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Home: Video University Forums: Tech Q & A:
Disasters in Home Computer Building

videobear
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Mar 20, 2006, 11:48 AM

Post #1 of 6 (1003 views)
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Disasters in Home Computer Building	Can't Post

Oh, boy. If I wasn't so tired from only three hours of sleep last night, I'd be in tears.

I had backed up all my data files from my old computer to the second hard drive of my new machine. This was all the accumulations of the last ten years...project files, business logos, family photos, graphic images, contracts, financial data, tax returns, letters, articles, animation models, music...everything but audio/video data.

Last night, I started to transfer that material from the D: drive to its new location(s) on the C: drive. A little ways into the process, the machine slows down and hangs. On reboot, I get an error message something like "Write back cache error. The drive cannot be initialized. Your data will be lost." I go into Disk Management and try and reinitialize the drive. No luck. Shocked

At this point, it begins to dawn on me that my data may be lost, although I don't yet realize just how MUCH data is at stake. In my sleep-deprived state, I let Windows reformat the drive. Crazy

I did a little searching and have found a utility from Stellar that may be able to recover the data. If so, fine. But even if I can get it all back, I'm left with the uneasy feeling that this might happen AGAIN. The drive seems to be fine physically...but are these Maxtor 200GB "Maxplus" drives subject to dizzy spells and epileptic fits??? I've always trusted my hard drives, within reason...doing periodic backups, but nothing daily, or even weekly. Am I going to have to be more paranoid? Unsure

Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions

Bob A
Veteran

Mar 20, 2006, 4:42 PM

Post #2 of 6 (987 views)
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Re: [videobear] Disasters in Home Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

After a couple of hard drive disasters over the years I burn "My Documents" to a CD at (irreguar) intervals. Usually after I hear of another disaster (unfortunately, like yours!) Frown

videobear
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Mar 21, 2006, 1:09 PM

Post #3 of 6 (965 views)
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Re: [videobear] Disasters in Home Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

Well "Phoenix" didn't cause my drive to rise from the ashes...instead, I kept getting the "Delayed Write Failure" message every time it tried to read the drive to find the missing logical drive and data.

I did a little more research on this problem. Turns out there are several things that can cause this error message...a drive that's bad, or partly bad, or incompatible with the motherboard chipset. Radeon video drivers are often a factor (not in this case, though). Substandard drive cables, or trying to get a drive to perform beyond its ability (wrong UDMA mode, e.g.)

I'm going to try a couple of things tonight...1) take the system back to a restore point prior to the problem. This won't get the missing data back, but if it fixes the error messages, maybe Phoenix can do something. 2) I'll also try "dumbing down" some of the performance settings to make life easier on the drive.

Even if I manage to get back the data from this drive, I'm going to replace both these Maxtors with Western Digitals. I've lost faith in the MaxLine III drives, at least in combination with an NFORCE motherboard.

Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions

ssvp
User

Mar 22, 2006, 8:44 PM

Post #4 of 6 (951 views)
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Re: [videobear] Disasters in Home Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

Download and create a BartPE ISO. It's basically a DVD/CD you create that boots a operating windows XP and allows you access to the network drives and your physical drives when you can't get into XP normally. You could always try to disable WBC on the drives..Typically that delayed error is Lacie Firewire Drives.. However, by going in through BartPE you could run a bunch of systools on your drives, check the MBR, Disks, etc..etc..

videobear
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Mar 23, 2006, 5:47 PM

Post #5 of 6 (927 views)
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Re: [ssvp] Disasters in Home Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

My last attempt to recover the data trashed the system so bad that it will no longer start Windows (see my "Utter Disasters" post in the Weddings forum).

I'll look into BartPE, thanks.

Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions

wilebill
User

Mar 23, 2006, 6:11 PM

Post #6 of 6 (924 views)
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Re: [videobear] Disasters in Home Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

How big is your power supply? Might you be over-taxing it? One thing I've learned over the years is that if you get unexplainable problems - check your power supply.

Regards,
Billy Horton
Video Image Productions

Studio & On-Location Video Production
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