Corrupt file allocation table

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:54 pm

my 2nd HD in my main computer went south this morning - 500mb Seagate Barracuda - windows ran diskcheck on boot - couldn't read - bad file allocation table - got a copy of spinrite 6.0 ran level 2 - it did 99.9% no problem and then went on to the last part and looked like it went into level 4 reading/rewriting bit-by-bit. I let it run there for about 2 hours and it gave me a couple of messages about bad sectors, couldn't retrieve all the data...and was showing an estimated completion time of 902 hours... I shut it off at that point because I needed to use the computer.

From what I read, NTFS does not have unitary file allocation tables (and duplicates) but spreads the info around the HD??

the drive is about 3.5 years old. I had noticed it was audibly spinning up when I accessed certain programs, but otherwise no real issues.

I downloaded the seagate dos tools. I put the offending HD in the fridge and will fire off Spinrite again when I go to bed.

anything I'm missing? all suggestions welcome. Running win7 pro.

thanks!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:27 pm

I would not do the fridge thing except as a last resort. You are going to ruin the drive with moisture from condensation.

Just let Spinrite finish. You can specify a starting point of 99.8% in the Spinrite settings so you don't need to scan the whole drive again and put needless wear on it. It may take a day, or it may take a week. Have you got another computer you can run it on so you can free up the main PC?

Another thought - you may already have fixed the drive enough to at least recover the data if you got to 99.9%. Most drives don't have anything on the end of the drive if it's regularly defragged (and Win7 automatically defrags).

Try reading the drive and see what happens. If you still get a file allocation table error then you may need to run Scandisk on it to repair the file structure.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:15 am

FlyingPenguin wrote:I would not do the fridge thing except as a last resort. You are going to ruin the drive with moisture from condensation.

Just let Spinrite finish. You can specify a starting point of 99.8% in the Spinrite settings so you don't need to scan the whole drive again and put needless wear on it. It may take a day, or it may take a week. Have you got another computer you can run it on so you can free up the main PC?

Another thought - you may already have fixed the drive enough to at least recover the data if you got to 99.9%. Most drives don't have anything on the end of the drive if it's regularly defragged (and Win7 automatically defrags).

Try reading the drive and see what happens. If you still get a file allocation table error then you may need to run Scandisk on it to repair the file structure.

I had a drive that took over 24 hours and still did not complete the sector, but it was enough to get the information off his laptop drive.

On my main rig, my drives are now approaching 6 years come this December. About a month ago, I ran SpinRite level 4 on both drives. Took almost 2 days to complete. Once drives hit 3 years, I start the maintenance routine of once a year with SpinRite level 4.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 8:09 am

Thanks gang. FP tried all of the above - I have an old machine in the garage and I'll hook it up there, fire off Spinrite and see what happens.

time to order some new drives.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 8:23 am

Just run level 2. 2 is for recovery, 4 is for preventative maintenance. 2 takes less time. As I said, there's a way to resume where you left off (at some point you are told you can press Shift+Enter I believe, to specify the start point in percentage).

Spinrite may make up to 2000 tries to access each bad sector, and if you have a lot of bad sectors that can take a while. Longest I let one run was a week. I've heard of people who ran it for months and eventually read the drive.

BTW: Gibson is working on Spinrite 6.1 which will be a free upgrade to any licensed owner. It will run faster (right now Spinrite uses Bios which doesn't allow SATA and USB drives to run at full speed) and also work in any SATA mode, thus not requiring you to switch to IDE mode for compatibility. It will also boot on a Mac.

PS: wvjohn, make sure Spinrite can acess SMART. If it can't, it can't do advanced sector recovery. If you see a drive temperature, then SMART is working, otherwise the SMART status page will be blank. On a SATA drive, you usually need to run in IDE emulation not ACHI. This is an issue the new version will fix.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:43 pm

When i fired up the garage machine, I got a message that SMART had been activated on the drive. We'll see what happens. I just let it start over - it gave me an estimated time of about 2 hrs...until it hits the funky stuff.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 5:59 pm

went back and checked and got the "completed" messsage from spinrite and checked the logs - they showed some recovery. tried it out, still corrupt table ...chkdsk couldn't restore. Windows thinks it's a healthy RAW partition ... I guess we're done with one.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 6:14 pm

You doing a real chkdsk /f from the command prompt, or letting ScanDisk do it (right click drive icon, properties, tools, Check Now, Automatically fix file system errors)? I'd recommend trying both as they both work a little differently.

Could just be that both your allocation tables got trashed by bad sectors, in which case not much you can do.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Aug 03, 2013 7:33 pm

wvjohn wrote:went back and checked and got the "completed" messsage from spinrite and checked the logs - they showed some recovery. tried it out, still corrupt table ...chkdsk couldn't restore. Windows thinks it's a healthy RAW partition ... I guess we're done with one.

Did you set the type back - ACHI if that is what you had it set at? I've made that mistake a few times.