Over-filled HDD? File errors and confusion?

[Dr. X]

I've got a 160 gb hard drive, about three months old about 130 gigs full.


It has started giving me a load of errors importing my music library into itunes saying files could not be read, i ran scandisk and then it worked. Since then windows 2000 decided to scan this hdd while booting and loads of my music files are now unplayable or confused, like playing the futureheads plays fine in winamp, however it is actually playing alanic morissette out of the speakers!.

A mate says it's because the disk is too full and a defrag would sort it but I'm convinced it's on its way out and have unplugged it.

Anyone seen symptoms similar to this before?

[JimmyBoy]

nothing like that before a drive die for me (normally strange noises) but a defrag wouldnt go a miss surely

[Insomniac]

Enable S.M.A.R.T in your Bios, and download a utility from your drive manufacturer's website.

[iranu]

You still have 18% or so free space so I doubt that the error is caused by having a too full hd. Do as Insomniac says and check the drive to see if it's on the way out. In the mean time back up any data you want to keep and defrag.

Personally my music is very precious to me so I back up often.

[pudds]

backup quickly before it fails.

[Steve]

I've got a 160 gb hard drive, about three months old about 130 gigs full.

In that case, I get a feeling this may come in handy:

http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglbatool.htm

See this KB article for more info:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/

Operating systems that do not have 48-bit LBA support enabled by default (such as Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), or Windows 2000) that are installed on a partition that spans beyond the 28-bit LBA boundary (137GB) will experience data corruption or data loss.

What service pack you running?

[Insomniac]

That's a good call Kez and very relevant!

[Dr. X]

SP4 installed but I ran the Big LBA tool which said 48-bit LBA wasn't enabled

However last night i ran Seagate's diagnostoc tools, SMART fine, no physical erros, no problem except for some file system erros. Fine, I thought and ran scandisk (took a couple of hours) and disk defrag... now disk management says the drive in unformatted!

RMA it?

[Steve]

It's clearly 48-bit related - a disk diagnostic program won't find any errors on the drive other than filesystem errors, as it's the filesystem addressing the drive wrongly.

[Insomniac]

If you had SP4 installed, then in theory that should enable 48-bit LBA.

However, I have seen on a couple of machines where a Service Pack was installed after Windows that it still didn't support large hard drives.

That is pretty rare though and I still agree with what Kez is saying.

Try slipstreaming SP4 (or the latest) into your Windows CD and doing a format and install. It's simple to do, handy, and foolproof.

If you still have problems, it's then I'd be looking at the drive itself.