Data Error Reading Hard Drive ( Win98 SE )

My Sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night and
described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh screen, but
receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "
Relevant specs of comp a

MidTower Case
200W PSU
AMD K2 - 400mhz CPU
ChainTech AGM 2 - Motherboard
Fujitsu 13.6 GB HardDrive

The motherboard has been there since Oct 98,
Tower is original,
CPU & HardDrive were upgrades in March 2000
Did a clean install of Windows98 SE in 2002,
before giving comp to my sister.

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It began life
as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a reinstall of
SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob

"Rob" wrote in
:

My Sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night and
described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh
screen, but receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "
Relevant specs of comp a

MidTower Case
200W PSU
AMD K2 - 400mhz CPU
ChainTech AGM 2 - Motherboard
Fujitsu 13.6 GB HardDrive

The motherboard has been there since Oct 98,
Tower is original,
CPU & HardDrive were upgrades in March 2000
Did a clean install of Windows98 SE in 2002,
before giving comp to my sister.

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It began
life as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a reinstall
of SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob




The error is triggered by an unreadable sector. Don't think a reinstall
will help for a long time. Try booting to dos, start scandisk and do a
surface scan. When it finds bad sectors which weren't bad before, the
disk is dying.

"Ingeborg" wrote in message
...
"Rob" wrote in
:

My Sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night and
described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh
screen, but receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "
Relevant specs of comp a

MidTower Case
200W PSU
AMD K2 - 400mhz CPU
ChainTech AGM 2 - Motherboard
Fujitsu 13.6 GB HardDrive

The motherboard has been there since Oct 98,
Tower is original,
CPU & HardDrive were upgrades in March 2000
Did a clean install of Windows98 SE in 2002,
before giving comp to my sister.

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It began
life as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a reinstall
of SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob




The error is triggered by an unreadable sector. Don't think a reinstall
will help for a long time. Try booting to dos, start scandisk and do a
surface scan. When it finds bad sectors which weren't bad before, the
disk is dying.


Can it be saved, or is it just time to upgrade & say goodbye?


In general, approx. how long could a HD last, after being newly added to a
computer. IOW, is 5yrs of use considered a short period, normal or a long
period of time for an IDE HD lifecycle?

"Rob" wrote in
:


"Ingeborg" wrote in message
...
"Rob" wrote in
:

My Sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night
and described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh
screen, but receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "
Relevant specs of comp a

MidTower Case
200W PSU
AMD K2 - 400mhz CPU
ChainTech AGM 2 - Motherboard
Fujitsu 13.6 GB HardDrive

The motherboard has been there since Oct 98,
Tower is original,
CPU & HardDrive were upgrades in March 2000
Did a clean install of Windows98 SE in 2002,
before giving comp to my sister.

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It
began life as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a
reinstall of SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob




The error is triggered by an unreadable sector. Don't think a
reinstall will help for a long time. Try booting to dos, start
scandisk and do a surface scan. When it finds bad sectors which
weren't bad before, the disk is dying.


Can it be saved, or is it just time to upgrade & say goodbye?


In general, approx. how long could a HD last, after being newly added
to a computer. IOW, is 5yrs of use considered a short period, normal
or a long period of time for an IDE HD lifecycle?


When it's dying it can't be saved. You can keep on using it, but the
number of bad sectors will increase. When it starts getting bad sectors
it's not reliable anymore.

I don't know how long a HD should last. When you google for 'MTBF
harddisk' you will find 250000 - 2500000 hours. That's about 25 - 250
years. But I have had several disks that died. I also have a 15 years old
486 which I still have in use as printserver, which runs it's original
HD.

Rob wrote:

In general, approx. how long could a HD last, after being newly added to a
computer. IOW, is 5yrs of use considered a short period, normal or a long
period of time for an IDE HD lifecycle?


Most consumer HD have a warranty period 1-5 years.
How long they last, your guess is as good as mine, from NOT starting
when brand new to longer than the last Pope's ministry.

HTH

Stanislaw
Slack user from Ulladulla.

Warranty periods can be as much as five years, and MTBF figures can be that
much or more, but it's quite meaningless when applied to a single hard
drive. Any particular unit could last from a few hours to decades.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Rob" wrote in message
. ..

snip

In general, approx. how long could a HD last, after being newly added to a
computer. IOW, is 5yrs of use considered a short period, normal or a long
period of time for an IDE HD lifecycle?

"Rob" wrote in message
. ..
My sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night and
described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh screen,
but
receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "
Relevant specs of comp a

MidTower Case
200W PSU
AMD K2 - 400mhz CPU
ChainTech AGM 2 - Motherboard
Fujitsu 13.6 GB HardDrive

The motherboard has been there since Oct 98,
Tower is original,
CPU & HardDrive were upgrades in March 2000
Did a clean install of Windows98 SE in 2002,
before giving comp to my sister.

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It began
life
as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a reinstall of
SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob


So I guess there isn't much point to saving the HD or the files on it
and instead look to possible mini - upgrade options. My sister & I live
about an hour and a half from each other, she visits once a month. Locally I
found a place near me that could do an upgrade for min. $250 CDN before tax.
My sister, who lives in a larger city, could probably find a place like this
and wouldn't be too much.

"Rob" wrote in message ...

"Rob" wrote in message
. ..
My sister, who has an old computer of mine, called me last night and
described her situation as follows.

She had turned on the computer, and gets thru to Windows spalsh screen,
but
receives the message
" Data Error Reading Drive C, (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.... "

Everything has worked well for the 5-8yr period of this comp.(It began
life
as a Pentium 133mhz comp)
I think the problem is a toasted HD, or is it as simple as a reinstall of
SE? Any constructive help/advice appreciated.

Rob


So I guess there isn't much point to saving the HD or the files on it
and instead look to possible mini - upgrade options.

Whether or not you want to recover data files is of course up to you.
But, just because Windows won't load due to one reported disk read error,
doesn't mean that most? data isn't recoverable.

You might also want to try running a "scandisk /surface" from DOS, and/or the
drive manufacturer's disk checking tools. Usually found on their respective
web-sites. If you have a SMART capable drive and it's enabled, you should
also check what it has to report.