Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

need help with hard disk error ???

by milleniumbeing Apr 25, 2004 11:41PM PDT

hey
I have a problem with my hard disk. I run windows xp on it and lately I got some error messages whilst booting up. I would get a blue screen with a error message saying "umountable_boot_disk" then their was a message saying that if you saw this once reboot and if you seen before there is an error. I spoke to a friend and he said that if that kind of error message was coming up then there is something wrong with the hard disk meaning I would need to replace it. Also the reason why I haven't just formatted it is because presently I am not at home and will not be there for a month which is where my discs are. The other thing about not formatting it is because there is about 40gb's on the disk of files that I don't have a backup of. If anyone has a clue of whether they have seen this kind of problem before the help would be much appreaciated. Below is a summary of my system:

Athlon 2.6ghz
768mb ram
K7 motherboard
80gig hard disk 7200 rpm
Dvd rom drive
cdrom/rw writer drive
Windows xp
Tv card
Network card
Geforce 4 64mb mmx
midi sound card
soundblaster sound card
dv input/output card

thanks
sam

Discussion is locked

2 Posts
- Collapse + Expand Details
- Collapse -
Re:need help with hard disk error ???
by jconner Apr 26, 2004 1:29AM PDT

If you can be explicit about the error messages that would help. Are they XP errors or device driver errors that may have come with your hard drive.

As soon as possible do make a backup, in case this is a warning about an impending failure. Any reasonable backup utility including the NT backup which you can get will compress the data such that a CD becomes viable for backups. You may want to also consider getting a USB or Firewire external drives to transfer you system to via Norton Ghost or one of the other Drive Copy utilities.

Once you have secured your data, then utilize some of the diagnostic utilities, perhaps even one that may have come with your drive.

If it is a boot sector problem, you can find utilities to allow you to repair that as well. One that is often mentioned in these forums is Knoppix, which allows you to boot from a CD under Linux and view the hard drive and make repairs, with a user interface that is similar to Windows.

- Collapse -
Re:need help with hard disk error ???
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Apr 26, 2004 2:25AM PDT
Back to Computer Help forum

CNET Forums

Operating Systems
Software
Electronics & Gadgets
Hardware
Tablets & Mobile Devices
General Help
Brand Forums
Roadshow Autos
Off Topic

Other Forums

Forum Info