Seeking suggestions to deal with this corrupt disk problem

Hi

This is a more elaborate version of a quick question post I made earlier about potential problems with an image of a an already corrupt drive.

I am looking for suggestions to get over a potentially corrupted C drive without having to do a fresh win2k reinstall.
I have my TI 10 setup to do a complete weekly backup image for C:

I have also been using Diskeeper 2007 on my PCs. Not sure if I should stop using it going forward.

Recently I installed Kaspersky AV 6.0 and at some point I decided to browse the Application Data directories used by KAV and I ended up finding that it is taking very very long time to open the folders in there. I did not try testing other random folders on the drive.

Then I ran chkdsk from within Windows and it showed some messages about problems with index files, MFT, etc. I do not remember the exact messages now.

So I scheduled a chkdsk /F during reboot. It ran fine but did not seem the find or fix anything!!

I go back inside Windows and I notice the same symptoms again. Also when I ran chkdsk within windows again, I got error messages, but they were not the exact same messages. They were similar, but pointing to some other index entries, etc.

So I try chkdsk /F at reboot again and again nothing is reported during its run. As if everything is fine.

I ran Western Digital's diagnostic tool from within Windows. It does not find any problem!! I did not try the DOS version. I tried the Seatools DOS version from Seagate and it choked rightaway on C: drive and quit! It is a Western Digital drive so I am not sure whom to trust more. May be I should run the DOS version of WD tool.

So I decided to uninstall Kaspersky and as expected the uninstall kept running forever and I eventually killed it. But looks like KAV was indeed uninstalled and I could not locate the Data folders anymore.

Then I ran chkdsk again to see the state of the drive and I get "unspecified error" message. Same thing happens if i run it at reboot time. At this point I am thinking I need to get off this drive.


So what are my options now to avoid a reinstall of Windows?

Last time my primary disk was throwing errors in event viewer, i was able to get away by cloning it to a new drive with TI. This time I dont see anything in event viewer specific to disk problems! It feels more like a file system problem than HW problem. The disk little over a year old and may be not even that. But of course I am not 100% sure.

This time (as I mentioned in the companion post) I think the backup image I have is corrupted too because it was made after the problem started to happen.

Is there any way for me to create a clone (before the disk goes totally bad) without transferring file system problems over to new disk ?

Instead of a new new disk I am willing to reformat and give this current disk a shot. But I am not sure how exatly i should start that process. Should I use a TI recovery CD for that ?

But again I think my current backup image is not good even though TI verifies it as a good image.

Is there a more smarter or efficient process ?

Sorry for the long convoluted post, but some pointed would be very helpful.

many thanks

 

Hi Flyby22

An image of a "bad" disk is going to potentially be a bad image.

There is in my experience only one almost guaranteed way of fixing a bad disk. Unfortunately it is going to cost you money. Be assured that this software will fix 99% of disk problems WITHOUT corrupting the data on the disk. That is something that no other utility can claim to do.

You can find details at this link.

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

If you have doubts then search on Google for user reviews. I have yet to find a bad review from an intelligent person.

T.

 

1. Make an image of the messed up system so that you can restore the current data from it.

2. Restore one of your earlier images.

3. Confirm that the system is running normally. If it doesn't seem normal, try another, earlier image. If that is still not normal, replace the hard drive and restore an image to it. If none of your images run normally even on a new hard drive, you will have to do a clean reinstall of your system.

4. Mount the messed up image and copy any data you want from the image to the hard drive.

Good luck.

 

From the post by JMK...

In this case you may want to use the "My Data" (Files and Folders) option rather than the "My Computer" option. Using the "My Data" option will enable you to recover all "good" files on a file-by-file basis, while "bad" files will return an error.

 

Interesting and valuable point. As long as all the areas where data is stored are selected in the files backup, that should be fine and smaller and faster than backing up the entire drive.

Of course, you have to know where the data is, but backing up all of Documents and Settings or the user logon folder under Documents and settings should be sufficient as long as hidden folders such as Local Settings are copied.