Western Digital has diagnostic software available for download.

http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...n&pid=999&swid

Ben

"SpamMePlease(NOT)" wrote in message ...
Ok. Can I connect this problem hdd up to another comp as a slave drive and
pull data off the problem drive without the problem drive having a working
FAT?

I have run a DOS hdd utility from seagate on the problem drive and found out
that it is a WD drive.

Here is the log file of the drive:


--------------- SeaTools for DOS v1.09PH ---------------
Device 0 is ATA device WDCAC313000R WD-WM6760118569

On Generic PCI ATA

Device is 28 Bit Addressed - Max LBA 25429824 ( 13.020 GB )

This drive does not support Security Features
SMART Is Supported And ENABLED
SMART Has NOT Been Tripped
DST Is NOT Supported
Logging Feature Set Is NOT Supported
POH 0
Drive FAILS Pretest SMART Checks !!
Drive Has Been Overtemp -- 0
Start Read Scan on 4/18/2007 @ 0:57.34
Read Scan FAILED on 4/18/2007 @ 1:04.50

"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
Rebuilding the FAT is not a significant problem, although it isn't always
100% successful. The data can be easily copied off the drive without a
FAT - the FAT only assists in identifying how that data is organised into
files, and there are many ways of doing that.

But that's not the issue. If the data on that drive is worth anything to
you at all, then the first step is to find out whether or not the drive is
working properly, and what options might therefore exist for getting
whatever is recoverable off the drive. Anything else you do with that
drive simply reduces the chances of getting at that data.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"SpamMePlease(NOT)" wrote in message
...
Well I do have a problem with a corrupt FAT hence my use of Scandisk.
Scandisk has only covered about 1% of C drive partition.

How can I get the data off the disk? If the FAT is corrupted can it be
repaired? Surely the FAT on a partition must be working for the data on
that partition to be found and moved off to another drive?

I have another computer I could connect the drive to and jumper it to act
as a slave. However if the FAT is corrupted how can the other computer
read the slave drive?



"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
Scandisk is a file system diagnostic and repair utility, not a disk
maintenance utility. If you run Scandisk and ask it to repair the file
system while the disk drive itself is still faulty then it will simply
compound the problem.

Depending on the cause of the problem, it's likely that the more you use
the disk the worse the errors will get.

You need to get a hard disk drive diagnostic program from the www site
of the disk drive manufacturer and use it to determine the extent, and
possibly the cause, of the problem. Once you know what you are up
against you can develop a recovery plan, such as installing the drive in
a different machine and copying all your important data off to a
different drive.

However, I would guess that the Scandisk attempts at repair, and the
length of time that it is taking, has already corrupted the data to the
extent that there may be little that is recoverable.

Clusters that Scandisk marks as bad are simply removed from the view of
the file system. They can be ignored when the disk is formatted, and
will re-appear, unless the format process also marks them as bad..
Whether or not they are recovered if you do an image restore depends on
the particular restore you are using - some do and some don't. I would
expect an 'image' restore to ignore Scandisk's bad sector allocations,
however some restore processes that are called 'image' really aren't.
However, Scandisk attempts to access the bad sectors may cause the
drive's internal logic to flag the sectors as bad. In this case they
become permanently marked as bad in the drive's electronics and cannot
be recovered.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"SpamMePlease(NOT)" wrote in message
...
Hi

Have a hdd which has suddenly developed bad sectors/clusters.

Currently I cannot boot to windows so I booted to the command prompt
and ran a surface scan dos utility with the auto fix switch.

This surface scan dos utility has been running day and night for 4 days
and has 1200+ bad clusters.

What I want to know is whether the bad clusters it is marking as bad
clusters will be permanetely marked as such; i.e. the hdd will know not
to use this space again even if I try to restore an image of the
partition?