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1. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Harm Millaard Feb 21, 2010 3:14 AM (in response to Powered by Design)Glenn,
First install a large new disk, then try this: http://www.recovermyfiles.com/ and if everything is recovered, you have the new disk to store it. Then you can use a repair utility from the manufacturer to see if your disk can be salvaged. If you Google for "Data recovery tool" you will find many alternatives.
Good luck.
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2. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Powered by Design Feb 22, 2010 1:22 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Thanks for the idea Harm but no luck.
Every time I tried the computer froze up.
I guess I didnt notice the drive was acting up because I hadnt used it for video.
I was only using it for still images and it was working just fine as far as I knew.
I tried allot of other programs but no luck there too.
from what I can tell the drive is just running really slow.
It will let me pull up images but when I try to copy or play a video it then cant keep up and will give me the Not Responding line.
I was able to copy one file at a time kinda so I might just try to see how long it will take to get what I need.
I put a new 1TB drive inside but the one failing has 350GB so who knows how long it will take.
I have some of it backed up and will just have to sit down and see what else I need.
Thanks again: GLenn
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3. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Harm Millaard Feb 22, 2010 3:33 AM (in response to Powered by Design)Glenn,
With this disk in such a troublesome state, make sure you have no pagefile on that disk anymore, if needed recreate a new pagefile for the time being on your C drive, and that no environment variables are pointing to this troublesome disk. In fact that even when disconnected, your OS and programs run OK and nothing accesses this disk. Then try Check Disk at boot time. Maybe that will mark bad sectors and maps them to other sectors. Or run the manufacturers recovery tool.
One other approach, that I have used myself in the past, was removing the disk, putting it in an external housing and connecting it by firewire/USB and then trying to access the disk for copying to a new disk. This ensured that the disk got a new drive letter and any references to environment variables or pagefile were effectively nullified.
Hope this helps.
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4. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Bill Gehrke Feb 22, 2010 9:29 AM (in response to Powered by Design)Glenn, I had a similar problem on my Internet computer. It is an much older ASUS motherboard with a nVidia chipset. It has a separate little fan on the nVidia I/O chip. It turns out that the fan had failed and the chip was overheating on big transfers. Have you cleaned your Dell system recently? If you can do small transfers but not large transfers and you do not have the original air flow because of dust accumulation it could be other than a disk problem.
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5. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
John T Smith Feb 22, 2010 11:51 AM (in response to Powered by Design)Spinrite is the best utility I have found http://www.grc.com/intro.htm
Note that it is DOS so you need a boot disk to make it run
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6. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Powered by Design Feb 22, 2010 1:01 PM (in response to Harm Millaard)Thanks for all the great ideas.
I have moved the drive to a new Letter and put the new 1TB drive in its spot.
I also have not used premiere yet.
I took the drive out and put in the freezer and after re-installing I was able to transfer one folder of 19.5GB with working files.
im going to just keep playing the transfer game till I get the data off.
It seems like all the data is fine but the drive is just not spinning fast anymore.
I will keep you up to date.
Thanks: Glenn
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7. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Powered by Design Feb 23, 2010 5:01 AM (in response to Powered by Design)The freezer trick has been working so far.
When I put it back in I can copy about 20GB before it starts heating back up again and slowing down.
I watch the temp with CPUID Hardware Monitor and it usually starts at 1 degree and goes up fast as I copy over files.
Ive almost gotten all the important stuff off.
Need to get a raid hooked up on new system when the time comes.
Backing up never sounded so good till you lose something.
ENjoy: GLenn
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8. Re: Hard Drive starting to fail ?
Harm Millaard Feb 23, 2010 6:13 AM (in response to Powered by Design)Glenn,
Now that you have your case open, I suggest you take the opportunity to install some extra fans to improve the airflow. 71 degrees for your video card and 38 degrees for some disks is pretty high IMO. A pull fan behind your disks may improve that and possibly a side panel fan for a better airflow over your video card will help too.





