Creeping hdd issue

[Opulent]

I have a hard drive issue that I haven't been able to solve yet. I can't determine what the cause is, so I don't know what to fix.
the problem: parts of the FAT table gets corrupted.
the history: The primary partition on my second physical hdd had an apparent file corruption. Scandisk could solve the problem. "The data pertaining to the file xxxx etc... is corrupt"; save file fragment and the file is fine, but the FAT was corrupt. okay, restore lost data. all is fine. scandisk all paritions. all is fine.
next day, there is another FAT corruption on the same partition, different location. hmmm...
buy new hdd, install, fdisk, format, DriveImage the 2 extra partitions on the secondary master. had to manually copy the d: drive because DriveImage is worthless.
scandisk all partitions. all is fine.
next day(or so): FAT corruption on the same respective partition on the NEW drive. WTF?
scandisk, fix it. scan for virii. nothing. scandisk all partitions. all is fine.
start getting desperate to back-up all files before I have a catastrophic failure.
buy new hdd to replace my primary master to make back-ups easier. DriveImage can't copy the freaking partition because of some file problem. says to scandisk/defrag and try again. so I do, no dice. What a waste of money DriveImage was. oh well.
use the WesternDigital drive-copy utility.
boot up. all is fine. scandisk all drives. all is fine.
Christmas day: my primary partition on my second NEW disk has FAT corruption! WTF!
scandisk, restore data from old drive. all is good... but for how long?
solutions?:
all 3 drives couldn't be failing, so it isn't the drive itself.
not sure if it is wise to disable DMA, besides what good would it do, since I was able to use the drive for months with no errors.
could be a sneaky virus, but the errors are so non-invasive that I'd say it's unlikely.
common denominators: Windows98, same mobo(drives work, at least so far in my Pentium2 machine), same hard drive controller, same BIOS, same hdd PartNumber.
I'd lean towards the hard drive controller, or the On-Track hdd controller interface, but I have no proof. besides, IF those were causing the problem, wouldn't the whole drive just be screwed at this point (not just a few bits here and there)?
I'm stumped at this point. Once I back-up my data to CDs, I'll probably reformat and re-install windows.
sorry for the long post.
any ideas would be very welcome: opulent@cox.net

[Bloodshedder]

Could be a boot sector virus that's inadvertently screwing up the file allocation table, could be a Windows problem, or could be the hardware or BIOS controlling the drives. I'd try completely formatting and reinstalling your OS and seeing if that fixes the problem.

[Coraline]

Yeah, try reinstalling Windows.
It's not very smart to partition a hard drive; these errors occur frequently if you do.
Another decision would be to use a program other than Scandisk. Scandisk is highly innefective, to tell you the truth.
Your boot sector is probably infected, and when that usually happens, it's bye bye hd.
If you want to partition a drive, make sure that you go out and buy a second hd first. I do not know why people want to partition one drive, it just screws everything up and makes it way harder to do stuff.
Check on Microsoft.com and download their help files. They have been extremely successful on repairing problems like this.
But yours seems so confusing that it would be a GOOD idea to go out and buy a new HD, install XP on it (FAT32), then copy ALL neccesary files from your old hd(s) to that one, and remember to NEVER partition your hard drive. Bad things can happen that way.
Hope this post is useful...sorry about your hd. That sucks, but like I said, just buy a new hd and copy all other stuff you need onto the new one. Then toss those other hd(s), or try reformatting.

[Opulent]

thanks for the fast replies, guys.
I don't see what is bad about having partitions personally, perhaps you can give me a reason why?
but on topic, is there a way to clean or check my boot-sector/MBR?
I don't want to run into the same problem later, that is why it is a tough problem troubleshoot. I don't know what is causing the issue.

[Ultraviolet]

If something was wrong with partitioning I'm sure somebody besides Chu would have said so by now.

[Coraline]

No it's just partitioning your HD is unreliable and a waste of time.
If you have a big hard drive then keep in big and don't partition it.
See the logic? Doesn't make sense.
But anyways partitioning can make things _worse_ in a situation like that. You can probably do a surface scan in scandisk or fixit utilities but it's probably corrupted.
That's the bad thing about partitions. When you split a hard-drive, it makes things worse in a situation like this. I'll have more convincing info in a bit...
Safer to just buy another stable hd and copy all things you need. Seriously.
Always glad to help out, man.

[Ultraviolet]

Partitioning is NOT useless. You can't very well (often) have more than one OS on a single partition, so if you want to be able to boot into any one of several OS's at any given time you'll need to either partition your hard drive or buy several more.

Even though I only run WinXP, I keep it on its own partition so I can format that partition and re-install without formatting the rest of my hard drive.

See the logic? Makes perfect sense.

EDIT: And I have had no stability issues yet.

[Bloodshedder]

Partitioning is a useful process. It's often recommended that you partition your drives so that all your data is separate from your programs and operating system. 99% of the time, it won't cause any problems.

There is a way to fix your master boot record, but I haven't really had much luck with it in the past. Booting into DOS and running "fdisk /mbr" is how it's done. This should eradicate any boot sector viruses, although any decent antivirus software would've taken care of such a thing.

[Coraline]

I see what you guys are saying, but not partitioning would make it easier, you gotta admit. :)

[Opulent]

maybe, but if you've ever had to wait through a scandisk/defrag/re-image a 250Gb drive (especially during a computer problem), you will appreciate partitioning.
doesn't 'fdisk /MBR' re-build the master boot record... in other words, you can't use it on a working partition, I assume.

[Bloodshedder]

Well, after actually researching it, I found that if you do indeed have a boot sector virus, using fdisk /mbr might not be a good idea, and might render the drive unreadable. However, it might be a good idea to try it after backing up all your data and before reformatting.

[Planky]

I highly doubt using the 'fdisk /mbr' command will stuff anything up, if a virus is in there it will be overwritten. Why not get a virus checker to actually see if one is on there?

Edit: But then again you might be able to, due to the drive corrupting. Another thought, your io adapter could be buggered

[Ultraviolet]

Planky said:

your io adapter could be buggered

Wow, hey, that does sound pretty likely in this case.

[Use]

Few ideas:

-Make sure your BIOS and motherboard drivers are up to date.

-Use Partition Magic, it's an excellent program for backing up partitions scanning for errors.

-Everyone has horror stories but in my opinion Western Digital drives are garbage.

-Partitioning harddrives is completely safe. I'm running several machines with partitioned drives and they have no problems.

[Opulent]

thanks, Use3D.
only issue is, that the drives worked fine for months, now there is a continual problem.
that would point to a virus or a hardware failure.
thanks to everyone for the feedback... I'm not sure what steps to take to start clean, but we'll see.

[Bloodshedder]

Use3D said:

-Everyone has horror stories but in my opinion Western Digital drives are garbage.

heh, well, in my opinion, Western Digital is one of the best brands out there. I've owned four different drives from them and have never had any problems, even after several years of operation. Although it is possible, though highly unlikely, that since Opulent apparently owns two of the exact same model drives, that they both suffer from an exact defect.

[fraggle]

Chu said:

It's not very smart to partition a hard drive; these errors occur frequently if you do.

Umm, what?

There isnt really a way of "not partitioning a drive". You can have one partition that covers the entire drive. You can even have no partitions at all on a drive.

[Sephiroth]

me i have 3 partions for the windows system
c: (2GB for windows and drivers)
d: (35GB for everyithing else)
e: ( 3GB for swap)


linux
4GB for root (operating system)
30 GB for everything else
6 GB for swap

[Ultraviolet]

Don't use hard drives, that's a sure-fire way to fuck them up.

Sephiroth: Way I heard it, it doesn't really do much good to have swap on its own partition, as far as performance goes. Having it on a seperate physical drive (and perhaps even a seperate drive controller), though, can help (being able to read many things from the drive you're using for storage and still be writing to your swapfile uninterrupted).

[Szymanski]

My old dodgy maxtor drive would scandisk ok, but defragmenting it took hours. Every now and then random files would become corrupt.

I never did find out what the problem was, it just died :(

[Use]

Bloodshedder said:

heh, well, in my opinion, Western Digital is one of the best brands out there. I've owned four different drives from them and have never had any problems, even after several years of operation. Although it is possible, though highly unlikely, that since Opulent apparently owns two of the exact same model drives, that they both suffer from an exact defect.

Yeah everyone has different experiences with HDDs. I've had to return 3 WD drives because of mechanical problems. After that I stopped buying them.