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All of a sudden one of my directories on one of my hard drives is inaccessible. The remaining disk space on that drive is the same, and I can still see the directory but I just can't access it.

I'm about to do a defrag on that drive, but before I do that are there any other things I should do first?

My suggestion would be to perform a disk scan / Scandisk first, before the defrag. You may have a few too many bad sectors. How old is the drive?

rhoenix wrote:My suggestion would be to perform a disk scan / Scandisk first, before the defrag. You may have a few too many bad sectors. How old is the drive?

The drive is about 2.5 years old.

You suggested scandisk, and I was thinking the same thing a few minutes ago and I did that..... and it said it was unable to complete the scan.

I hope it's not something really bad.


PS: It's a 120 GB, and I think it's a Maxtor. It's got NTFS, and I use XP pro.

Shinova wrote:The drive is about 2.5 years old.

You suggested scandisk, and I was thinking the same thing a few minutes ago and I did that..... and it said it was unable to complete the scan.

I hope it's not something really bad.


PS: It's a 120 GB, and I think it's a Maxtor. It's got NTFS, and I use XP pro.

Hmm...at this point, I would suggest rebooting, and then immediately starting the full surface scandisk. If it asks you to schedule it the next time your computer starts up, say yes, and then reboot again. See if this helps.

That first time I did scandisk, it was a basic scan and it couldn't finish it.

But then I tried a basic scan again but marked automatically fix errors and yay!! The files are back!!


But just to be safe, I'm going to do a full check, and see what comes up.

Shinova wrote:That first time I did scandisk, it was a basic scan and it couldn't finish it.

But then I tried a basic scan again but marked automatically fix errors and yay!! The files are back!!


But just to be safe, I'm going to do a full check, and see what comes up.

Good idea - in general, hard disks have extra "sectors," and when one is marked bad by scandisk, the hard drive quietly uses a spare. However, a hard drive only has so many "spare sectors," and when you begin seeing bad sectors appear on a scan, it's generally time for a new hard drive, and quickly.

I'm going to get a 300 GB one next monday. Any brand recommendations?

The one I'm aiming for is 70$ with coupon and is a Maxtor. Is Maxtor a good brand?

I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence. Every single Maxtor drive I've bought failed after about 2.5 years, whereas the Western Digital or Seagate drives all lasted at least 4 years with the same use. Your experience may vary of course, but I mostly stick with the above.

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence. Every single Maxtor drive I've bought failed after about 2.5 years, whereas the Western Digital or Seagate drives all lasted at least 4 years with the same use. Your experience may vary of course, but I mostly stick with the above.

Actually, I've had great experiences with Maxtor. Our first computer back in '96 had a Maxtor HD and it lasted about 5 or 6 years before dying. A year or two before it's death, we installed another Maxtor HD and currently still works after 6 to 7 years.

Enigma wrote:

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence. Every single Maxtor drive I've bought failed after about 2.5 years, whereas the Western Digital or Seagate drives all lasted at least 4 years with the same use. Your experience may vary of course, but I mostly stick with the above.

Actually, I've had great experiences with Maxtor. Our first computer back in '96 had a Maxtor HD and it lasted about 5 or 6 years before dying. A year or two before it's death, we installed another Maxtor HD and currently still works after 6 to 7 years.

I've had the same experience with Maxtors and horrible ones with WD drives, especially around '00 to '04.

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence.

Uraniun235 wrote:

I specified that it was personal experience speaking, and I also granted that others' experience may vary.

EDIT: Fixed quote tags.

rhoenix wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:

I specified that it was personal experience speaking, and I also granted that others' experience may vary.

EDIT: Fixed quote tags.

Destructionator XIII wrote:All the big names are good brands. Failure rate is about the same across the board.

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree

Your disagreement was on retarded grounds.

Uraniun235 wrote:Your disagreement was on retarded grounds.

Very well. Point conceded.

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence. Every single Maxtor drive I've bought failed after about 2.5 years, whereas the Western Digital or Seagate drives all lasted at least 4 years with the same use. Your experience may vary of course, but I mostly stick with the above.

If you're going to be disagreeing based off anecdotal evidence, my friend's lost 5 Western Digital drives since he moved to a RAID array. That was at the beginning of this year. He's spent more time with the computer off in case another drive fails while his array is degraded than with it on.

Beowulf wrote:

rhoenix wrote:I'd actually like to disagree, though only based on personal and anecdotal evidence. Every single Maxtor drive I've bought failed after about 2.5 years, whereas the Western Digital or Seagate drives all lasted at least 4 years with the same use. Your experience may vary of course, but I mostly stick with the above.

If you're going to be disagreeing based off anecdotal evidence, my friend's lost 5 Western Digital drives since he moved to a RAID array. That was at the beginning of this year. He's spent more time with the computer off in case another drive fails while his array is degraded than with it on.

I do understand your point, and I did concede that anecdotal evidence is highly subjective, particularly in this case. However, I am curious - what type of RAID array is/was your friend running? RAID 5?

EDIT: clarified question.

RAID 10

Beowulf wrote:RAID 10

Aha - if you wouldn't mind another question, how long did the RAID array run before one of the drives burned out?

Okay, another of my folders disappeared. It's not as important as the first one that disappeared, but I would prefer to have it back.

I ran the scandisk thing again, a full scan, and it finished but the folder's not back. I'm gonna try some recovery tool, but is there one that you guys would recommend?


PS: I got a 400GB Seagate next to me, but I wanna try to get that folder back before I do all the formatting and copying stuff.