Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Third Party Check Disk replacement?

<< < (3/6) > >>

Carol Haynes:
You could try the disc manufacturer's website ... some manufacturers have boot time utilities that can do a full surface scan (not just  the partitions).

cmpm:
The bad block could be in your unallocated space which TrueCrypt is or may be reading as well.

Is there a way to tell if it is reading this?
Is there an option to have TrueCrypt not read the entire drive, leaving out the standard unallocated space which is designed in part to house bad sectors.

Or if you make the unallocated space it's own partition and/or format it. TrueCrypt may ignore it. If that is where the problem is, these solutions may work.

city_zen:
Any tips or suggestions for such a solution?
-Deozaan (October 14, 2008, 09:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

Two programs worth mentioning are HDD regenerator and Spinrite

I have NOT tried either of them so I can't really comment on their performance. Both programs seem to have their share of supporters and detractors (f0dder being one of them  :D ), so you may want to investigate a bit further before trying either.

What I definitely DO advise you to do is to take a look at the S.M.A.R.T. info from that drive (Speedfan is a great program for that), particularly at the "Reallocated Sector Count" value


Update: the free HD Tune also has an Error Scan section

40hz:
You could try DiskFixer. It's part of the Avanquest Fix-it Utilities package. There is a trial version available for download at:

http://www.avanquest.com/USA/pc-utilities/anti-virus-anti-spyware/complete-packages/Fix-It_Utilities_8_Professional.html

Might be worth a try.

Couple of other things:

1. Most times TrueCrypt gave me stones, it was because of some other app (usually an antivirus utility) was interfering. Try to boot Windows with a minimal set of startup apps and see if the problem goes away.

2. If you've been experimenting a lot, TrucCrypt sometimes seems to get confused. It might be looking (on startup) for a container that's either been corrupted or deleted. Try uninstalling TrueCrypt and get rid of any containers you may have created before reinstalling. I'd suggest using Revo Uninstaller. Run it under the 'Moderate" setting to be sure you also get any legacy configuration files that remain after the app itself gets uninstalled.

I had that happen to me when I first started using TrueCrypt. Somewhere along the line, while I was willy-nilly creating and deleting containers, and generally seeing what it could do, something glitched big time. Somehow, two of the containers wound up cross referencing each other and TrueCrypt locked up. Then I made the mistake of just deleting one of the containers, and the real fun began. What finally fixed it was a complete removal and clean reinstall of TrueCrypt. Fortunately this happened while I was playing with TrueCrypt. I would have been very annoyed if I had lost actual data.

luck :Thmbsup:

Deozaan:
Thanks for everyone's suggestions since my last post in this thread. I haven't had time to try out the suggestions yet, but thought I'd clarify some information while I have a minute:

TrueCrypt gives me this error along with the following information:

Third Party Check Disk replacement?

Third Party Check Disk replacement?

It can't be just TrueCrypt because in preparation for this I was trying to split my single partitioned 120GB hard drive into two partitions using Acronis Disk Director Suite but it told me it couldn't make a partition because of a bad block.

I've run the really long pre-boot chkdsk /r at least 3 times now and every time it says nothing is wrong.

I'll try out some of the free suggestions. SpinRite for example is $90, and I'm not sure it would solve my problem--Not worth it just to try out TrueCrypt.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page