It seems like one of my harddisks is about to give up on me. A couple of days ago I noticed the following eventlog messages when starting Windows:

and



First of all, I'm not sure about which physical harddisk it is referring to? (I have three harddisks in this computer) This is of course the first thing I'd like to make clear, to be able to switch it if it's broken.

In the message above it mentions "\Device\Harddisk2\D". Does anyone know how to positively match this to one of my physical disks? One thing that confuses me a lot is that it has a "D" on the end, which one would think would indicate that it is the "D" partition on my IDE primary master disk, but it also says "Harddisk2", which is not the disk number that this disk has in the "Disk manager" in Windows?!

So, first question: How can I know which physical disk "\Device\Harddisk2\D" is referring to?


Today when I started the computer, I got the following messages instead:

and



I'm starting to get really shaky here, and would like to pinpoint this problem as soon as possible. I'm starting to believe it might be more than a harddisk error, maybe some motherboard/IDE controller issue? I haven't noticed any operating system malfunction, or any other problem using the computer, which also feels a bit strange if there is some such serious problem with the Windows boot drive disk. (although it might of course take time before such errors are noticed or have any effect too)

Based on the info above, does anyone have any idea about what it might be, or how to analyze it further?

Also, finally, I've only gotten all these eventlog messages immediately on computer startup this far, and then nothing else during the entire days when using the computer, any idea about why that might be?


I'd really appreciate any and all input about this, as soon as possible.

I think Windows numbers disk devices as follows: First bus/Master is 0, first bus/slave is 1, second bus/master is 2 etc... But you can look at drive properties in My computer, and there on the "Hardware" tab is a device number ("Localization". Correct me if I'm wrong on this though

I'm not sure this is the same thing, because two of my disks show "0 (0)" in this field, and the last one shows "1 (1)"?

Anyone else has any ideas whatsoever?

Yo Svensk Dude

I tried something desperate and entered into Google:

A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort1

and received a number of interesting hits, including this one

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=262448

SYMPTOMS
If you are using DMA transfer mode with an ATA66 hard disk, you may receive the following error messages at startup:
Disk error
Driver detected a controller error on the device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1

ATAPI Error
Parity error on device \IDE\IDEport1
CAUSE
ATA66 DMA transfer mode is not supported for the onboard IDE controller.
RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, change the transfer mode for the controller: 1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Double-click System Tools in the right pane, and then double-click Device Manager.
3. Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller in the right pane, and then double-click the appropriate controller.
4. On the Advanced Settings tab, click PIO Only in the Transfer Mode box.
5. Click OK, close the Computer Management window, and then reboot the computer.

Since I believe you have probably been using these HDs for some time, this probably isn't your issue, but there are other hits which might shed some light on your problem.

Regards,

This also might help:

Converting Drive Letters to MS-DOS INT 13H Disk Drive Numbers

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;62571

". If the device is a hard disk drive, you need to interpret the hard disk partition table to differentiate between a primary partition and a logical partition because the ordering of logical drive numbers does not necessarily reflect the physical order and corresponding BIOS physical drive number.

For more information, query on the following keywords:
prod(msdos) and driver.sys and order

Once you know how MS-DOS assigns logical drive letters on system initialization, you need to address the correct physical hard disk and compute the offset (starting sector number) of any logical drive by using the starting sector values supplied in the hard disk's partition table. These starting sector numbers would be supplied to the BIOS Int 13H function to access those sectors representing a logical drive. "Advanced MS-DOS Programming" by Ray Duncan has more information on the boot record and partition tables. Example
-------

HD 1: Bios# 80H HD 2: Bios# 81H HD X: Bios# X...

C: (primary) E: (logical)
----------- -----------
D: (logical) F: (logical)

To access logical drive D, address HD 1: Bios# 80H, but sectors starting at logical partition D:.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also you might check out:

Basic and Dynamic Disks and Volumes

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prdg_dsm_hzec.asp

And the subsection titled:

Converting Basic Disks to Dynamic Disks

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prdg_dsm_hzec.asp

The list volume command in DiskPart also shows the system, boot, and paging file volumes as follows:

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 G Unknown 0 B
Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 4096 MB Healthy System
Volume 2 F NTFS Partition 4651 MB Healthy
Volume 3 D NTFS Partition 4096 MB Healthy Boot
Volume 4 P NTFS Partition 4664 MB Healthy Pagefile
Volume 5 E NTFS Partition 9 GB Healthy

For more information about using DiskPart, see "Managing Disks from the Command Line by Using DiskPart" later in this chapter.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Howdy,

Enter setup when booting and see what it says for settings for your hard drives.

Do you have RAID setup ??? What about VMWARE ???

How long has this box been running the current setup before it started to have problems ???

What type of drives are they ???

Woodmann

>a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\D.
which means your d drive has some errors

>The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.
(sent by the source "Ftdisk" to the "System" eventlog)
Thats partition or hadddisk sectors errors I assume.Your best bet is to take out the d drive(harddisk) and see what happens

Thanks for all the tips. I have done some more searching, and it seems it might be some problem with my external firewire disk (these are apparently still mounted as IDE disks to the system, go figure), or the caddy I have my boot harddisk in. I have disconnected the firewire disk, and I'm waiting to see what will happen (the error messages did not come on every boot earlier either).

To answer some questions made in this thread:

* I don't use RAID.

* All three disks are 200 GB Maxtor IDE disks, using ATA100 or 133.

* It's a physical computer, not in VMware.

* The computer has been running well for 1.5 years. The HD caddy was added 3-5 months ago, and the firewire disk more than a year ago.


Well, I'm still shaky though, and if you don't see me here for a while, you know what happened anyway.

Any further ideas or suggestions are of course still welcome, thanks for all the ideas so far.

Howdy,

Since it has been running for quite a long time it must be something physical like a cable/firewire or the Mother board connections or the mobo itself.
I have also seen Master Boot virus that can do the same thing.

Woodmann

Yes, a motherboard malfunction was my first thought too, which is not a very pleasant thing indeed. Well, let's just wait and see I guess, not much more to do right now...

Not to state the obvious, but have you done a total backup before it really fucks up??

Crazy tip, but it works. I've previously got "dead" disks working again by putting them in the fridge for an hour. I have no idea why or how this works, all I know is that the drives wouldn't spin up properly or read data before, but after a quick chilling I could copy most of the data off before they died again.

You may also find Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro a great too for diagnosis/recovery.

Naides, yeah, most of the Terabyte on my disks is backed up, the important stuff anyway. Although I'm always a little nervous about if the backups will all work once they are needed and such, but hopefully...

And thanks for the tip Silver, I'll be sure to keep it in mind.

good tip Silver, I did the same thing a few years back, what happens is that when put in a freezer the cold aligns the sectors onto the disk but use this only as a last resort to recover any data. Once the hd warms up and gets hot...shows over.

I've heard about the freezer trick, too. I always thought it was just an old hacker's tale until someone I know from another message board actually tried it and managed to get a bunch of music files he composed off of an apparently dead drive. No one really knows for sure why it works. My WAG - the slight contraction of the metal may let a jammed component spin clear (bad bearings on the spindle, maybe), or might give you a little extra clearance between the read heads and the platter if you've had some kind of head crash.

You can usually do this several times, if you have to. But if I were you, I would put the drive in a ziploc freezer bag. Stick a straw down one edge of the bag and seal it up to the straw. Suck the air out of the bag and seal the gap where the straw was as you pull it out of the bag. You want to get the drive cold, but not wet. A bunch of condensation can't be good for the drive's electronics when you plug it in. The straw trick is also a good tip for sealing food. Less air = less moisture = less freezerburn

I tried the freezer trick (among many others) some months ago on a 40giga Maxtor affected by the "click click of death": no success... I lost my last developments on Linux...

Regards, bilbo