output (and took notes.)
> Anyone know if that text is actually saved somewhere?
> I've poked around in system logs by going to My Computer->Manage->Event Viewer
> While I saw the statement that it thought that H: was corrupt, it
> didn't say any more than that.
>
> Am I to believe that they will validate a drive, list files which were
> corrupted... and punish people who go to the bathroom while they boot
> their system and don't see the message?
>
> I'm also interested in any suggestions for programs that scan/correct
> disk drive issues.  Heck, I'm willing to *pay* for the tool, so free
> or commercial is just fine.
>
> Giving minimal info to the user from such tools is just wrong (some
> tools should not be dumped down to be usable by "average" users.)
>
> Now I'm off to look at my home backups.....
>
> Eric
>
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Does your hardware support SMART error reporting?  If so, see if your 
hardware claims that the hard drive is going bad.   Otherwise, maybe one 
of the Live Linux distros has smartd and can tell you the state of the 
drive?

If the drive is good, can you siphon the data you care about from it and 
place the data on another drive, then reformat it?

If the drive is bad, I've had excellent success with getdataback for NTFS 
from runtime.org.  If your H drive's filesystem is FAT, they have the same 
product for another cost.  Just have enough space on a good hard drive to 
store the recovered files.

Or, if the drive is FAT, and you can boot into it, and it has enough free 
space, try converting it to NTFS (convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs) and 
after a reboot, it will/should convert the filesystem over.

Scott