Questions tagged [hard-drive]

A hard disk drive (or HDD) is a non-volatile, random access device for storing digital data.

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Windows Defender Waking Up Hard Drive

I have an external hard drive that I only use for storage, I almost never write data to it but it can be useful if I want to access some data that I have in it. When it’s possibile I’d like for the ...
christian97's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
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NTFS external hard drive formatted on Linux is not recognized by Windows

I fully formatted a hard drive in NTFS on Linux from a completely empty (zeroed) drive and it is not recognized by Windows 10. It is not listed in the Windows File Explorer nor with the fsutil fsinfo ...
Nicryc's user avatar
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8 votes
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Laptop won't boot, restarts on its own + black screen

yesterday I was playing on my Win 7 laptop when suddenly my screen went into this colorful faulty state, something of this , though not exactly. And a second after my laptop died starting itself up ...
Kešu's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
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Bad Block on Virtual Machine (Virtual or Physical Problem?)

I am dealing with a virtual machine that is receiving the following entry in the event log: TIME OF EVENT: 7/30/2011 3:47:05 PM EVENT LOG: System EVENT SOURCE: disk EVENT ID: 7 SEVERITY: Error ...
FourHundred57's user avatar
7 votes
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Reading data from a 23 year old IDE harddrive

I have a 200 MB Western Digital 2.5" IDE drive, originally from an Amiga 1200, that I would like to try to get an image file of, so I can keep the data that is on it. Since the drive is very old, and ...
Joakim Hårsman's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
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LVM and Superblock failure; how to recover?

How do you repair the superblock of an LVM volume? Alternatively, how do you recover the data on an unmountable lvm logical volume? I recently added a second hard disk, extended my volume group and ...
Dan's user avatar
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7 votes
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What causes this HDD sector damage pattern?

Out of curiosity, I ran GNU ddrescue on a Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB hard drive with known bad sectors, and then I visualized the ddrescue mapfile with ddrescueview. When I zoomed in, this ...
Deltik's user avatar
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6 votes
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Bluescreen Stop 0x00000027 RDR_FILE_SYSTEM after cloning system on new HDD

A couple of months ago I got a new 500GB HDD for my no-name-brand Laptop PC and I cloned the complete Win 7 Pro 32bit system with clonezilla from the old 70GB drive to the new one. At first everything ...
Daniel's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
519 views

Some USB devices not working properly on a new W10 x64 machine

Can you help me with a problem that I have with some USB devices not working properly on a new built machine. I hope you will be able to help me, being myself a power user, but here a little lost in ...
Oliver's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
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Drive missing from Optimize Drives since upgrade to Windows 10 1803

Since upgrading Windows 10 (Pro) to version 1803, one of my drives is missing from the Optimize Drives list. The drive in question is, my D:-drive, a software-defined RAID-0 (striped) over two disks. ...
Mark Rotteveel's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
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fsck_exfat: Could not update main boot region: Bad file descriptor - Mac OS X - external hard drive

My external hard drive (seagate barracuda with good SMART status insidev erbatim 4TB store 'n' go) has 3 main partitions: 1) ntfs 2) hfs+ for time machine backup 3) exfat to transfer files between ...
sardanus's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
1k views

Will the write pointers in drive-managed SMR drives ever be reset?

I own a Seagate Expansion Desktop 5TB external hard drive, containing a ST5000DM000 according to hdparm. While information found on the internet is inconclusive, I strongly suspect that this drive ...
Taral's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
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Windows 10 dynamic mirror showing "Failed"

I had Windows 7 running 2 x 1TB hard disks in a dynamic mirror setup. I had this for many years and it worked just fine. I recently installed Windows 10 on a new SSD. Everything booted fine but my ...
Big Bill's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Diffing an entire hard drive, available tools?

There's an existing question similar to this that didn't get answered in the proper context (a massive volume of data to compare) at all, so I'm trying again here. I'm using SuperDuper to maintain a ...
beporter's user avatar
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Does SpinRite still prevent/predict crash failure in modern hard drives?

Yesterday I attended a presentation by Western Digital that discussed various innovations in rotating hard drive internals, including perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), heat-assisted magnetic ...
Philip's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
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Windows 8 System.exe writes to HDD like crazy

I have checked Application event logs and found that every second about 20 entries for MSSQL Server were recorded. Removed the server and all its components and the problem is gone... Thanks everyone ...
Daniel Gruszczyk's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
2k views

mdadm RAID monitoring no DegradedArray email

So, I have a couple of MDADM RAID arrays and I want to set up monitoring with email notifications for drive failures through sSMTP but I can't seem to get it working. The system in question is a ...
Glader's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
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Average/General RAID 0 "Chunk Size"?

EDIT: this got closed as being "opinion based". i disagree! the facts are, i have to choose one of five Chunk Size options when creating a RAID on Mac. i don't know which size to choose for ...
SyberKnight's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
781 views

Formatting a failing & write-locked SSD

I have a failing 4 TB 870 Evo SSD. It has lasted less than a year (thanks Samsung). I believe the SSD has entered a read-only mode because it is failing. Any disk enumeration tasks take 30 seconds ...
Matt's user avatar
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Any way to tweak Windows' kernels or drives to handle I/O and reduce or eliminate hangs with failing drives?

I frequently work with failing hard drives for data recovery and various tasks. These tasks are usually short lived in nature, but important. The way Windows seems to handle any failing drive that's ...
ylluminate's user avatar
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Chkdsk for a specific directory or File !?!? The Syntax

I need help to chkdsk a specific Directory : F:\GOG\*.* I am too stupid to understand the chkdsk sytax for file: CHKDSK [Volume[[Pfad]Dateiname]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:Größe]][/B] [/scan]...
Web's user avatar
  • 21
4 votes
1 answer
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Why is my newly formatted (NTFS) 4 TB external hard drive has a Total Reserved Clusters of 4.7 GB?

I just bought a new external HDD (WD My Book 4 TB, it's my 3rd of the 4 TB variant). As per usual, I formatted it using NTFS with 4KB cluster size because I'm using Windows 10, but then when I checked ...
LuckMan's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
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As of late 2020, is optane still worth considering?

If I want very fast NVMe storage for general usage, is Optane still a good option? In the past, I read that Optane/3D Xpoint was superior in situations that didn't just require raw throughput, mainly ...
Andreas Hartmann's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
1k views

What is practical size for bcache cache size with respect to hdd size?

There are plenty of manuals how to implement bcache, how to select correct bucket size, how to resize (grow) backing device and so on. This includes, but doesn't limits to in-kernel documentation, ...
Nikita Kipriyanov's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
2k views

How to unlock NVME disk locked with ATA security

I've locked my NVME drive in the BIOS with a USER and MASTER password. I'm looking to unlock this drive on another machine. How can I do this? I've tried working with nvme-cli. This should be able ...
Roland van Laar's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
5k views

Is there a way to disable a hard drive in the UEFI?

BIOS allowed to disable specific hard drives. However I don't seem to find information about how to do it in UEFI. I would like to dual-boot, but I strongly prefer each Operating System (Which will be ...
Eder A.'s user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
1 answer
662 views

Do magnetic HDDs gradually lose their data?

I read that magnetic HDDs can lose data with age as the magnetism weakens in spots. I have a more than 1 TB and growing archive copied onto several magnetic hard drives (each drive has the whole ...
Moonling's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
2k views

How to automount an ext filesystem in macOS

TL;DR This question is about auto mounting partitions with file systems non native to macOS. I'm presently running macOS 10.12.x and I can successfully mount an external SATA disk formatted with an ...
ipatch's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
457 views

Periodical performance drops and high HDD usage Windows10

Usually my system performs fine. However, periodically, there are temporary performance drops. Basically the Task Manager shows 100% HDD usage and the culprits invariably turn out to be system related ...
gaazkam's user avatar
  • 1,003
4 votes
0 answers
907 views

macOS 10.13.1 High Sierra Disk Space iMac

I cannot determine what could possibly be taking up so much of my 1TB startup disk. I have moved most applications to another disk and moved home directories and still receive your disk is almost ...
jwilleke's user avatar
  • 166
4 votes
0 answers
4k views

Extremely high modified memory usage and pages won't flush

My Lenovo Y50-70 machine suffers of extremely poor performance lately. I'm disturbed by some memory-related issues. The machine has 8gb RAM and the pagefile size is currently 24gb ("Autmomatically ...
golosovsky's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
3k views

What is the meaning of COMRESET failed?

Laptop's internal WD SATA HDD of 1 TB is not being detected from any OS. It does not have any physical damage. However while booting to linux from another disk, log is printed [ 6.397803] ata5: ...
Nilesh's user avatar
  • 161
4 votes
0 answers
115 views

Need to reconnect power supply to boot windows 8.1/10

Please let me know if it is offtopic here. I am facing some hardware problem may be that's why I am posting it here I have a desktop pc with dual boot(ubuntu14.04 and windows 10). Motherboard: intel ...
Md Sabbir Alam's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
140 views

Can I mark an entire partition as "bad sectors" to prevent a device from formatting the whole thing?

Update: My HDD did not support HPA. All well, I'll just stick to using it as a true external drive with folders for both PS3 and Xbox. I have a large HDD that I'd like to partition and use half on my ...
Derf321's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
2 answers
4k views

How to read MacBook Air (2013) SSD via PCI card adapter from Windows?

I purchased an adapter which connects my MacBook Air (2013) SSD to PCI-E of motherboard. However, I was unable to find a proper way to read it, even with MacDrive. What I want to do is back up the ...
Edwardhk's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
487 views

Size on disk way bigger than expected

I have read Why is there such a big difference between "Size" and "Size on disk"? but why is mine so different? My RAID5 is set at 128kb stripe, the volume is formatted at 64kb NTFS. I would expect ...
codaamok's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
1k views

How Can I List Which Processes are Using a Specific Disk in Ubuntu?

How can I list which process(es) are using a specific disk in Linux? I'm trying to track down what is writing to my hard drive, because I'd like to move the process's stuff to my SSD so that my hard ...
HappyCoder86's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
2k views

hdd recognized as ssd after windows 10 update

I received the Windows 10 update and installed it without any problems to a Lenovo computer running Windows 7. So far, everything works fine except that when I go to defragment the drive, the media ...
sparky's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
1 answer
688 views

Rebuilding FakeRAID RAID 5 with new disk, no partitions show up, invalid PMBR

I have a RAID 5 array with 4 2TB disks on a HP Z800. One disk failed and was swapped out for a new one. I went into BIOS Intel Storage Matrix Utility and set the Array to rebuild with the new disk. ...
Bitdivision's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
600 views

Combining two disjoint ddrescue backup images

I have a 3 TB drive which recently started to malfunction. I was using the ddrescue utility on Debian to read data off the disk to a different external hard drive. However, after 2 TB of data had been ...
Marcus Emilsson's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
259 views

Ubuntu won't boot with 4 hard drives

I got two HGST 4TB HDD's for my birthday and I'm trying to put them in my media center which already has a 128GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. The motherboard is an ASRoxk E350M1 which only has 4 SATA headers so ...
TBridges42's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Windows 7 installation loses volume label after reboot if no drive letter assigned

Here is my problem: I have had a Dell laptop with the following partitions: 39 MB - (OEM Partition); 14 GB, label: RECOVERY, no drive letter; 200 GB, label: OS, drive letter C: I used the "Minitool"...
Jorg K's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

btrfs does not show drive as missing

I am trying out btrfs and I noticed some funny behaviour: I have two drives in a raid 1 configuration. sudo btrfs fi show Label: none uuid: 52b9c6f6-ce5c-4727-861e-e2fd012e475f Total devices 2 ...
niklasfi's user avatar
  • 591
4 votes
0 answers
617 views

Is there a way to verify the integrity of a rsnapshot backups?

I'm using rsnapshot to make daily backups to a second hdd. But how can I make sure, that no file in my backup is corrupted? If I use the checksum option from rsync, the whole backup will take much ...
schlicht's user avatar
  • 141
4 votes
1 answer
3k views

How do I automatically share external USB drives over the network?

I used to have an old G5 tower running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) which I was using as a fileserver. In this tower I had a USB dock connected where I could plug in 2.5 inch drives from my archive and then ...
sebastian.bertoli's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
3k views

What exactly happens when you "mount" a drive?

What underlying things happen when you mount a drive. Even when a drive isnt mounted, it is visible to the computer (such as sudo fdisk -l / diskutil -list). When a drive is mounted, is all that is ...
agz's user avatar
  • 8,248
4 votes
1 answer
163 views

It it possible to make windows 7 not detect/spin up my secondary hard drive after resuming from sleep?

I only use it once a month for backup and don't want it spinning up/becoming active needlessly. I use Hotswap! to spin it down and making it disappear from my computer/device manager so it can't be ...
evilperro's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
138 views

PC won't boot from flash drive after computer hibernated (grub on hdd corrupt too)

I had 3 OS installed: Windows 7 , Fedora 17 and Mageia 2 in my Acer Aspire 4253 laptop. I deleted the partition of Mageia and my grub got corrupted. I didn't have an installation DVD of either Win7 ...
Shankar's user avatar
  • 143
4 votes
1 answer
265 views

Does TrueCrypt work on systems where the user data has been moved to a seperate disk from the OS?

I have a desktop computer with a small SSD and a large hard drive... as a result, I have installed my windows OS on the SSD but have moved all user data and programs to the hard drive except for "...
Silentscope's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

Windows SuperFetch service for SSD + HDD mixed systems

The guides are floating around the web stating that Windows 7 automatically disables SuperFetch if it finds that disk is SSD. However, my SSD is only 60GB, and I still have 3 TB of storage on HDDs ...
boomie's user avatar
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