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Numbers guy wrote:

Dunno why but it seemed like a good idea to defrag my hard disk this afternoon.....

 

All went well apparently, then immediately after the defrag I got the BSOD. Unmountable Boot volume error message.

 

Have tried to boot from the CD, running chkdsk /p and chldsk /r - neither has done anything useful. "One or more errors that can't be repaired..."

 

fixboot has looked as though it is working but it didn't.

 

Hard drive diagnostics gives "Drive 0 - Maxtor 6Y160M0 - Fail - return Code 7"

 

Some people on this site say this is fatal and the hard disk needs to be replaced. Seems a bit odd that it should fail in this way after a defrag. (Yes, I'm sure those were my exact words: "Hmm: that seems a bit odd...")

 

Is there anything else left to try other than reinstalling the OS???

 

Thanks, anyone. I really don't want to have to reinstall - again!

 

Maxtor drives and failing go hand in hand.  Time to buy a new one.

Numbers guy

 

Try to buy either a Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung or Hitachi.  As you have found out, Maxtor is not a good buy at this time, due to high failure rates. 
Check the lenght of the warranty, there's one to five years on hard drives.

 

Bev.

It would appear your drive is on it's way out. There are some options in the link below.

 

http://forums.getdata.com/showthread.php?t=475

The drive was on the edge and the defrag pushed over while moving files. Pick up a new harddrive (Seagate) and reinstall Windows and then install the old drive as a slave and try to recover your data.

Presumably it was the defrag that did it. But why does that mess up the drive so bad that it has to be replaced and simply reinstalling the OS won't overwrite any errors?

 

I'll be a lot less bitter and twisted if I can get some sort of handle on WHY this happened - or, indeed, WHAT has actually happened.

 

Again, thanks for any info/comfort/commisserations/pity...

 

Er - if not Maxtor, what brand should I get (I'm in England)?

OK, thanks for all that.

 

Any issue about it being a Dell Dimensio 4700? The last time I had a disk problem the guys at PC World couldn't even look at it because it had different connectors from most other drives. Does that limit my choice re a new HDD?

 

Also, I see that Seagate BOUGHT Maxtor in May for about $2 billion...

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Numbers guy wrote:

OK, thanks for all that.

 

Any issue about it being a Dell Dimensio 4700? The last time I had a disk problem the guys at PC World couldn't even look at it because it had different connectors from most other drives. Does that limit my choice re a new HDD?

In the future, by using the Advanced Forum Search on the bottom of this page, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

You need to buy a SATA drive.  Not PATA.

Thanks very much, everyone. Feel like I'm getting somewhere.

 

I've had a looking the FAQs and advanced search etc but I kind of need to double-check with you experts.

 

I've got a Dimension 4700 P4 PROCESSOR 530 WITH HT which HAD a Maxtor 160GB SATA (7200RPM)

 

As far as I can tell the nearest Seagateto that is a SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.10 Hard Disk Drive 320GB SA, which costs around £80 fro mMisco.co.uk. It's got

1 x Serial ATA-300 - 7 pin Serial ATA

22-position Serial ATA (SATA) plug

interface: Serial ATA-300

and a five-year warranty.

 

Am I safe in saying this is exactly what I need?

 

 

 

i'm very confused now...not sure what this has to do with my computer problem...

Forget I said anything. Apologies for causing confusion.