sectors

Fri
16
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

3 Ways to Fix: Install Failed During First_Boot Sysprep Operation

Infopackets Reader 'Cindy' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop which has been very, very slow. I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 hoping this would fix my problems, however I keep getting a message that ' The installation failed ... in the First_Boot phase with an error during Sysprep Operation ' (pic). I have been researching this problem for 2 days using Google, and have yet to find a fix that makes sense! Absolutely nothing I do seems to work! Can you PLEASE help? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of emails from folks asking for help on this. If you want this problem ... (view more)

Fri
15
Dec
Dennis Faas's picture

Step-by-Step: Fix 'I/O Device Error' (Hard Drive, SD Card, etc)

Infopackets Reader Greeshma N. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an external hard drive that has worked fine for years. Now the hard drive won't show up in My Computer, though it shows up under Devices and Printers - very strange! I have tried ... initializing the disk from Disk Management, but it won't format and I keep getting ' The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error '. I have tried cleaning up the disk by deleting items but it shows 0 bytes free and keeps giving me 'The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error'. What can I do to make this work? " My ... (view more)

Fri
20
Oct
Dennis Faas's picture

How to Fix: Attach, Rebuild RAID 5 after Failed Disk (Dell PERC S100, S300)

Infopackets Reader Harlen W. writes: " Dear Dennis, I own a Dell PowerEdge T110 server, which runs Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation and is equipped with a Dell Perc 300 RAID card . We have 3 x 250 GB hard drives in RAID 5 format attached to the ... Perc 300 RAID card. According to the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (which we use to manage the RAID via the browser), the 'Alert' log file is reporting ' Device failed: Physical Disk 0:1 Controller 0, Connector 0 '. I would like to hire you to help me fix this problem, including testing the failed hard drive . If it passes, I want to put it ... (view more)

Mon
27
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

How to Fix: Device I/O Error (and Recover Data)

Infopackets Reader Phoebe A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Today I tried to free up some space on my C drive by moving files over to my external hard drive, but Windows gave me an error message, stating that 'Error during copy: the request could not be ... performed because of an I/O device error'. I've also tried using 'TeraCopy' to copy files over, but it keeps freezing on the same files. Can you help? " My response: If you receive an error that says "the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" when trying to copy or move a file, that usually (but not always) indicates bad ... (view more)

Mon
09
Nov
Dennis Faas's picture

How to Fix: Test RAID for Bad Sectors (Sync Errors)

Infopackets Reader Steve H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a RAID 1 set up with 4 hard drives in a mirrored array. Recently my RAID software reported that one of the drives was dropped from the array and has since been marked as 'rebuilding', ... however, during the rebuild process I keep receiving RAID controller errors that data could not be synced / written to the drive. I'm not sure what to do from here. Is there any way for me to independently check the drive for errors? I understand that if the drive is bad I should replace it, but I'm not even sure which drive is which. " My response: This ... (view more)

Mon
30
Aug
Dennis Faas's picture

New Hard Drives Trouble for WinXP, Home Server Users

Microsoft has warned users of its Windows Home Server technology that they could have problems using newer hard drives. It follows earlier warnings that the drives are also problematic for Windows XP users. Drives Use Advanced Format Technology The ... situation involves sectors, the individual chunks into which a hard drive is divided. The standard size of each sector has traditionally been 512 bytes, but some drives are already using a 4 kilobyte sector, and this will become the standard size for all drives after 2011. The new drives are referred to as having "Advanced Format" ... (view more)

Fri
12
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

New Hard Drives Could Spell Trouble For Windows XP

Tactics used to make new hard drives more efficient could cause problems for Windows XP users. It may mean any new drive bought after next year could be noticeably slower to use on the operating system. The issue involves the way hard drives are ... broken down into individual sectors. Until now, it has always been standard for hard drive sectors to be 512 bytes in size. However, not all of each sector is used for storing data. Instead, there is a marker to denote the start of the sector: a space used for codes which are used to check if there is any error with the sector and its contents, and a ... (view more)

Sat
25
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

Available Space Misreported by USB drive?, Part 2

A recent question raised a red flag in my mind. I think most, if not all, of you read my 'brief' description of about what happened to the missing 32 MB on a 512 MB Thumb Drive: Available Space Misreported by USB drive? Allow me to explain in ... greater detail. On a hard drive, thumb drive, or any other storage device in common use, the capacity displayed on the carton is the maximum 'raw' or usable number of bytes the device can hold. However, a device that 'says' it can hold 512 MB of data will not display the number 512 MB after it has been formatted. As stated in the previous article , some ... (view more)

Fri
17
Sep
Dennis Faas's picture

Repair damaged sectors on a hard drive?

Infopackets Reader Melissa P. writes: " Dear Dennis, Is there an easy way to fix and repair damaged sectors on a hard drive? Windows keeps reporting to me that my hard drive may have damaged sectors. " My response: A damaged sector *may* be an ... earlier warning sign that your hard drive is about to fail. If you have 1 damaged sector, it may not be all that bad. If you have many damaged sectors, that's a different story. Here's the skinny -- Inside your hard drive are typically 2 ~ 4 discs (called "platters") stacked on top of one another, and read / write heads between each ... (view more)

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