On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:02:02 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:

Never seen this before.

A HDD of mine (IBM Deskstar 20GB IC35L020AVER07-0) 'died' when I restarted
Windows (XP btw FWIW). Windows shut down OK seemingly but wouldn't restart.

It totally 'locked up' the PC with no error message. Never seen anything quite
like that before so it took me a little while to pinpoint it. The BIOS found the
drive OK btw.

Anyway, I got things sorted and then re-attached it as a secondary drive.

Trying to look at it, Windows Explorer 'froze' for a bit but it did load a drive
icon eventually. However Windows Explorer was of no further help.

I then used XP's command.com and got the cryptic message 'cyclic redundancy
error'.

Any ideas what's up ? Is the drive destined for silicon hell or is it
recoverable ? I'm wondering if the system area's data's been trashed for
example.

Graham



Try IBM's drive fitness test. It may be able to repair the drive.
I've seen a lot of their drives suddenly develop lots of bad sectors.
The drive fitness test was able to reallocate them without destroying
the data on the drive. Run the extended test, then it will allow you
to run "sector repair" when it finds the first bad sector. Most of
the drives I've repaired with DFT worked fine for several years and
are still working today (although I wouldn't trust them for anything
important after that).

If you just want to be able to copy the files off the drive without
windows stopping you with a CRC error, try Western Digital's "Data
Lifeguard". It's a windows program that's designed to copy files from
your old drive to your new one and it works with non-WD drives. The
nice thing about it is that it doesn't stop if there's an error. It's
great for a drive that has a few bad files among thousands of good
ones.
Andy Cuffe