Massive cluster damage - how should I proceed?

[Bryson]

To make a long story short my WD2000JB has massive cluster damage. It ran perfectly fine then one day it just refused to boot. I managed to re-install windows xp but it refused to boot again just 24hours later and I was not even able to re-install windows at all this time. After installing windows xp on a 30gig maxtor and setting it as master, I ran chkdsk on the WD drive with the /f and /r switches. At one point I noticed it was writing 6.5 million bad clusters to file. ouch!

My main priority is salvaging the data on the drive. At first I thought that chkdsk restored the files but upon further inspection some are listed as 0kb while others will show as being 100mb for example but when in reality only take up 15 mb on disk making the file useless. By mistake I ran the chkdsk on windows pre SP1 forgetting that it couldn't read more than 137gb. I wonder if that had any effect on the recovered files. The drive is not clicking and it passes speedfan's smart test with a rating of 94%. Also according to windows it is running at UDMA5.

So my options from what I've read are to try and repair the drive itself using either spinrite or HDD regenerator. Or trying to manually recover the data using Getdataback, etc...If I try to repair the drive using spinrite, will it in any way lessen my chances of recovering the files using getdataback? Basically I need to know ASAP if I should go out and buy another drive to attempt data recovery or try to get this drive working again. What are the chances? Please advise, I really don't want to do the wrong thing.

Random questions:

1)Aside from SATA drives being cheaper and having a thinner cable aiding in better airflow, are there any other advatages in picking up a sata drive over a pata?

2)In speedfan 4.32 I am getting a temperature reading of 127 degrees for temp3!! Is that for real? Which peripheral is that?

3)In windows xp, one of the partitions on the WD drive has the files and directories listed in blue. What does that signify?

 

[drizzt81]

... I managed to re-install windows xp but it refused to boot again just 24hours later and I was not even able to re-install windows at all this time....

My main priority is salvaging the data on the drive.

If data recovery was or is your main priority, you should not have (re)installed Windows on a failing drive.
My suggestion would be to use GetDataBack or a similar tool (usually cost ~$80) to recover whatever data you can. Note that it is advisable to recover onto a drive that is not failing.

By mistake I ran the chkdsk on windows pre SP1 forgetting that it couldn't read more than 137gb. I wonder if that had any effect on the recovered files.

Possibly. If CHKDSK recovered to your drive, it is rather likely that this has further decreased the probability of a successful recovery.

The drive is not clicking and it passes speedfan's smart test with a rating of 94%. Also according to windows it is running at UDMA5.

According to a Google study, SMART is not very useful at predicting drive failures. If I were you, I would FIRST try to recover the data and then run the manufacturer's diagnostic.

I need to know ASAP if I should go out and buy another drive to attempt data recovery or try to get this drive working again.

Would you really trust a drive like this to hold your valuable data? Of course, I do not know your financial situation, but I would buy a new drive and use it to recover the data first, then try repairing. If the repair works, you will have a drive that you can use for backup purposes.

1)Aside from SATA drives being cheaper and having a thinner cable aiding in better airflow, are there any other advatages in picking up a sata drive over a pata?

It's cheaper and performs at least the same. Recent Intel chipsets do not have PATA support anymore. What more reason do you need?

3)In windows xp, one of the partitions on the WD drive has the files and directories listed in blue. What does that signify?

I am not sure, but I think that this indicates NTFS filesytem compression.

 

[Bryson]

If data recovery was or is your main priority, you should not have (re)installed Windows on a failing drive.

You're absolutely right but it was not until I re-installed windows and then ran chkdsk that I noticed I had a problem. My system didn't have as much as a hiccup until this point. I have not run chkdsk or defrag in 2 years so it was bound to happen. When windows failed to boot I tried to "repair" the OS using the repair option in windows setup. I noticed that it was trying to recover files on my E: drive(second partition) but that was not what I wanted at all since there was nothing wrong with that partition so I reset the PC. My E: drive then became unaccessable and was red in windows XP signifying an error so at this point I had no choice but to run chkdsk and let it run all the way through and now most of my files are corrupt!. My C: drive(40gigs for OS) does not appear to be damaged. So you see, I am not fully convinced yet that my drive is failing. The file sizes shown are wrong so maybe the file table or whatever is corrupted? But then again I'm the one asking for help so what the heck do I know!

Are there any tests I can do or programs I can run to check the disk without fear of damaging it? Hard to believe that chkdsk actually ruined my disk instead of fixing it!

 

[pettybone]

If windows will not boot from the drive, and someone correct me if I am wrong, but your first step if you want you data back is to slave that drive. At most try and do a chkdsk to get wndows to load. Then safe mode. If you can't get into safe mode, the next step is getting a new drive to install windows on and slave the old drive. Thats only if you want the data. If you didn't need it then yeah why not reinstall windows.

As far as I know chkdsk will only try and repair. If it cannot repair it will then mark down bad sectors so that windows will not even try to write to that sector.

 

[drizzt81]

Are there any tests I can do or programs I can run to check the disk without fear of damaging it? Hard to believe that chkdsk actually ruined my disk instead of fixing it!

Yes, manufacturers offer a low-level diagnostic utility that you can run. Most of them (all?) are included on the ultimate boot cd. Since it is pretty clear at this point that your HDD has failed/ is failing, you should make data recovery your top priority. As you had mentioned in your first post, use GetDataBack or a similar tool to recover your important data to a second HDD. Then you could run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and think about stuff like speedfan etc.