My 2 year old Toshiba notebook started taking 5 - 10 minutes to boot last week. The Windows 10 system log file reports dozens of Harddisk0\DR0 bad blocks. After the system boots the Windows menu doesn't open, though its context menu does. Programs launch from the taskbar, though the icon for Edge is gone. I'm able to run other programs pretty successfully by navigating to their executables.

I ran the copy of Data Lifeguard Diagnostic that came installed, but in less than an hour it aborted complaining it found too many bad sectors. I tried booting the most recent Ultimate Boot CD and running the utility from there, but maybe because I have to change UEFI boot to CSM boot in bios/setup in order to boot from an optical disk, the utility didn't find any compatible drives.

At this point I have a couple questions I'm hoping the good people here might be able to answer.

* Is anyone aware of a utility I can boot off of that might be able to scan and repair this Toshiba MQ01ABD100:TI1071800E HDD?

* And my hopes are not high for this one: Do you think there is any chance the OS can be repaired. I ran sfc /scannow, but it failed after 5 - 10 minutes,

Thanks for any thoughts on all this.
matt

Too late to edit I guess, so I'll add this: After backing up some data, I find Windows 10 wants to update on shutdown. I'm afraid that could make matters worse. I've googled for ways to shut down without applying the updates. The option isn't there on the Alt + F4 menu. And I'm not easy with deleting C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution. Will ask over at the Win10 forum too. Meanwhile I'm letting the notebook run..

Thanks again.
matt

Thank you for your feedback on this Spildit. I got pretty much the same response from the folks on the Ten Forums. I have been through this before. But it's always involved the click of death. This was a silent killer Luckily there's not much data on the drive that's very important. I've already copied off most of what I'd like to save.

I'm not sure if folks here will know if I'll be able to just drop a new HDD in the Toshiba and re-install Windows 10. I'm told that the Windows installation will detect the signature of the notebook, and if I just need to respond, "I dont have the key", iti'll go ahead and install the OS. I guess I can download the current 10 installation ISO from Microsoft again: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Thanks again for getting back to me Spildit
Matt

And, if you reinstall windows, it will get the key from the laptop bios. It would be easier if you had made the recovery disk when the laptop was new, but you can install from the iso . Then you will need to download and install the other drivers for the peripherals and also reinstall your software.

If the laptop had an activated Windows 10 previously, then the new installation (has to be the same Home or Pro version as before) with will be aware of the digital signature from the BIOS and activate on the fly.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

With a bit clearer mind after that all-nighter troubleshooting I finally remembered that I did image this drive twice just a few days after I got it. But the Toshiba boots UEFI by default and I had to set it to CSM in order to boot from an Acronis True Image 2016 optical disk. I knew nothing about UEFI or CSM then, and know very little more now.

I've imaged older systems with an earlier version of True Image and was able to restore them successfully. But I've never attempted to restore the Windows 10 image. I'm not sure if switching the Toshiba boot to CSM and attempting to restore the image I made with True Image 2016 is going to work. As I recall, the partitions Windows 10 creates are different from anything I'd ever seen. And I'm not certain True Image 2016 cloned them properly from a CSM boot. So restoring the image might be a real crapshoot.

Cloning the drive as it is to a new one and seeing if the Windows installer might be able to repair the OS sounds intriguing Spildit. What software would you use? Are you familiar with Acronis True Image 2016?



That's good to hear guys. Guess it's time to research what to look for in specs for buying a new HDD. Recommendations anyone?

Thanks for that Spildit. I loaded them both onto my Mint boot USB drive, but ddrescue never showed any progress in detecting drives. I was hoping to do a dry run by cloning a small USB flash drive with hddsuperclone, but kept getting and error failed with sense data 2 3a 0. Will do some more research and try again tomorrow.

I did found a standalone hardware dual 2.5" drive docking / duplicating station selling locally for $26 USD that's a tempting option too, & another combo 2.5" & 3.5" for $39.


Indeed. Not sure if that was in reference to my UEFI to CSM boot situiation


I'm looking at an HGST 2.5" 7200RPM 9.5mm model for $59 I may have a go at.

If you are getting the following error with HDDSuperClone, then you may be choosing something like a card reader (could be built into the PC) that does not have anything in it. Sense data 02 3a 00 is "Not Ready - medium not present".

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

@maximus Thanks for your input. I tried plugging 9 different USB flash drives into one of the USB ports on my Toshiba L55T-C5290. I'd booted Mint from a 64 GB stick and found that to make HDDSuperClone happy, and able to select it, I had to dismount the flash drive, leaving it connected. I got that error for each of 8 drives ranging from 2 GB to 64 GB in size. I was finally successful in getting HDDSuperClone to select a 32 GB HP flash drive, but I had no other flash drive that size I could test cloning it to.

I'm going to pick up a hardware USB HDD docking port that supports 4 HDDs, 2 2.5" and 2 3.5" and does standalone cloning when I pick up a new 1TB drive for the notebook. I'll try HDDSuperClone again at that point. But reading through the manual, it states that using a USB interface id not recommended.

@matt56231, you also said this: Both ddrescue and hddsuperclone need the drive to show up as a device, which can be checked with the command "sudo fdisk -lu". If the device is not showing up properly, then neither will work. But HDDSuperClone does use more direct protocols for drive access, and can therefore be more likely to either give a better indication of the issue, or perhaps in some rare cases just not work (I have not seen that yet, the SCSI passthrough should always work).

As for USB devices not being recommended for use with HDDSuperClone, if the device can be connected directly to the computer via SATA or PATA connector, then that is preferred (even when using ddrescue), but does not mean USB will not work. Some USB adapters can be weird and not process errors properly, but what you describe is odd and should not happen. It almost seems as the OS is not recognizing the USB drive is attached. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you booted from a USB device, and that is causing conflict in the OS with the hardware trying to detect another USB device. If the device will show up with a "sudo fdisk -lu" command with the proper size, then it should work with hddsuperclone.

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

@matt56231 When you get a new disk, it is important to try to restore those cloned images you created when it was new. If they don´t work, it is better to know it now than keep them believing they are useful and later discover in a bad moment that they aren´t.

Also, if you can somehow restore those images, create the usb recovery disk from the instalation. That would allow you to restore the original situation of the computer ( OS, drivers, applications ) in case of hdd failure.

@maximus : from his post " ...booted Mint from a 64 GB stick and found that to make HDDSuperClone happy, and able to select it, I had to dismount the flash drive" , I believe he is trying to make hddrescue clone to the same usb drive he booted from, instead booting from one and connecting another one later for the clone test.

I picked up that HGST 2.5" 7200RPM 9.5mm SATA II HDD for $59 along with a "Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner" today. Not certain how accurate the Sabrent cloning would be, I started with just using it as a docking station and now have hddsuperclone cloning my Toshiba HDD. It's reporting 2 hours and 20 minutes left to complete.

I also picked up a cheap set of plastic tools for prying the Toshiba case open. It's tighter than any other I've see in the past & wasn't sure if fingernails and an old plastic supermarket discount card would do it. From what I see on YouTube it's just removing 10 screws and prying the case open. The HDD apparently is in a plastic enclosure that just pops out (hopefully)


In Mint a desktop icon pops up and there's an audible alert when a USB flash drive is connected. Something is nuts either in the OS or hddsuperclone as when I inserted one of the flash drives (4GB) that was rejected the other day, on 1st try today it was imported as the source drive. But between then and finding another flash drive to clone to, hddsuperclone wouldn't import that same 4GB drive as source. Instead I got the error I got yesterday saying it couldn't set a source drive that was mounted. So in Mint (I'm not very Linux savvy) USB drive context menus show 2 options:

1) Dismount drive
2) Safely remove drive

2) totally disconnects the drive. 1) just dismounts it and leaves it showing up in the file manager. Not all flash drives behave in my Mint the same though. Some don't show the 'Safely remove drive' option. And for whatever reason, I was able to import my 32GB HP flash drive as a source drive even when it was still mounted. I'll test "sudo fdisk -lu after this drive is cloned.

So I skipped the test dry run with the flash drives and went straight to cloning the internal SATA HDD which seems to be progressing well so far.


Well so far the Sabrent USB 3.0 docking station seems to be connected and functioning properly.


It may indeed be some problem with the 2-3 year old Linux Mint OS on this 64GB flash drive I set up to do some data recovery. It's really been functioning pretty flawlessly as far as I can recall. Except for today. Besides these problems with hddsuperclone importing these old flash drive as a source, Mint fully locked up for the 1st time while hddsuperclone was searching for connected drives. None of the keyboard commands I googled would shut it down, so I had to opt for the power button.


I have that Acronis image backed up in 2 places along with a number of other image files for other systems. I'll probably attack pulling the Toshiba case off tomorrow and see if I can get Windows 10 installation media to repair the copy that I'm cloning now. If that fails I'll try restoring that Acronis TI image.


That's interesting. Now that you mention it, Windows 10 did have me create a recovery disk... or image file (??) at some point back when I was 1st backing up the drive. I'll look around for it and try to find out what it was all about and how it differs from standard cloning.


Hah! I may have tried that at some point in the past But the Toshiba has 3 USB ports. I booted Mint on 1 and was trying to use the other 2 to clone from 1 to the other. Or I was thinking trying to clone a 16GB or 32GB flash drive to an image file on the 64GB Mint drive.

This last message of yours made things more clear. Your linux disk is auto-mounting the usb drives, so that should explain why they could not be cloned ( and had to be dismounted before ) .

Success! The Toshiba is booting Windows 10 with all my programs and data as it had been.

Last night hddsuperclone successfully cloned the Toshiba's internal drive to the new one. Tonight I cracked the case open and dropped in the clone. After that it was pretty simple. Booted Windows 10, and ran Check Now from the C: drive's Properties > Tools menu. It had me reboot to run chkdsk I assume it was, found and fixed system file errors, and finally booted to a working desktop after repairs.

When @Spildit said, " i would use (lacking hardware based sollutions).." it prompted me to look into standalone cloning devices. Though I didn't have to use the cloning feature of the Sabrent docking station, I'm glad I spent a few more bucks on it instead of buying a cheaper USB 2.5" HDD enclosure. It'll be really useful in the future. I have several 3.5" HDD USB enclosures. But the dual docking station for both 2.5" & 3.5" drives makes it easy to simply drop in bare drives. And if needs be, can be used as a stand alone cloning device.

Spildit, rogfanther, labtech, maximus: I can't begin to thank you folks enough for all your feedback. Thank you so very much for steering me the right direction in setting up hddsuperclone to clone my failed HDD and breathe new life into this Toshiba. It's really great to see so many people with a lot of experience with and knowledge about the workings of these beasts willing to take the time to help others work out issues like this. I've learned a lot in the process too, and have added a few new tools to my ever expanding quiver.

Glad to be able to put my tired old 2005 1.6GHz core 2 duo lappy back on the shelf and properly stream video again with the new one

Hi,
Great to see you got through all the advice and was able to follow it so well.

I would add one thing.

open a command prompt as administrator and do a windows file check : sfc /scannow you may need your OS media if it finds anything needed to repair.

Also if you are not running win10 creators update, I would upgrade to that, plus update to latest patches from windows update, or run the latest cumulative update from:

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Update%20for%20Windows%2010%20Version%201703%20for%20x64-based%20Systems%20

click on "last updated" column header to sort by newest file and choose the latest version for your version.

If you are already running creators update, and it is x64, check version by right-clicking Start, choose Run and type "winver". As of now latest is 15063.540


The network I run has been the most stable it has ever been with this version, a mix of Surface pro4, Surface Pro 3, varios models of laptops, 4 different desktop versions. Harware between new and 8 years old, around 600 devices.

HaQue - Thanks for the suggestions. I actually did try running sfc /scannow 1st, and it failed at about 75% before running chkdsk. Glad you reminded me though. I'll run it again.

One of my PCs just got updated to Windows 10 Creator last week, and this notebook was reporting it had updates to install right when the drive started failing. I suspect those may have been Creator. I managed to shut the system down from the ctrl-alt-del menu and avoided the updates.

If Creator doesn't show up in the next week or so I'll take your advice and get it installed manually. I used to be picky about having MS notify me when Windows 7 updates were available so I could review them and choose whether of not to install them. But with the advent of Windows 10 I've just let the OS update itself automatically. Something all those businesses should have done before those 2 recent ransomware attacks.

HaQue: I ran sfc /scannow again and this time it did complete now that chkdsk had made repairs. But it reported:


The CBS.log is over 31000 lines and is a bit beyond me. Here's most of the error I can spot:

* 12 instances: .... - ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND
* 25 instances: xxxxxx - Couldn't mark for pending delete:
* Many: 0000xxxx - Error - Overlap: Duplicate ownership for directory
* Many: [Path to file] is not owned but specifies SDDL in component in component [Component]
* Very many: 0000xxxx Error - Overlap: Duplicate ownership for directory [Path to directory]
* Many: Cannot repair member file [File info] in the store, file is missing
* 4 instances: Could not reproject corrupted file [File info] source file in store is also corrupted
* Several: Warning - Overlap: Directory [Path] is owned twice or has its security set twice

In the past I've seen a lot of errors in the daily Windows system log file after booting other systems that I guess must be common as those systems were working fine. Maybe I'll see if someone in the 10 forums can have a look at this CBS.log tomorrow if no one here has input on this. But the Toshiba seems to be running fine from the testing I've done so far.

I would get an ISO of 1703 and just go into windows and run setup.exe. This will upgrade windows and at the same time fix all the SFC errors.

after that I would also re-install any programs that are "serious" installs, such as photoshop-like applications.

I normally wipe the whole disk and re-install, after saving any data, but I have my disks setup so that it is fairly easy to do that (redirect desktop and special folders etc)

after you have installed windows, you can probably just wait and see if any applications play up, and deal with it then as your system will be stable.