Tuesday 17 July 2012

Computer won't Start - Disk Read Error

The worst possible screen when booting up a machine happened to me today.

Simply
Disk Read Error 

Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to Restart

The 250Gb Western Digital drive that was at best estimate 5 years old decided to bite the dust. I usually cycle my drives but this one had slipped past.




Straight away I headed into BIOS to see if the disk is still being recognised, and it was, puzzled I removed the drive and powered up my nexstar hard drive dock and checked the drive, it was working perfectly.

So i began to do what I should have done a while ago, backup the drives contents, the software of choice, Acronis True Image home, this will allow me to restore onto another drive in the future and have the thing be bootable.

Acronis True Image Home 2012



The drive mustn't be dead so it could be a Windows XP issue, (its an old machine) hopefully not as software issues in Windows are more time consuming then failed drives, Windows sort of teases you into thinking you have a chance of resurrecting your Windows install only to find that it would probably have been best to re-install and start from scratch you'll finish that install quicker then solving any lingering registry or missing dll issue you will encounter.


No biggie either way will restore backup back to new drive shortly and hope all will be good.


- Update
Yep the drive was failing only slightly enough that Windows XP couldn't boot and cried a little. As soon as I restored to a new drive Windows XP booted straight in. XP boot process could have tried a little harder to boot in my opinion, but anyways lesson learned drives don't last forever.

Again many thanks to Acronis True Image Home, made it a very simple process.

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