Hard Disk Drive Problems: How to Fix IDE PATA and SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Problems - Page 1

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This section of this website consists of three pages of descriptive links to the hardware and/or software solutions of 90+ IDE and SATA hard disk drive problems from the straightforward to the relatively complicated, all of which anyone with a moderate knowledge of computers should be able to implement. To make it as easy as possible to find the problem that you are encountering, I have included as many of the symptoms of each problem in the descriptive link that links to each one. If you were brought to this page by a search engine, the quickest way to find the problem that matches yours would be to press the Ctrl + F key combination that brings up the Find box in most web browsers and enter the same search query in it on each of the three pages of hard disk drive problems. Alternatively, just read through the descriptive links. There is one common problem provided on this page that affects network-attached storage (NAS) devices, which are essentially hard drives packaged as network devices. There is only one problem involving an SSD (solid state) storage drive dealing with how best to install one and transfer an existing installation of Windows 7 to it to boost boot times and general performance. I have read accounts of the outright failures of SSD drives, but there are not many problems with them of the kind that are provided here for hard disk drives, no doubt because, being far more expensive than hard drives (a 512GB SSD drive currently costs around £500 compared to the £30 to £50 for a 500GB hard drive) these drives are not in widespread use yet, being mainly confined to high-end laptop PCs. Note that the capacity of a hard disk drive is quoted in round figures (250GB, 500GB, 1TB, which is 1000GB, etc.) while, because they are made of flash memory, the capacity of an SSD drive uses the same figures as RAM memory (64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, etc).

The questions and answers (Q&As) on hard disk drive problems on this website are linked to below the following useful hard-drive-related diagnostic and recovery information.

Visit the Disk Drives section of this site for information on internal and external hard disk drives SSD and CD/DVD drives/writers.

HARD DISK DRIVE PROBLEMS - PAGE 1

Click the relevant link below to go to that Q&A article. Use your browser's Back button to backtrack.

1. - Some of the most common hard disk drive problems... - These are the common problems or questions dealt with on a single page: - A. - My PC's SATA hard disk drive failed and I replaced it with a 1TB SATA drive, but on booting it gives this error message: "Hardware BIOS Initiate Failed, Press "G" to continue" B. - Why can I only create four partitions on my hard drive? - C. - Windows can only see 137GB of my 250GB IDE hard drive - D. - I partitioned and formatted my new hard drive, but a message just says there's no operating system - E. - I ran benchmark tests on my IDE hard drive, which say that the drive isn't running at full speed - F. - A problem with an old IDE hard drive and a new SATA drive running from a PCI SATA adapter card. - G. - How can I transfer the contents of my entire old hard disk drive to the new one so that Windows 7 Home Premium boots from the new drive? - H. - Can I use an old IDE hard drive in my new PC that only supports SATA hard drives and CD/DVD drives?

2. - Information on the most common hard disk drive problems in the Microsoft Knowledge Base

3. - How best can I install an SSD solid state drive and transfer an existing installation of Windows 7 to it to boost boot times and performance?

4. - Network-attached storage (NAS) device problem: After a sudden crash, I can't access the valuable data on my LaCie 1TB Network Space 2 NAS drive

5. - After having my desktop PC's SATA hard disk drive upgraded, the system freezes from time to time while the system clock still functions

6. - Bad sectors reported on hard disk drive - Norton Ghost refuses to create a system image but Windows 7 Backup does

7. - The hard disk drive of my HP Pavilion laptop PC seems to have failed irrecoverably. The error message produced says: Operating system not found

8. - Toshiba Equium M70-173 laptop stopped at Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 startup screen and then produced an error message that announced a hardware failure after a grinding sound came from where its hard disk drive is

9. - Startup of Windows 7 is interrupted by a request to run chkdsk and a countdown. When it tries to run it says it can't do so because of recently installed software and says to use a restore point

10. - Can an ultra-large-capacity 3.0TB hard disk drive be used with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7?

11. - My PC is taking a long time to boot and shut down - hard disk drive is showing as nearly full but files only occupy half of its capacity

12. - My HP desktop PC's hard disk drive has a C: boot partition and a D: Recovery partition. How can I delete the D: drive and make the C: drive fill the unallocated disk space?

13. - I have a Windows 7 desktop PC and I want to know how to add a second hard disk drive and install Windows XP on it

14. - Can I add the SATA hard disk drive with Windows XP Pro on it from my old PC to my new Windows 7 PC to create a dual-boot system?

15. - I can't erase/delete files on my external USB hard disk drive

16. - Changing from IDE to AHCI mode in the system BIOS made Windows XP/Vista and Windows 7 produce a blue screen of death (BSOD)

17. - I can't copy 6GB master image backup files of my PC/computer to a USB external hard disk drive or to a USB flash drive

18. - My desktop PC runs Windows Vista/Windows 7. How can I install Windows XP on an external eSATA or USB-connected hard disk drive without having to reinstall Windows?

19. - I have to start, restart, shut down and restart my computer to get it to boot properly and Windows Vista reports corrupt hard disk segments and Registry files

20. - My PC reboots by itself and warnings have appeared asking me to run Chkdsk, the Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 hard-disk-drive diagnostic utility

21. - Chkdsk, the hard-disk-drive checking and repair diagnostic utility in Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7, is "Unable to read security descriptors"

22. - Windows XP/Vista/7 PC/computer is producing many hard disk error messages and prompts me to run chkdsk, which fails to fix the problem

23. - Is my PC's hard disk drive dying? - A constant "disk boot failure" error message appears at startup that only a shutdown and reboot can fix

24. - Windows 7 Disk Diagnostics reports that my PC's hard disk drive is faulty and about to fail

25. - Can I install/mix IDE PATA and SATA hard disk drives in the same computer/PC and in a RAID array?

26. - Will a backup copy/image created by Norton Ghost on a second hard disk drive be bootable when the drive is installed as the boot drive?

27. - The Windows XP Disk Defragmenter won't go all the way: Defrag stops at 10%, 12%, etc.

28. - Change ownership of a user account in Windows XP: I can't access my files in a user account protected by a password on a hard disk drive that was installed in another PC running Windows XP

29. - In Windows XP, the boot drive is F: instead of C: - How can I change the boot drive's letter back to C:?

30. - If I connect an SATA hard disk drive to my PC using an IDE hard drive, it won't boot. It gives error message "hal.dll is corrupted"

31. - When I install Windows XP on an SATA hard drive and then reboot, the setup program asks me if I want to begin the setup all over again

32. - I can't find out if DMA is enabled for my IDE or SATA hard drive in Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7

33. - My external hard disk drive is not recognised (US: recognized) by my PC/computer

34. - File systems: How to convert from the FAT32 file system to NTFS

How best can I install an SSD solid state drive and transfer an existing installation of Windows 7 to it to boost boot times and performance?

Problem

I want to install an SSD drive to improve boot times and performance by transferring Windows 7 from my desktop PC's existing hard disk drive to it. Can you tell me the best way to do that and are there any serious pitfalls?

Answer

The best way to do that would be to make a backup of your system (not create a system image, which can only be restored in its entirety) so that you can restore folders and individual files from it. You would then open the PC's case, disconnect the hard disk drive from the motherboard and install the SSD drive. Note that you have to have a 2.5-inch SSD drive installed in a caddy so that it can be installed in a 3.5-inch drive bay. Most SSD drives come with the required caddy. All drives must be connected to the power supply and to the motherboard. (Visit this page of the Build Your Own PC section of this website for information on installing drives. SSD drives use the SATA connection interface. The motherboard must have an SATA (not an older IDE) connection point on the motherboard for the SATA data cable and power supply must have an SATA power cable. A standard Molex power connector from the power supply can be converted into an SATA power connector by using a cheap adapter cable. (Web search query: molex to sata power adapter cable.)

With the SATA drive installed, you would then reboot, enter the BIOS and set the boot order of devices to boot first from the CD/DVD drive, place the Windows 7 installation disc in the optical drive and reboot. The Windows setup will run and you will then be able to clean-install Windows 7. (If necessary, visit this page of this website for instructions on how to clean install Win7.) The boot order of devices in the BIOS can be set as 1. CD/DVD drive 2. SSD drive 3. hard disk drive or SSD drive, hard disk drive, CD/DVD drive. The hard drive must be lower in the boot order than the SSD drive. If there is no CD/DVD disc in the optical drive and it is set as the first boot device, Windows will boot from the next device in the boot order of devices. If you only have the recovery disc provided by the PC's manufacturer, ask it for advice. A recovery disc installs the PC to its factory state. Using a recovery disc is unlikely to make Windows optimise itself to use an SSD drive. You can then reconnect the hard disk drive and should be able to access its files. You will have to reinstall all of your programs to register them in the fresh Windows registry of a clean installation, but you can transfer data files from the hard drive to the SSD drive. You could also format the hard drive and install your programs on it and transfer the data files back to it. If you have an SSD drive with 100GB+ of drive space, installing everything on it except your data files would provide the best performance, because an SSD drive works much faster than a hard drive, so booting and loading programs are much quicker than if those actions are performed from a slower hard drive. Installing a fresh copy of Windows to an SSD drive makes Windows optimise itself for use on such a drive, which is why a clean installation is the best method.

Another way of doing the installation would be to create a system image using an imaging program that can implement the specific partitioning requirements of an SSD drive, such as Acronis TrueImage Home 2011, creating it on an external hard drive, then restore the image to the SSD drive when it is installed as the boot drive. In theory, Windows should boot from the SSD drive without the user having to do anything else. Unfortunately, using this method is not desirable because when the image is restored to the SSD drive, Windows might not configure itself to optimise its use on an SSD drive, which would lead to reduced performance and greater wear of the most well used parts of the drive's flash memory (similar memory to that used by a flash drive), thereby reducing the drives's life span. The flash memory used by an SSD drive only has a finite number of writes before it cannot be used any more and if Windows doesn't spread the use evenly over the whole drive, the most well used parts will wear out and render it unusable.

Network-attached storage (NAS) device problem: After a sudden crash, I can't access the valuable data on my LaCie 1.0TB Network Space 2 NAS drive

Problem

I have a home network consisting of one desktop and two laptop PCs, which are backed up to a LaCie 1.0TB Network Space 2 NAS drive. Being a professional photographer, I also store all of my digital photos on it. To my horror, when I was copying a folder of new images to it, the device crashed. When I rebooted the main desktop computer, I was unable to access the main partition on the NAS drive where my images are stored or from any of the networked computers. Fortunately, the drive can still be accessed through the LaCie Dashboard, which provides all of the configuration data. The setup can be changed, but the "openshare" partition is greyed out. The Dashboard states correctly that there is 0.6TB of used space on the disk with the rest free space.

Answer

This NAS has received very mixed purchaser reviews on the web - some purchasers think that its great, easy to work with on a home network, does everthing it says on the box - for others it is a devil to use, crashes or fails and has to be returned. Given that more people always tend to bother to write damning reviews, on balance the reviews look all right, but I would have bought a better-reviewed NAS.

As is the case with many similar external devices, such as routers, network printers, video streamers, Android smartphones and tablets, VoIP devices, Kindles, etc., it is almost certain that your NAS device is controlled by a customised version of the Linux operating system, which makes it possible to use Linux troubleshooting tools and techniques to fix problems with them.

You have to know how to recover a Linux partition, because although the concepts are very similar to those used by Windows, the terminology and tools are not the same. This article - http://lissot.net/partition/ - deals with Linux partitions per se. Section 9 deals with how to recover a deleted Linux partition. Having read it you should know how the LaCie NAS hard disk is set up. There are other guides that can be found using a search query, such as linux partition recovery, in a web search engine.

Now you need a Linux partition-recovery tool, which many free, bootable Linux CDs such as Knoppix and Ubuntu provide, but you can download independent recovery tools of which SystemRescueCd is probably the most popular. If necessary, read the user guide on sysresccd.org/.

With the PC's BIOS set to make the CD/DVD drive or USB flash drive the first boot device, you can boot from your Linux disc or flash drive containing the recovery disc you have created and try accessing the LaCie NAS drive on the network. If you can see the drive, you should be able to employ the recovery tool.

If not, you can remove the faulty drive from its housing, which, note, will almost certainly render its warranty void. But removing the bad drive will dissociate it from the network interface and the customised Lacie software, which is what you want in order to proceed further with recovering its data.

Then you can install the bare drive in your desktop PC as a non-boot secondary drive. Visit this Build a PC page for instructions on how to install a secondary IDE or SATA hard drive. You can enter its make/model in a web search to find out which type it is. It is almost certainly an SATA drive.

With the NAS's hard drive installed in a PC, boot it with a Systemizes disc or USB flash drive. You should be able to access the system’s hard drives and apply its tool to recover the partition of the NAS device's drive. Once recovered, you will also be able to transfer the contents of the drive to a healthy internal or external hard drive.

Note that the LaCie support page lists two recent updates for the Network Space 2 NAS device, which should be installed after you have put the recovered drive back in its Lacie housing. In fact, you can update any of the Linux-driven devices listed above - if updates are available.

Bad sectors reported on hard disk drive - Norton Ghost refuses to create a system image but Windows 7 Backup does

Problem

I have a HP desktop PC that I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Premium, which is working perfectly, but when I tried to use Norton Ghost 15 to create an image of the whole system, which it has done many times, it failed, stating some sectors could not be read. When I tried to create an image of the system using Windows 7's Backup and Restore, it did so successfully. Disk scans by both Ghost and Windows Chkdsk found and supposedly fixed several KBs of bad sectors. Norton still fails and my HP hardware-diagnostic test fails when the hard drive is checked, saying that there were 980KB in bad sectors, but the computer itself is working as well as ever.

Answer

The hard drive is no doubt on its last legs. Drive wear is the cause of the bad sectors - the head-positioning mechanism of the drive is worn and not positioning the read/write heads correctly all the time so that when the diagnostic software is run it reports bad sectors, which probably aren't bad, just not being read or written to properly. Windows chkdsk and other diagnostic software can mark bad sectors as such so that they aren't used, but if the heads are worn other sectors that aren't really bad will be reported as such during another scan.

The best advice is to replace the drive while the going is good - before a total failure occurs.

Standard IDE and SATA hard disk drives are very cheap these days and can be replaced very easily. A huge 2TB internal hard drive can be bought for as little as £50 and a 1TB drive for £35. Be aware that that a drive with a higher capacity than 2.19TB requires a new EFI BIOS, which only a few motherboards were providing in September 2011.

Read this Q&A on this website that discusses the 2.19GB barrier: Can an ultra-large-capacity 3.0TB hard disk drive be used with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7?

Make sure that you buy the same type of drive that is installed in the PC - IDE or SATA - as a replacement drive. If the motherboard has SATA ports, you can buy one; if it only has IDE ports, you'll need to buy an adapter card that fits in a free PCI or PCI Express slot on the motherboard to which you install the drive. You can identify the PC's motherboard by using the free CPU-Z tool and then download a user manual (in the PDF format), which will tell you which type of drive ports it provides. Enter cpu-z as the search query in a search engine to locate its website.

Visit the Hard Drive and Build Your Own PC sections of this website for information on IDE and SATA hard drives, including how to install them.

Most new hard drives come with replacement instructions and even include software that can transfer the data from the old to the new drive. Rest assured that it's not very difficult to do. The physical work requires only the use of a screwdriver.

After having my desktop PC's SATA hard disk drive upgraded, the system freezes from time to time while the system clock still functions

Problem

I have just had my my desktop PC’s SATA hard disk drive upgraded by a qualified PC technician from 200GB to 500GB. However, now the PC freezes from time to time for about 15 to 20 seconds and then gets going again. During the freezes, the system clock, set to display seconds, still does so. I have the ZoneAlarm firewall installed plus Microsoft’s Security Essentials and the firewall is enabled in my ADSL modem-router.

Answer

Because the system clock is working, it's not a full system freeze, which freezes everything. The freezes appear to be caused by the new hard disk drive being delayed in its spin up, which can occur if the drive has been set aggressively for power-savings, which the PC technician who performed the upgrade might have done, making it spin down too soon. When in a low-power standby state, the hard drive has to wake up and then get spinning before it can start reading or writing data. A delay of that kind is probably hanging any software that is seeking to run from the drive, leaving the the system clock unaffected.

If you listen carefully, a hard drive can usually be heard spinning up. If a particular instance of freezing occurs while the drive spinning up, then you have found the cause of the problem, which you should be able to fix by increasing the drive’s sleep time to a longer interval via Power Options in the Windows Control Panel. It's the time delay shown for the setting called Turn off hard disks in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

If the problem still exists, try using the Task Manager, brought up by the Ctrl + Alt + Del key combination, to find out which software is dominant. The software using the most CPU (processor) time is probably connected to or causing the freezing. The Task Manager's window is shown in the image below open on its Processes tab. As you can see, many of the processes are identifiable by their name. I know that the first entry - ZABackupTary.exe - is the executable file (the file that runs the program or tool) thyat makes the ZoneAlarm's online backup service place an icon in the bottom right Notification Area and BatteryCare.exe is the executable file for a utility that monitor's my laptop's battery. But there are entries that I have no ide about, such as alg.exe and jusched.exe. All of the processes shown in the image were taking up zero perecentages of CPU (processor) time when the image was taken and the system is only using 3% of the available processor cycles running 52 processes.

Open the Task Manager by pressing the Ctrl + Alt + Del key combination. Windows 7 and Windows Vista brings up a screen presenting several options one of which is the Task Manager. Clicking on its Processes tab should produce a list of the software (their executable files) that the system is running and information about each item. The percentage figures in the CPU column is the approximate current percentage of processor time that each loaded program, named in the Image Name column, is using. Scrolling down the list of programs should reveal the program with the highest percentage against it. Clicking on the CPU heading should order the dominant programs alternatively in ascending or descending order. If the name doesn't identify the software to you, using its name as the search query in a search engine should enable you to find out that information. The free Process Explorer does a better job of providing information on the running processes than the Task Manager in Windows XP, but the version of Task Manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is just as good as Process Explorer.

When the problematic software has been identified, you might be able to adjust its settings or just replace it and the problem should be solved.

File systems: How to convert from the FAT32 file system to NTFS

Question

I bought a new desktop computer that came with Windows XP Professional installed on drive D: - so that drive C: could contain the Recovery System. Another oddity is that FAT32 is the file system in use instead of XP's native NTFS file system. The company that I bought the computer from went bust, so the warranty is worthless, and I can now convert to NTFS and have Windows XP on the C: drive without rendering it void. I need to know if this can be done without reinstalling everything.

Answer

Some OEM computer manufacturers and vendors (that have to provide the technical support for their merchandise) prefer to have their system's set up to use FAT32 instead of NTFS because the latter file system is far more secure and complex and hence more prone to require technical support. Indeed, it is for this reason that Time Computers [no longer in business] made it a condition of the warranty that renders it void if the file system is changed from FAT32 to NTFS.

If a computer has a hard disk drive larger than 64GB, or a user wants to have partitions on a drive larger than 64GB, the NTFS file system is a must. If you want to keep using FAT32 without problems, drives and partitions of drives that are smaller than 64GB are required.

See FDISK on this site for information on the use of that MS DOS partitioning utility on a FAT32 drive.

Windows XP has a Convert utility that converts a FAT32 partition to NTFS without having to copy all of the data elsewhere. This is a time-consuming process and the files are not as well arranged on the drive as they would be if they were installed on a partition that was already configured to use NTFS. Moreover, the cluster size, which is the size of the addressable units that the partition is broken down into when the file system is created, can be set far too low at only 512 bytes (0.5KB) per cluster, and this can slow down file access significantly.

Moreover, note well that unless the user enables the Cvtarea option before the drive or partition is converted, a new Master File Table (MFT) is created that is placed all over the drive/partition. And even though it is the most used file on a drive, Windows XP's Disk Defragmenter can't defragment a fragmented MFT. Even if you defragment the drive before running the conversion, there is no guarantee that the MFT won't be fragmented. Read the following article on how to use the Cvtarea command.

Build a Better NTFS Converter - http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=643

Note that Sysinternals is now owned by Microsoft.

The Contig utility can be downloaded from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545046.aspx.

Read CONVERTING FAT32 to NTFS in Windows XP for information on how to prepare a drive before converting it to NTFS in order to avoid using 512 byte clusters.

How to find out what a drive's cluster size is in Windows XP/Windows Vista

To find out what the cluster size is for a particular drive, enter cmd in Windows XP's Start => Run box (Windows Vista's Start => Start Search box) to bring up the Command Prompt. Enter the command chkdsk c: to check the C: drive (or any other drive's letter to check that drive). After the quick check has taken place, a message appears that provides information about the drive. Note the number next to the bytes in each allocation unit line.

The bytes in each allocation unit is the drive's cluster size in bytes. To obtain the cluster size in kilobytes (KB), divide the number by 1024. For example, if Chkdsk shows 4,096 bytes in each allocation unit, then the cluster size is 4 KB. (4,096 bytes / 1,024 bytes per KB = 4KB). If it shows 512 bytes, you'll have to format the drive to get it to 4KB. If it's the C: drive and Windows XP/Vista is installed on it, you'll have to format the drive and reinstall Windows and all of your software applications. To do that you would boot the system from the Windows CD/DVD (the BIOS might have have to be set to use the CD/DVD drive as the first boot drive). Note that you are given the option reformat the drive during the Windows setup process.

Note that if you make a backup of a FAT32 drive with a backup utility such as the one that comes with Windows XP/Vista, or make a master image with a utility such as Norton Ghost and burn it to a CD/DVD discs, the file system is also backed up. Consequently, it is restored when the backup or master image is restored. Therefore, you can't make a backup or master image of a FAT32 a drive, format it with NTFS, and then restore the back-up or master image, because the FAT32 file system will be restored as well.

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Windows File Systems: Converting to NTFS from FAT32 - FAT32 versus NTFS on this site has some additional information on the advantages and disadvantages of using NTFS instead of FAT32.