[kirch]

:dead:

My computer restarted after finding a new driver, only to fail. I ran with boot disk and got to a scanreg. The file system did not scan.

"ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading the FAT on drive C."

It's a DiamondMax Plus 60 Maxtor 40.9GB

Can I run my Win98 cd and start over or will I lose my data?

What are my options?

I've always seemed to have problems with this area of my computer, sound familiar?

Not a good hd manufacturer?

Thanks in Advance!

 

[Mental_Myopia]

If you reformat with Win98, it will erase everything.

Can you boot to safe mode? Hold the Ctrl button down when you boot up until the recovery menu pops up, then choose safe mode.

The drivers you installed must've set up the wrong drivers for your IDE controller. What did you install? What motherboard are you using, and what is your IDE controller? If you don't know these, open the case and read the black chips in there. List the names and numbers on all of them for us. Pay close attention to any larger squarish ones that would be on the bottom half of the board.

If we can't get the old IDE controller drivers back, you'd need to reformat. If you do this, hook this drive up to another computer as a slave and pull off all your data. Another option would be to buy a new hard drive, format it as the master, then hook up this old drive as the slave to get your data off of it. I recommend having two drives in a computer, so the second option is what I'd personally do.

I've had this kind of stuff happen to me often, but I've always been able to recover my data by having a second hard drive to boot from. Maxtors are very good drives, and I've had zero physical problems with any of the five I've used. A friend of mine is actually using an old 3GB Maxtor that's around eight years old and still running strong.

Problems like this happen often for you? Is it usually after installing new drivers? If your hard drives go nuts very often, ensure that you have correct jumper settings, have them hooked up correctly, don't let them get bumped around, and keep magnets far away from them.

 

[kirch]

Thanks MM!

I'm going to take your advice and get a new drive. 80gb is only around $75.

We'll just see if we can't get the info off the old one and toss it. We have a geek who believes it will be no problem to get the data out. Then partition the new drive for data storage, I guess that's the thing nowadays!

My motherboard is a "1st" Mainboard. PhoenixBios. D686 Bios. The main chip is covered with a fan. On bottom left is a sticker with VBD41 0000 3902B575 KA51701287 FA15T

It won't even scandisk so we can't redo Win98. So obviously we can't safe mode or anything.

So, I'll get a note back in a couple days as to the results. Your thoughts...

Thanks again!

 

[Mental_Myopia]

I'm positive that the old drive is still in good working order. All that happened was most likely a driver conflict. Don't throw the old one away! If you're able to pull the data off of it, and it seems to work well, keep it as a slave on your primary IDE cable. If it works and you still want to throw it away, mail it to me!


As for the new drive, I built my new system the other week using two 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives with the 8MB buffers, and they rock! The 8MB buffer increases performance very nicely, and Maxtor has thicker platters, which is good.

The BIOS chip helped to narrow down the motherboard, but I'd need to know the rest of the chips on there and any more writing you might be able to discover.

 

[kirch]

Okay...

my Maxtor 40gb doesn't spin anymore. Still under warranty. We replaced it with a new one, 80gb Maxtor, and partitioned off 10gb's for backup. However, even this kind of backup doesn't help under these conditions.

I've asked Maxtor if I could send back their defective hd and get my last 3 months of data still, I have backup before that. What does anyone know about data retrieval?

This was the problem. My tech guy has never seen one seize up like this before!

I got the hd you recommended MM.

Now I have browser questions regarding importing all my Netscape mail data!! What's the best forum for that? Or does someone here know that?!

Seems like my mail is right there, but can't be read by NS.

I'm using NS 4.79, but 7.1 seems to browse so much better... guess I'll have to start using that program for everything now!! Perhaps this is the answer.

Thanks,

 

[Mental_Myopia]

No spinning at all? The motor must've been defective.

The warranty should replace the drive, although I can't remember if the Maxtor warranty covers data recovery. I sort of think it does, but Maxtors have been so good to me that I never was put into a position of needing to do that.

I've also always been paranoid enough to have a second hard drive which keeps a duplicate copy of my main hard drive, and I burn important things to CD's every couple months. For frequently modified things, I use a trusty zip drive.

One trick to recovering data off a hard drive that goes horribly wrong is to stick the drive in the freezer for a while, but I believe this is only for damaged surface area. If the motor won't spin, it's not going to read it regardless. Hopefully Maxtor will be kind enough to put the platters from your old hard drive into something with a decent motor so that the data can be recovered.

 

[kirch]

Here's how this came down...

Maxtor will warranty the hd in full, but data is a whole different deal. It's nearly $2k to recover that data. So I may go for it early next year, then get the new hd from Maxtor, which they said is fine, and use the new 40gb for backup.

Thanks for all your help, it boiled down to a seized up hd.