How do I fix errors on my hard disk?

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Leo, does SpinRite make data recovery more difficult for the professional services if SpinRite itself is unable to recover the data? I've heard that you should stop using a dying drive immediately to prevent further data loss. SpinRite would increase disk activity, right?

(and yes, backups would have made this a moot point, but at the time I didn't know any better).

As the problem is a possible failing hdd the first step should be to clone the hdd.

twice in the last 6 years i've seen corruption messages that do not let you boot into windows. both times i have brought up the pc on knoppix, backup the info for safety, then replaced the corrupt file (usually a .dll)from a working pc with same os and the computer runs fine for years.

I think this problem is related to write (disc) caching. It could be a USB stick or similar improperly removed and windows still wanting to write to it. It can’t so it gets upset!
I seem to remember reading, a long time ago that there is a registry hack to help- something to do with the large write (disc) cache?
Basically what is happening is the drive is going off line (or was never online) before windows can finish writing the cache to the drive. And obvious solution would be to turn off write (disc) caching. A possible solution would be to reboot, turn write (disc) caching back on if you want or need it and the problem may resolve itself.
If however there is an underlying problem causing the write (disc) caching failure, this may not help.

To turn off write (disc) caching in XP, right click my computer, properties, hardware, device manager and expand the disc drives entry. Right click the disk and choose the policies tab. There you will be given the choice to optimize for performance (write (disc) caching enabled) or for quick removal (write (disc) caching disabled).

Of course, in this case it appears this may not be the problem because there is no mention of having a drive g:\ which leads me to suspect the problem is a removable drive of some kind.

Hope this helps.

I have a HD that was dropped and is no longer seen by the computer. Is it possible to transfer the disk platters to an identical enclosure? Assuming dust is a problem, maybe a small dust free enclosure can be made? I really need access to this HD as it contains (old) confidential medical information and sending it out to a clean room is out of the question.
Thanks
Bill

I had a WD External drive go bad on me a few months ago and I took it into a computer fixing place I know ("User2" in Edinburgh) and they plugged it into a machine running on Linux and were able to read it OK and to copy all except a few files over from the bad drive onto a new one. I was very happy to pay the money for the new drive and the copying work.

I always thought Windows XP SP2 that keeps returning a G:|$mft corrupt error meant the master file table was corrupted and your run error check and that usually takes care of it...

my Dell D600 says it doesn't recognize chkdsk in any way???? what gives?
Tks

Leo:
Re: my previous post...(and sorry about the typo's). I also tried to access the SpinRite url, but it to will not load. This window remained open, but seemingly just froze there. Any ideas as to the problem?

I notice you don't mention another possibility here which is a faulty hard-disk controller, located on the mother-board.
I had some boot problems recently and when I booted into safemode and looked in the event viewer I saw a whole bunch of disk errors.
I connected the disk to another computer to save the data and noticed that there were no errors in the event viewer on the second computer.
The problem was the IDE controller on the motherboard.

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