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Old September 29th 17, 02:49 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
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Posts: 54
Default Cant access some of a Partition

In message ,
writes:

(Ah, you _are_ the person who posted in the Windows 7 newsgroup!)

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:59:47 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

[]
I dod have another desktop computer that has XP installed. But that is a
much newer machine and it has some other kind of drive, (not IDE). I
think it's Sata or something like that. So I dont think I can just plug
this IDE drive into it.


If the drives are connected by narrow cables (about 1/2"), usually red,
then it's SATA. The _motherboard_ may have an IDE connector on it (it's
only relatively recently that motherboards without one have become
common), so you might be able to use that (with the existing ribbon
cable). As long as the BIOS doesn't try to boot from it.


Yep, then it is Sata.


I don't quite understand that reply to the previous paragraph (-:. To
avoid doubt: _Does_ the motherboard on your XP computer have an IDE
connector?

My guess is that the easiest way is to buy one of those kits that allow
any hard drive to be converted to an external USB drive. I plan to order
one of them from ebay today.


There are roughly two sorts: an external housing, and a bare-bones sort
like these:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...7.m570.l1313.T
R0.TRC0.H0.XUSB+to+IDE.TRS0&_nkw=USB+to+IDE&_sac at=0
I'd say just for diagnostic purposes, go for that sort rather than the
housing. But make sure it's one that has a power supply (whether housing
or bare-bones) - a 3.5" (desktop) drive is likely to need more power,
especially at startup, than USB can provide.


I dont really need a case, but I'll get whatever works.


External cases for 3.5" drives are rather chunky, and may not be that
good ventilation-wise. So I'd go for the cable - it's a lot quicker to
mess about with. The first one on that page that included a power supply
was seven dollars something.

I dont think the whole drive is failing either. It has 3 partitions. G:
H: I: (H: and I: work fine). But I think once a drive starts to show bad
clusters, it's starting to fail, and I should replace it.


(Agreed.)

What sort of utility will check SMART?


There are lots; the one I use is DiskCheckup, from PassMark
https://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm; it still works on
XP-SP3, so you should be able to use it on your other computer. (I don't
know any for '98, but I think there were some.)


That webpage is invalid. Gave me a 404 error.


Nope - I just tried it; it's fine. (Even in my old Firefox 26. [They're
up to 56/57 now.]) The direct download for the executable is
https://www.passmark.com/ftp/diskcheckup.exe .
[]
It's amazing how quickly one or two bad clusters can totally screw up a
whole drive or partition. I'd think that scandisk would have enough


If the bad cluster is in an index area (a directory, or - worse - the
FAT area), it will.
[]
sense to mark these bad clustera as BAD, and leave everything else
intact. I guess scandisk is not a very useful utility.


It can't fix things when the data isn't retrievable - nothing can.
[]
I tried using a command prompt in Windows, and I only get ABORT RETRY
FAIL.


Ah well, it was worth a try.

Trying to copy from Dos is giving me the same error on large files, only
small ones will copy.



3
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets
you. - Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear