Fujitsu HD MPG3307AT SMART/Drive Failure Problem

[s0l1d 0]

(This is a pretty long read for a big problem I have. Please take your time to read and help out as much as possible so at least I can recover some files)

 

I have this Fujitsu 30GB Harddrive MPG3307AT (4 year-old drive) that has a very serious SMART/Drive Failure problem. ;(

 

It first started to show signs of problem when it shows the SMART warning during Boot. However, this warning doesn't consistently show during every boot up. Because of that, I kind of ignored it as the drive seems to function with no visible problem. x) At this time, I had 2 partitions (15GB each) and had Win2K installed on first partition and second partition was used for storage.

 

Around last year (2003) June/July, I've got couple of new computers, so I switched components around between the 3 computers. The Fujitsu drive is now connected to Asus P4PE motherboard, with 3 partitions (10GB w/ WinXP & Progs, 3GB for general storage, 2GB for backup drivers & some program installations files). It never had a single problem for a year until now.

 

Just this Tuesday (July 27), while using Firefox, ICQ Lite 4.0 and couple of others program running (don't remember exactly), I started experience a slow down with the computer. Jerky mouse movements, doesn't respond to any keyboard presses, which seems to suggest like some program is taking up too much of the CPU resources. I managed to closed all apps and restarted computer. On restarted, WinXP did a CHKDSK by itself automatically. I let it run, seems to fixed couple of entries, boot right into WinXP, and used the computer with no problems at all for the rest of the afternoon until I turned it off around 4:30pm.

 

However, yesterday (July 28) was a different story. The day started out fine with I booted the computer up with no problems at all in the morning. But around noon time, I started to experience the same slow, jerkiness that I had on Tuesday. Again, I restarted, WinXP did CHKDSK, fixed couple of entries, and boot into WinXP. Not a long while later, the slow jerkiness happened again. I restarted once again, but this time it won't boot up at all. It went passed POST screen (with no error or warning), screen went black, then it just rebooted.

 

I tried several DOS tools from different manufacturers and here are a list of what happened with each tool.

 

Fujitsu's Diagnostic Tool ;( :

No Drive Found. Check Connection. <stupid response for its own drive>

 

Fujitsu MPG series HDD Recovery Tool v2.02 :x :

I can't continue because I don't have a 2nd empty HD I can recover to.

 

Seagate's SeaTool Desktop :

Quick Test successfully complete with no problem (no SMART error). Full Test completed with one bad sector but could not be fixed by the test. File Structure Test showed all 3 partitions failed the test with critical errors!

 

Maxtor's PowerMAX :

Quick Test warned of possible problem during SMART test segment and suggest to do Full Test. Full Test stopped after a long duration of SMART test and warned the the drive has Failed SMART test. I did not do full disk scan.

 

The harddrive can rot afterwards for all I care, but I really need to recover only a few important files right now. Can someone please help me or give me some useful tools or suggestions so I can backup those few files?

[Sampson 0]

You have gone to a lot of trouble and been extraordinarily thorough, but you have a hard drive with either some physical defects or messed up sectors. Think about getting a new drive. This one is not going to survive.

 

I know you want to recover what is on the old drive, but continuing to test it will probably make it less readable. If you get a new drive you could slave your old drive to it to see if you could at least find and read the data. Or you could try to Ghost the old drive to the new drive. If it is only some sectors that are problematic and Ghost does create an image to the new drive all the better.

[BL4VAL 0]

if you where able to recover

i would know how couse i got the same problem

[DosFreak 2]

http://www.jillmatrix.com/

 

has some suggestions. Setting it up as slave, preferabbly in an external enclosure might be a good bet.