Disk on my home PC took a partial dive

[joecar]

It's really weird, Windows XP safe mode comes up, can access quite a few files ok, other files hang Windows Explorer, disk repair thrashes itself to death trying to repair half the disk (250GB SATA disk).

[Bruce Melton]

Sounds like a fairly new drive? Can you install it as a secondary via USB or something to try and save files?
Or, are you only as good as your last backup?

[joecar]

Looks like I can save most files.

[Garry]

Glad to hear ... symptons point towards some untimely end for the drive, so get off of it as much as you can (and need), then send it in for warranty replacement ... (I recon) If Windows fails to work on the drive at all, try to boot off of one of the Linux System-Repair CDs, they usually give you most of the tools you need to save as much as possible ...

[joecar]

WinXP boots in safe mode, and I read all the important files, now I just have to get the unimportant/convenient ones.

[neil]

Have you tried to boot from the windows installation disk to do a windows repair or tried windows recovery?

Regards,

Neil.

[joecar]

Neil,

Disk repair started up and mentioned a whole bunch of bad/unreadable blocks, but I'll give the windows repair a try, maybe there are enough useable blocks on my 250GB disk.

Thanks,
Joe

[Dick]

Joe,

You might want to take a look at SpinRite by Gibson Research (www.grc.com). That program is specifically designed to operate on disks at the sector level.

Regards,
Dick

[joecar]

Dick,

Ok thanks, I'll give them a try (I have edited DOS FAT file headers before... ).

Edit: I have been to GRC before, that's where "Shields Up" is...

Joe