Hard drive failure, need boot utility

skankinredskankinred
edited July 2006 in Hardware
My laptop HD just died. I'm worried if diskeeper is wearing out the hard drives. My PC's main HD just died recently too, and it was only a couple months old.

Now I need some kind of utility to boot up on cd that can read ntfs filesystem and usb drives so I can copy from the failing hard drive to the usb hard drive.

I tried making a boot cd with nero, but the caldero dos wouldn't let me write/copy to anything, it kept saying access denied.

I've made about 15 boot cds with programs from bootdisk.com and Ultimate boot cd and some other random things. I just can't find anything that works. Thank you.

Comments

  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    To boot from CD and copy files from your Windows disk to USB drive, you can certainly use BartPE. If BartPE becomes a problem, you can use Knoppix Live Linux CD. You can download the ISO from Knoppix web site and burn. After booting into Knoppix, you can mount the USB drive and Windows disk, and copy the files between them. Knoppix may even mount the disks automatically for you, I have not used it since almost a year. A third option is booting to DOS from your USB drive and use NTFS DOS driver. I have never done this, but I heard it was possible. Just do Google search for "DOS NTFS driver".

    And, if none of these work, you can remove the disk from your computer, install in an external USB case to access the files on another computer.

    I hope these help :)
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    I originally tried using a usb converter on the laptop drive, but it doesn't load up. The drive is too far gone, or maybe too currupted to show up. It only works if inside the laptop. A lot of programs lockup as the hard drive spins endlessly once they try to access it. The only thing that seems to be able to access it without locking up was caldera dos and spinrite, which I have running right now trying to repair the bad sectors.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    skankinred wrote:
    I originally tried using a usb converter on the laptop drive, but it doesn't load up. The drive is too far gone, or maybe too currupted to show up. It only works if inside the laptop. A lot of programs lockup as the hard drive spins endlessly once they try to access it. The only thing that seems to be able to access it without locking up was caldera dos and spinrite, which I have running right now trying to repair the bad sectors.


    It sounds really bad. I hope you can see some useful data in the disk after recovering the bad sectors, but do not be surprised otherwise. :(
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    Have you heard of any bad experiences using diskeeper? I remember back in 2000 people said you shouldn't use defragmenter too often because it would wear out your hard drive. But today we use bittorents and other things that I think would do just as much wear and tear. Since 2 HD's have failed around the same time, and both using diskeeper starting at the same time.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    skankinred wrote:
    Have you heard of any bad experiences using diskeeper? I remember back in 2000 people said you shouldn't use defragmenter too often because it would wear out your hard drive. But today we use bittorents and other things that I think would do just as much wear and tear. Since 2 HD's have failed around the same time, and both using diskeeper starting at the same time.


    I have not heard of it. I only defragment my Windows drives one or twice a year using Windows internal tool. But when it is doing its thing, I worry about disk wear too. I lost disks several times too but I do not think they were related to defragmentation. I would recommend you to use the Windows internal tool for defragmentation, I think, it is doing a sufficiently good job.

    How old were your disks and what brand? You know all of the disks I lost were Western Digital. Two more WDs are making unbearable noise after one year of use. I am only able to use them at the basement. Those could be just a bad coincidence but I am buying only Seagate and Samsung now.
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    The main HD in my pc was a WD Raptor 150 and the HD in my laptop is a hitachi travelstar. The laptop is only 1 year old and the WD HD was only 3 months old.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    You should be able to use your warranty for the WD, I do not know the warranty on Hitachi. But you wasted time and data which is more important. I hate the harddisk technology, spinning magnetic medium. When are we going to eliminate all of the electric motors in our computers ? :grumble:
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    I did recently RMA the WD hard drive, and the depot center is right here in Irvine so I just drove up returned the drive after receiving the new drive one day after placing the RMA. Dell is sending out a replacement for the laptop HD as well.

    I also lost 3 hard drives 4 months ago. But it might have been because of a cheap 300 PSU I had in my old pc.


    Well I was reading about how they could make them a lot more durable, but then they would have to charge more, and they can't do that since they are stuck in this price/GB race.

    I also read about this new parallel hard drive design which was only 7,200 rpm and (700gb?) but kicked the snot out of the WD Raptors.

    What do you think about the hologram hard drives?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited July 2006
    What are your case temperatures like? I've seen overheating send many a hard drive to an early grave. :(
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    Very high. The HD's usually around 40 C and Case case around 30-50 C

    Although I checked the SMART logs and it's never been above their "threshold" where it would void the warranty.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited July 2006
    There are several types of coolers designed for laptops. If you need help tracking them down I'll see what I can find.

    As for the desktop computer, I'd try and add a fan blowing across the HD area. Personally, I don't recommend any of the so-called HD Coolers out there. They generally come with crummy little fans which die quickly, leaving you with nothing but a big slab of metal further restricting airflow over the drive.
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    The case has a fan sucking in air in the front bottom vent which blows across the drives. But there's 3 of them right on top of each other, and the PSU and cpu put out so much heat I doubt it does much at all.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited July 2006
    You might consider adding a fan on the side of the case blowing across the drives. A blow hole at the top might help, too. If you have free 5.25" bays you might try moving the middle HD up there (using an adapter). This would spread the heat out somewhat and allow more airflow between the two drives at the bottom.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    skankinred wrote:
    I did recently RMA the WD hard drive, and the depot center is right here in Irvine so I just drove up returned the drive after receiving the new drive one day after placing the RMA. Dell is sending out a replacement for the laptop HD as well.

    I also lost 3 hard drives 4 months ago. But it might have been because of a cheap 300 PSU I had in my old pc.


    Well I was reading about how they could make them a lot more durable, but then they would have to charge more, and they can't do that since they are stuck in this price/GB race.

    I also read about this new parallel hard drive design which was only 7,200 rpm and (700gb?) but kicked the snot out of the WD Raptors.

    What do you think about the hologram hard drives?

    Okay, I am glad at least your disks are being replaced.

    Holographic drives are very interesting, but technologically they are only at demonstration stage yet. Magnetic Ram seems to be a closer candidate. I would even be happy with Flash RAM if it was cheaper, or even acceptable in price per GB. Just like in CRT technology an electron beam scanning the whole screen area, a magnetic head per platter is scanning the whole area in magnetic disks. I am not against magnetic recording, it is fine. The problem is moving the head and spinning the disk which limits reading and writing to one location per platter at a time, creates mechanical complications and reduces the reliability. In very short time, we will be talking about the sound barrier while discussing the harddisk performance, if this technology does not go away :eek2:
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    The main HD in my pc was a WD Raptor 150 and the HD in my laptop is a hitachi travelstar. The laptop is only 1 year old and the WD HD was only 3 months old.
    The other guys beat me to it - your hard drives are not cooling properly, plain and simple. Laptops under even moderate use are very, very hard on drives.
  • skankinredskankinred
    edited July 2006
    I leave FAH on 24/7 on the laptop and the cpu is always 55-60 and HD 40.
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