Ran cleanor once, now MS wants me to backup, failing hard drives

CCleaner for Windows CCleaner Windows Bug Reporting
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I thank all of you for your input on this topic.

You are welcome.

Also, I read just this evening that these images will not be available to download after March 2014, that is when the contract between Microsoft and Digital River expires and is not being renewed.

Thanks for that info. Have to get going on that now, at these download speeds it will take until April. :P

Also, fwiw, I just thought to offer a different, simpler solution for Brads problem after the cloning effort failed.

No quarrel intended. You and Alan both know much more than I about these matters.

But I still think 2 things are worth a try:

1. Try making the recovery disks,

2. Download and clean install the iso.

For that second approach there are a couple of tutorials those links I posted.

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No quarrel from me.

I agree with recovery disks and downloading and preparing a clean install of the ISO.

All versions of Windows prior to XP would give me grief on a daily basis.

I therefore create image backups expecting sudden calamity when I Defrag or shrink a partition,

though I have not had any need to use those backups in two years daily use of Windows 7.

Images are my habit, hence my 16 stages.

I believe there is no budget for a new disk,

and have some hope that there is still long life ahead in the D:\ region of the disk.

CHKDSK should be run on D:\ to see if it is viable,

if so then I would NOT expect anything to go wrong by shrinking D:\ to create space at the "SLOW END" of the disk for either :-

A fresh install of Windows from a downloaded ISO ; or

Restoring an image backup of C:\

A fresh install from an ISO to the "SLOW END" of the disk will be clean and free from error,

but will require installing many updates,

and will exclude all the applications you may at the moment have installed on C:\.

It will be ignorant of all the contents on D:\ - but will give you full access.

Your desktop and Start Menu will not have the links that take you to your applications on D:\,

but that is trivial to fix.

Any applications which were installed on D:\ and incorporated components in your existing C:\ will not run until you re-install.

Simply creating an image backup of C:\ and restoring that to the "SLOW END" of the disk should integrate perfectly with the shrunken D:\.

You will not need to re-install anything on C:\ or on D:\ - they will immediately run as previously.

The downside is that any file corruption due to bad sector errors or malware or user error will remain uncorrected,

though hopefully SFC would sort out the worst of the errors.

Please note that Windows will run infinitely faster from the "SLOW END" of the Disk than from a USB2 Disk

and may still out-perform a USB3 Disk - assuming the Toshiba USB3 Disk can actually Boot Windows.

N.B.

SFC May have a need for an installation DVD

SFC May be surprised if all you can offer is Rufus - I have no experience of this,

my special skills are asking questions and worrying about what can go wrong next :unsure:

63

After typing into the wee hours last night, and after rereading large parts of this thread today, I realize my intentions were good, but my priorities were at fault. The cloning/imaging process has proven to be unsuccessful so far, and to try to image and rearrange the drive's existing partitions in an attempt to save them is both too complex and too risky. In the end, it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, when the ship is going down anyway. I think Brad should minimize the use of this drive in order to save it as an archive of sorts. If he finds that something is missing from the data backup he made in the beginning of the process, he can go back and retrieve it from this drive. I think doing a clean installation should be the priority at this point, and steps should be taken to ensure it's success.

I think as a test, he should disconnect the internal drive, connect the second Toshiba that he has been using for cloning, plug in the USB stick with the Windows ISO, boot it, and do an installation to the external drive. This will verify the integrity of the ISO, reveal any installation issues as far as missing drivers are concerned, confirm that the activation key is valid, and let him practice doing an installation if he has never done one before. When he gets a new drive he will be aware of what to do and confident in doing it. I'm sorry this has dragged on for so long, and I'm somewhat disappointed that Macrium did not produce the results I had hoped for. There were too many variables and unknowns to overcome. Remote troubleshooting has always had this problem. At least Brad has learned a lot from this exercise, and maybe others as well. I'm thankful he had the opportunity the create the installation USB prior to the drive failing, and it's probably best to have a new installation to go with his new hard drive.

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Well it was a mighty effort.

Lots of careful research and advice by Alan and Derek in an effort to save Brad money.

End result is good, imho, Brad has seen several alternatives.

Now Brad, please do post back your results if you can.

It would help me and maybe others to know what finally worked.

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Hi. I'm running Win 7. I ran ccleaner once, just the cleaner, not the registry option. Now win is telling me I have disk errors and need to backup because both my hard drives are going to fail. I ran the cleaners Saturday 12-14-2013(Saturday) and got the messages today on Sunday. I'm a lil freaked out by this. Any suggestions? Please help and thanks in advance.

Let me be less dramatic and more helpful. Sorry. MS Windows brings up a system window quite often now saying: "Windows detected a hard disk problem.... backup immediately." Options are to start backup, ask again later, don't ask again(not recommended) Under "Show Details" it says "Which disk is failing? The following hard disks are reporting failure: Disk Name ...ATA Device. Volume C:\;D:\"

I have 2 hard drives and i think it's near impossible for them to both fail at once. What should I do?

Hi all. I haven't given up yet. In an administrator command prompt, I ran "sfc /scannow Verification 100% complete. Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations. I also ran chkdsk on both the C: and D: drive labels(WIN7 & DATA.) The reults were lengthy, but this might be relevant: "0 KB in bad sectors" & "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems." on both partitions. The only thing I did not understand was: "WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. And I do not know how to run CHKDSK for the Unallocated and the Recovery partitions. In Windows Disk Management program, all 3 partitions are showing a Status of Healthy(except for unallocated(no status.)) Recovery(no label) status Healthy(Primary Partition) 8GB. DATA(D:) status Healthy(Primary Partition) 550.90 GB. WIN7(C:) status Healthy(System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) 280 GB. The only odd thing I noticed that the RECOVERY partition did not indicate a "File System" status. The other 2 partitions reported as NTFS.

I realize now my original post was misleading, confused and paranoid. But could it be possible that Ccleaner deleted or corrupted SMART detection somehow? If so, how did that start affecting my SMART BIOS boot error? If not, I will continue on the path to recovery in these posts. Does any of that make sense?

p.s: My external Toshibas are USB 2.0 manufactured 1/2010.

p.s.s: In Acronis Drive Monitor, under SMART parameters tab:

Read Error Rate,58102680,113,6,OK

Spin-Up Time,0,96,0,OK

Start/Stop Count,164,100,20,OK

Attribute Name, Raw Value, Value, Threshold, Status

Reallocated Sectors Count,4158,1,36,Fail

Seek Error Rate,99863916,79,30,OK

Power-On Hours (POH),32545,63,0,OK

Spin Retry Count,0,100,97,OK

Power Cycle Count,165,100,20,OK

SATA Downshift Error Count,0,100,0,OK

End-to-End error,0,100,99,OK

Reported Uncorrectable Errors,2,98,0,OK

Command Timeout,2,100,0,OK

High Fly Writes,1,99,0,OK

Airflow Temperature,589299745,67,45,OK

Temperature,77309411361,33,0,OK

Hardware ECC Recovered,58102680,42,0,OK

Current Pending Sector Count,0,100,0,OK

Uncorrectable Sector Count,0,100,0,OK

UltraDMA CRC Error Count,0,200,0,OK

Head Flying Hours,125434519912628,100,0,OK

Total LBAs Written,1843318067,100,0,OK

Total LBAs Read,3723921684,100,0,OK

On right click, there is an option to Ignore parameter or to Reset default settings.

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Hi Brad.

The guys have given you an excellent service here, and I don't intend to try and add anything different, but I will say that quite some time back Windows told me that my system drive was failing and to back up asap and replace the drive.

To cut a long story short, I eventually ran tests with my drive manufacturers proprietary tools, available here ...

Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities: (Most manufacturers, Toshiba included)

.. which disagreed with Windows, and with the comfort of a Macrium Image in the background, I ran that drive as my system drive for another two years without problems. It is now an extra internal hard drive for data storage, and is still running well over 4 years after that warning.

You can't ignore these warnings and should have some type of "system drive" backup to hand, but sometimes Windows gets it wrong.

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Hi all. I haven't given up yet.

Good for you, hang tough, you can do it. :)

If those drive results are as good as I think they are you may be in luck.

Alan & Derek will know more about those readings.

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In Windows Disk Management program, all 3 partitions are showing a Status of Healthy(except for unallocated(no status.)) Recovery(no label) status Healthy(Primary Partition) 8GB. DATA(D:) status Healthy(Primary Partition) 550.90 GB. WIN7(C:) status Healthy(System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) 280 GB. The only odd thing I noticed that the RECOVERY partition did not indicate a "File System" status. The other 2 partitions reported as NTFS.

I am sorry but there have been far too many meaningless words in the 67 posts of this topic for me to bother attempting to comprehend and comment.

I REALLY NEED to see a screen shot showing every possible detail that Windows Disk Management can provide.

If the screen shot is already supplied then please forgive my oversight and tell me the #?? post number I should look for.

A screenshot of the SMART BIOS boot error would also be more than useful - I love screen-shots :wub:

I am surprised that CHKDSK now reports

"0 KB in bad sectors" & "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems." on both partitions

I think Derek's summary indicated bad clusters were found.

Perhaps words have been misunderstood.

If you have a CHKDSK report it would be better to attach this with your next reply.

I do not believe that CCLeaner has any capability of damaging the SMART DATA which is provided by the electronic components within the HDD enclosure.

I will leave it to those with experience of Acronis Disk Monitor to comment upon the values which it reports.

Regards

Alan

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I've gone back and read this thread for the fourth time in as many days. Here are some notes:

Post #1 (12/15) Windows reports disk errors...backup immediately (after running CCleaner)

Post #5 (12/15) AMI BIOS boot message: SMART reports disk condition BAD (first time seen during boot, never seen previously)

Post #10(12/16) Ran error check in Windows - No errors

BIOS reports SATA1 SMART capable and status bad

Acronis reallocated sectors count - SMART attribute reported bad blocks on the drive - RAW value 4158 - Threshold 36 - Status Fail

Everything else OK according to Acronis

Post#47(1/2/14) Booting Windows with bad drive consistent - BIOS still sending message bad drive

So at one time or another, Brad has seen error messages reported by three different sources - Windows, BIOS, and Acronis (using SMART data). I think this is something not to be taken lightly or ignored. The presence of reallocated sectors is not the end of the world, but does indicate the beginning of the end for this hard drive. Based on reading I did last night, I would place a higher value on what SMART is saying rather than what Windows is saying. This is because any remapping of sectors done at the drive's firmware level is not visible to Windows at the filesystem level. Windows only concerns itself with mismatches in the FAT or MFT tables and the filesystem itself. I believe that chkdsk is a useful tool in this regard, and probably was the only tool available prior to the development of SMART technology in the late 80's to early 90's timeframe.

Also from last night's reading session, I found one thing that could affect the drive's firmware and trigger SMART to report errors regarding bad sectors: a loss of power during a write operation. So Brad, to your knowledge, has your machine ever experienced this? Have you ever lost power while the machine was on?

I do agree with Alan as far as CCleaner having no way of affecting the drive's firmware or SMART. I also agree with Dennis, Brad should visit the support website of the drive's manufacturer and use any tools that are available, in order to verify what Acronis is reporting.

A few questions for Brad: Early on, you received a message from BIOS about reflashing. I asked you to visit the ASUS website and find out what is the current version of BIOS for this machine and compare it to what is installed on the machine now. Did you do this? Is your BIOS current? If not, did you reflash it at the time? And again, any power outages while this machine was on?

Edit: Brad, please read post #63. Forget about cloning, use the second Toshiba to do a test run with the installation USB you created for plan B. At this point, I'd like to be sure it works and you have no problems with it. Be sure to have the internal drive disconnected before doing this. If this succeeds, you can use the internal drive until it eventually dies.

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I've gone back an

Edit: Brad, please read post #63. Forget about cloning, use the second Toshiba to do a test run with the installation USB you created for plan B. At this point, I'd like to be sure it works and you have no problems with it. Be sure to have the internal drive disconnected before doing this. If this succeeds, you can use the internal drive until it eventually dies.

I have questions to help clarify that quote for myself, maybe Brad too.

Is it true that Brad has 3 drives and a USB stick?

I think there are:

- 2 external USB drives, both Toshiba, and

- one internal drive which may be failing, make and model unknown so far, probably SATA,

- and a USB stick wh/ has been prepared to install win 7 cleanly.

I might be missing something, but it seems that if the USB stick is going to install win 7 to the internal drive, that drive must be connected, right?

It doesn't matter to me what the internal drive is, because if Brad reinstalls win 7 to it, and it runs OK, there will be plenty of time to check it for bugs after that, right?

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login123: Brad has the two Toshibas, one has all of his backed up files from the internal drive's D: partition. If he missed anything doing this, the internal drive can be used as an archive, so I don't want anything to be overwritten. You know how Microsoft Windows is, all your disk are mine. ;)

The other has been used to attempt to clone the other partitions, recovery and C: partition, from the internal drive. Due to the fact that cloning has been unsuccessful so far, I wanted him to try an installation using the second Toshiba. This is only a test at this point, the reasons for doing this are on post #63. I want to be sure the installation process goes without problems, since it is the only option left. Until we can figure out whether the internal drive actually has problems or not, there's nothing to be gained by doing a clean install using that drive.

72

OK, got it.

Plan is to keep the present internal HDD as is.

So the install will be onto one of the external Toshiba USB HDDs, right?

Will win 7 run from an external USB drive?

If not how will we know if win 7 installed correctly?

Thats the part I don't understand.

Edit: Just my ignorance, I don't know how to be sure it will boot and run except by actually booting it up.

Nuther edit: This sort of thread seems to often run on a bit. I've seen several like it.

And Brad is no doubt grateful to the Piriform folks for providing this forum where he could work it out.

And to the long suffering moderators who have to read every word of it. :)

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OK, got it.

Plan is to keep the present internal HDD as is.

So the install will be onto one of the external Toshiba USB HDDs, right?

Will win 7 run from an external USB drive?

If not how will we know if win 7 installed correctly?

Thats the part I don't understand.

Edit: Just my ignorance, I don't know how to be sure it will boot and run except by actually booting it up.

That's the purpose of the test, to iron out any problems with either the USB image, the installation process, missing drivers, the validity of the activation key, or anything else. I'd like to solve any problems now, not later. If Brad gets a new hard drive sometime in the future, he will have the knowledge and experience gained from this exercise to guide him.

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I am sorry but there have been far too many meaningless words in the 67 posts of this topic for me to bother attempting to comprehend and comment.

I REALLY NEED to see a screen shot showing every possible detail that Windows Disk Management can provide.

I have to stick my two penneth in here guys, although as I said above I'm not suggesting anything different.

-------------------------------------------------

Brad ... I find all the stuff in this topic very hard to follow and I more or less know what the guys are talking about.

Can I ask you to be quite honest and let us know as to whether you are ...

1:) Comfortably following all this stuff.

2:) Understand it completely.

3:) Are 100% confident to carry out the recommendations made to you.

I ask because it's easy for a topic to grow extraordinarily large and complex and for us not to realise how much daunting information we've thrown at the guy with the problem, who may not be as technically knowledgeable as we may think.

No offence meant Brad, but I have a feeling your head may be reeling with all this stuff, and I would hate to think that you don't want to admit that without causing offence to the guys who have put in a lot of effort to help you.

You won't cause offence to anyone, and if necessary, we'll start again from the beginning with an accurate picture of exactly what your situation is, and I must be honest, I'm not entirely sure myself.

If I'm wrong, then by all means carry on, but don't get out of your depth out of politeness. The guys will understand. :)

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Okay, Derek, I do have electric cutouts about once every few months or more during bad weather(like this winter.) My house is 75 years old and some of the wiring is that old. My triplex(electric line to the pole) is old and patched. I do have a UPS but that doesn't always keep it running.

I've looked very closely and I am unable to determine my motherboard model # on the board or in BIOS. It may be? N13219 or D33005 but I don't know.

My "American Megatrends" ASUS BIOS is out of date. I have version 0261 and there is a version 0407 out. I do not know how to update the BIOS and not certain I want to if there's a chance of me losing this computer doing it. All I have now is a bad hard drive and don't need anything else mucked up. I have an Essentio Series consumer desktop PC model CM5571 running Win 7 64 bit. Here is the link to the BIOS upgrades and utilities:

http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=14&s=11&m=CM5571&os=&hashedid=6lfzXPQRwPjUYpUW

I did not do a flash utility upgrade. I've heard bad stories over the years and am wary.

Derek said in post #63: "I think as a test, he should disconnect the internal drive, connect the second Toshiba that he has been using for cloning, plug in the USB stick with the Windows ISO, boot it, and do an installation to the external drive."

If you can flesh this out a bit more I am ready to do it as I have installed OS before but not from an ISO stick. But if you think I should safely upgrade my BIOS first, I am ready to do that too with help. :)

p.s: I went to "American Megatrends" website and they had a motherboard identification utility but it doesn't run on 64-bit. Are there general utilities out there that can identify my motherboard? I tried several of these utilities, including an online utility at Intel.com, and they all identified the motherboard model # as CM5571. But I cannot find that model listed in ASUS' motherboard support.

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Hello Brad - I was only curious if the BIOS version was current or not, I don't think it's a good idea to mess around with it now, especially if you are not sure about the motherboard's model or i.d. number. Using the wrong BIOS will brick your motherboard, so unless you are absolutely 100% sure you have the right BIOS version for your motherboard, don't do it, it's not worth the risk. Also, forget about looking on AMI's website, you should only use what is available from Asus, the manufacturer. And the last thing you want to experience is losing power during the flashing process, that is certain to result in failure. I think your priority at this point is using the USB stick to run a practice installation.

You already know how to set up BIOS and boot from the USB stick, and you know it begins the installation. Since cloning has been unsuccessful, use the second Toshiba to test the installation from start to finish. I want to see that you have no problems with the installation hanging at a certain point, if there are any hardware drivers missing and where to find them, and if the activation key is valid and accepted by Microsoft. So to do this, plug in the Toshiba and format it using NTFS, so it appears to the system as an empty drive. Then power off the machine and disconnect the internal drive. Plug in the USB stick, then power up and enter BIOS. Set BIOS to boot from the USB stick. Your machine should recognize it as a bootable device. When the installer starts, it should recognize the Toshiba as the drive available for installation, since the internal drive has been disconnected. Run through the installation from start to finish. Do not enter the activation key during the installation, you can do this within 30 days afterward. When you get Windows up and running, enter the Device Manager to see if any devices have the little yellow triangle next to them. This will indicate a missing or incorrect driver for the device. Take note of what the device is, then explore the Asus support website to see what is available, or the first time you run Windows Update, Windows may find and install the drivers for you. After you solve any and all driver problems, check all the Windows software and applications to see there are no problems. Then you can use the activation key. When you're all done, put the USB stick somewhere safe. Then you have two choices: continue to use the Toshiba, or reconnect the internal drive and use it until it dies. When you get a new hard drive, you'll be all set to do a clean install and will know how to solve any problems you experienced with the test run on the Toshiba.

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Ok. Thanks. I tried this stick ISO install on the usb 2.0 toshiba. Windows setup replied that it could not install Windows 7 onto a USB device. There was an option to load a driver, but not even sure that was relevant to the USB issue.

On another matter, on my bad hard drive, I setup a windows backup to backup automatically every week on my d: partition before I realized it was all one bad hard drive with 2 partitions. How do I stop this? I don't want windows to backup automatically, or even at all at this point. There seems to be no options or settings to stop this useless backup activity. Any ideas?

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Brad405red. If you dont know yet if your hard drive is damage, then just download this sftware HDD Regenerator, just google it and you will find it. I assure you. It is the best hard drive scanner software you can find. Burn a cd, then restart, go to boot option chose start from cd and scan your hard drive. If it is really damage it will show as B as in Bad Sector.

I apolagize if you already have solve this problem, it s just i got to the conversation to late now and honestly didnt had the patiance to read all the replys. Anyway just trying to help. Think there s no harm in that.

Cheers.

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Just burn Win 7 iso onto a dvd. Much easier to use and it just works.

As for turning off the backup read the posts in this thread

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/how-do-you-abort-stop-the-windows-7-backup/382d3688-9bd9-4576-9586-2560dcb87796

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Thanks, hazelnut. I think the win backup problem is solved. That sure is buggy and poorly designed MS software.