Hard drive repair...

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So after my Samsung HDD died on me, i decided to try and repair it and hopefully it would let me get onto computer thus allowing me to backup all my files ect and make a backup DVD at the very least .

So last night i tried a CHKDSK by booting PC up via windows Vista DVD and using command line.

CHKDSK found bad sectors (no suprise) and tried to fix them.

I then rebooted pc and sadly still isnt working as im still getting a i quote

CI.D77

Status:0xc00000e9

Unsure what that means but i tried a windows repair and it said" unable to repair "bad hard disk".....

But atm i keep getting the above CI.D77 error code whenever i boot up and cannot get past it.

help or advice be great, otherwise il have to use the new samsung hard drive and reinstall everything......:mad::eek:
 
Tbh I'd get stuff backed up ASAP.
A quick look around states nothing other than HDD failure.

Whack it into a USB caddy or another PC and see if you can drag yer data off.
 
Tbh I'd get stuff backed up ASAP.
A quick look around states nothing other than HDD failure.

Whack it into a USB caddy or another PC and see if you can drag yer data off.

I wont be able to stick it into another pc as my other pc is quite old and thus Xp compared to the HDD one which is Vista 64 bit.

USB caddy?

Any other sugggestions out of interest?

Atm my only idea i have is to reinstall windows then hopefully pc will boot and transfer the data located in "old windows" into backup.

so help really needed on this as it ant looking good
 
The files on your HDD are most likely NTFS which windows XP can read. It just might take a while if you're copying via USB but it's possible.

Another option is a live Linux DVD .... you can boot this then copy the files from the faulty disk to a slave USB or internal.

If the disk is failing avoid any writes to the disk, especially a reinstall as you're just adding to the problem.

Other option is grab a new HDD and reinstall your system then look at the data recovery from the failing drive.

AD
 
Hi
I did have a external hard drive but sadly it isnt vista compatible thus didnt work.

You said
The files on your HDD are most likely NTFS which windows XP can read. It just might take a while if you're copying via USB but it's possible.

So if i USBed the Hard drive to my XP computer it will pick up the device and il be able to access the files?
If so, can i then using XP backup, backup the files on the vista HDD to a DVD then once new hard drive is installed recover via that DVD???

Other option is grab a new HDD and reinstall your system then look at the data recovery from the failing drive.

if i plug the new hard drive into the PC then install Vista into it might i be able to then access the first hard drive then?

unsure what you ment by "then look at the data recovery from failing drive"

cheers
 
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Hi,

I haven't heard of an external hard drive not being Vista compatable, unless it's been formatted with a linux file system. I have an old maxtor 160GB from early XP days which still works just fine with vista and win 7.

You should be able to get the files from the external drive in XP though I'm not sure that the backup software in will play nicely with external drives as it's quite limited. Worth a shot though. You may find you need something like Acronis True Image or similar to do a drive backup / copy.

If you install on a new HDD you'll have a nice fresh installation. This will get rid of a lot of OS clutter and your PC should run better. In this case, you'd be looking to copy back the photos, documents, spreadsheets etc from the old disk and save them.

The other option is that you just reclone the from the old one back to the new one. The only danger in this is that it's already partly corrupt therefore even the copied installation would have hidden error which could cause issues later.

Reinstall everything.... painful as it is, is the best option. I've found on many occasion I spend longer on ways to save time than it would take me to do the task.

AD
 
I agree with what you said about spending time ect.

Tbh the most anoying thing is that my HDD failed just when HDD prices are stupidly high, £90 for 500gb is crazy:eek:

If i do just buy new HDD and then reinstall vista, this ofc means i must then install all those windows updates, including SP2.

One question though is this, am i correct in saying this the correct order for installing new HDD

Remove old "shi" install new exspencive HDD
Reboot pc with windows DVD install vista onto new HDD
Reinstall windows updates incl SP2
Then reinstall all those drivers for my PC, graphics ect(unsure if i need to reinstall motherboard drivers/sound drivers ect)

Then done

Am i correct there?
 
Hi,

Thats about it,

Vista setup will partition and format the new drive

Check for network, you may need to install the chipset drivers for the mainboard or the networking will not work. All depends if vista has built in drivers. It's worth downloading these upfront to a usb or CD then you're not stuck waiting.

Then just run windows update a few times until it says there are no more updates. Plan to spend serveral hours on this depending on your download speed. I just leave it running and do something useful. Usually it will install a few blocks of updates, then the service pack, then some more updates..... took me around 3 hours at the weekend waiting for windows 7 and I had a 38mbit downstream connection.

Once windows has finished install some Antivirus, AVG-free edition or similar to give yourself some basic protection.

Then it's the chipset driver if not already installed by vista, usually have a look in device manager for any hardware that is not detected. If it is all fine then you can probably leave it, though later drivers are usually better.

Then to the GPU ... windows will have installed a driver but you'll want a later one if you use the PC for gaming.

Then it's over to the applications or games you want.

Once you have the PC up and running nice .... then it's see what you can salvage of the other drive.

It seems to be the smallest drives that are hardest hit... has a look at one common online site I use quite a bit and they have 160GB SATA @ £90 500GB@ £130.

If you don't need anything off the other drive then you could always just wipe it, do a reformat and see how you go. I've had disk errors (chkdsk) before now and a corrupted windows installation but the drive was fine. It all depends if you need files from the original drive. If you do, best to play safe and avoid writing data to it.

AD
 
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cheers, pretty much what i thought i needed to install.

I imagine the HDD from overclockers comes with all the relevent cables and stuff hopefully, if not il have to use my current ones whether they work or not im not 100% but cant see why not.

Drivers wise im unsure if Vista has motherboard drivers but i think i might need to install them, though tbh i have no idea as i never have needed to install motherboard drivers.
 
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