hello,

I was having a hdd issue on windows, so I decided to come to linux. My hdd was formatted with ntfs but it wasn't recognized as such anymore. Windows said 'The disk in drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now ?'. Fortunately, linux was able to read its contents with no error. I didn't know how to format it to ntfs again without losing its contents, so I decided to use another hdd that I hadn't used for some time to make a copy just in case I messed it up. So I tried both cp and dd to copy it from sdb to sdc, but in both cases, after a few minutes, it said 'in/out error'. I don't know how to access whether this second hdd is damaged or not, nor how to repair the ntfs file system in the first hdd so that windows can read its contents.

So there are I am with two different problems on two hdds. I'm losing hope. Can you help me ?

Thanks.

You can check your disk with smarttools if you download gparted and put that on a usb stick or a cd you get a bootable disc including the smarttools which you can use to check your disc for errors. It seems your disc has serious errors and it is difficult to analyse if it is only the file-system that is corrupt or that there are physical errors on the disc. Because dd gives i/o errors it looks like physical errors. dd has a option noerror to continue copying despite read errors. It probably won't give you a bootable drive but it will allow you to save (some) of your data.

I'm not sure you understood what I meant.
I have two disks, and one is fine but his filesystem is damaged, while the other is perhaps dead. These are two different disks, so there are two different questions:
1. On the disk with the ntfs problem, how can I make windows see the contents of the disk again, as Linux does ? To put it differently, what does linux do that windows don't, regarding ntfs files ? Why is linux able to see the contents, and not windows, and how to make it so that windows is able to see the files again, without deleting the files ?

2. From my newbie point of view, the second disk seems dead, because of the in/out errors. But then again, I'm a newbie, and it's all the weirder than this disk was just barely ever used.
The in/out error returned when I use dd is "error splicing file input/output error". How can I make sure that it is dead, and if not how to repair it ?

Thanks

1)The disk with the ntfs problems has probably hardware problems you can use the above program to look at the smart data of the disc. To look if the disc really has hardware problems. If so you shouldn't use the disc anymore and get as much data from it as possible. If it's only the file system thats corrupt then you should also save your data and reinstall the os and then put your data back.

Would be really a strange coincidence that your first disk has problems with its file-system while your second disk is having problems.
It is much more likely that your first disk is having problems with the file-system, because it is dying. I would recommend to download the manufacturers' diagnosis tools to test the disks.

Yeah I know this is all very unlikely and that's why I'm so sad it's happening to me. But I really think I have two unrelated problems happening at the same time, since I checked copying from a third disk to the second one, and I still get these "error splicing file input/output error".
I haven't found any diagonistic tools for my hard drive, which is a wd caviar green 2TB. Are there even any for this disk?
But doesn't linux provide some tools to detect whether it's working properly or not?

And how about the first hdd ? It's really weird that linux sees no problem, but windows does and asks me to reformat it. How can I repair it, whether from windows or linux, so that I can read it again in windows ?

Thanks

This would be my suggestion:

If windows is your issue remove windows as a factor. Partition a HDD, install a Linux Distro (aka dual boot), boot up in the new Linux Distro partition and copy the necessary files over to a clean HDD/Partition as DATA versus an INSTALL. If they're corrupt, you don't want to mess up another HDD entirely.

As for the HDD issues, they're addressing your HDD due to the title of the thread versus what you want, which is a quick fix for the file incompatibility.

Good luck!

Linux has rather generic tools for that, I would recommend to use the manufacturer's tool. The one for WD can be found here: http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...sid=30&lang=en
Download the iso version and burn it as image to a CD, then start the computer from that CD.

Hi TobiSGD,

I tried to do what you said. I Downloaded the iso version and burnt it as image to a CD, then started the computer from that CD, but it said: "error 120: no disk found". I'm 100% that a WD caviar green is connected to that computer though.

Sometimes those testprograms have problems with the AHCI mode of modern disk drives, due to the fact that they run on DOS. Change it to IDE mode for the time of testing and it should work.

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with the procedure you want me to do. What is it you want me to do exactly ? My disk uses sata, but if what you're asking is to connect it to a IDE port using an adaptator, I'm afraid I don't have it.
Change what to IDE mode, and how ? (what is IDE mode and anyway?)
And are you sure the fact that the CD doesn't find hdd is due to that issue ? I've just read on the net that AHCI is only supported by Vista and newer OSes, but I could read the hdd from XP, so perhaps the HDD is not AHCI at all ?

He's referring to the setting in the BIOS. The CD is booted from the BIOS, there is no OS being loaded (be it any version of Windows or Linux). The disk utility might not support AHCI mode, so you'd need to change the hard drive to IDE mode in the bios before being able to run the disk check utility on it.

IDE mode means ICE compatibility mode. The drive is connected to the SATA port, the setting is changed only. There is usually a page in the BIOS setup that lists the available SATA ports and related settings.

AHCI is older than vista. It comes with the SATA technology. win xp can use it, by installing special drivers during the installation, same as RAID mode.

You first have to verify that the drive is detected by the BIOS. If it has serious problems, it can die in the next day or even in the next reboot (it happened to me with a cdrom drive). If you hear any strange clicks you didn't hear in the past and data access is quite slow, perhaps there is problem.

Please, verify cables and connectors, too. A loose or defective connector can cause random errors.
Try another SATA port, to exclude the case one of them is defective.

An idea is to boot with just one hard drive connected to the computer each time, so you have to check for this one only. Perhaps it is not highly probable that both problems happened together, however it is not impossible. So, you have to check every case.


Perhaps you need to set a jumper on the hard drive, to run in basic SATA I mode (1.5 GB/s). WD doesn't provide such a jumper with their drives (I bought 3 of these drives last year), so you have to look for a jumper on any other drive.

These new WD drives (marked Advanced format) are somehow tricky because they have sectors of 4096 bytes but the firmware shows them as being 512 byte/sector drives. This can be a problem with some hard drive tools. To use such drives in a xp system, it is better to format them with a software like GParted using the align to MiB option. The xp format doesn't align correctly the partitions. vista format uses the MiB alignment by default. Nevertheless, this is related rather to performance issues, it wouldn't make the drive "invisible". I used myself them on a xp system, even formatted with the wrong alignment.