[pyrosrockthisworld]

i duno i cant say that i have had any problems after re formating the drive but im not ruling bad luck out of the question
i was using explorer with a standard copy it managed about 200mb before crashing

i have run multiple checkdisks on the drive before and after re formating the drive and they all came up clean so who knows it is not a big issue for me personaly as all my files in windoze are considered uninportant as having to scrap the install at any time is a reality as i end up rebuilding reguraly (mostly due to me being lazy and not wanting to spend a day uninstalling crap, not viruses)

[tordeu]

That really does not sound like something directly related to Windows. Even people who don't like Windows at all have to agree that Windows does not just suddenly delete all files. There might have been something weird going on, especially because a standard copy with the explorer will not write to the source disk.
My guess would also be a hard drive problem. Doesn't checkdisk just check the filesystem? You would need to check the whole disk for bad blocks; maybe that's what been going on. Also, sometimes disks don't just fail from one moment to the next, but start behaving weird. And although they can still seem/be usable for a while, it might be a sign of an impending death.

You will probably have your answer in the next few weeks/months.

[Robbie Ferguson]

chkdsk won't tell you if you have a bad firmware, which is what it sounds like to me. Check your drive manufacturer's web site for firmware updates for that model. Don't trust it with your data in the meantime.

[Garbee]

* Garbee had a bad drive. Only bad due to HP firmware.

^^ Which is why I will never recommend HP again. They 100% failed me in that situation.

Anyways. From what you described it is 99.99999999% not Windows, unless it is a botched install with some bad files.

As far as uninstalling stuff, I really don't ever install something I don't need or want to try. If I want to keep software I try, then I do, otherwise I remove immediately. It takes about 30-40 seconds and then I don't need to waste an hour sometime uninstalling a handful of things at once. Revo uninstaller FTW.

[pyrosrockthisworld]

ok then how do i know which drive it is... this sounds stupid but i have 5 drives and i dont know which drive is which, i can rule out 2 as i know it is neither of the sata3 drives but past that im lost... if i were to search the drive name that comes up when i chose the boot drive will that work?

i did also check the smarts on the drive at the time and nothing seemed alarming

dont worry robby nothing on the disk cant be replaced all i lost Reilly was a bit of time... that i know of

[Garbee]

SMART does not detect firmware issues, and really is only helpful after an accident occurs or very close to one.

You can go into My Computer and then under the properties of the C drive it should tell you somewhere what the manufacturer of the drive is, if not the serial number also. Device Manager could also shed some light on things.


Side note: Why have 5 drives and not know which is which?

[pyrosrockthisworld]

Side note: Why have 5 drives and not know which is which?

i know which is which virtualy but not physicaly

ok, so that is fine but i dont have the drive mounted as a drive only as a folder will i be able to find the information in device manager on win 7?

[tordeu]

Side note: Why have 5 drives and not know which is which?

i know which is which virtualy but not physicaly

ok, so that is fine but i dont have the drive mounted as a drive only as a folder will i be able to find the information in device manager on win 7?

It's been some time since I used Windows, but I remember seeing the serial number or something like that. Maybe try the properties of the folder where you mounted the drive or try to find the "Disk Manager" or "Disk Management" through the start menu. There you should be able to find information about the disks. If you get the serial number or (in case your drives are from different vendors, the you just need the vendor name) you can just look on the physical hard disk and look at the serial number/vendor name to find out which is which.

From experience I would advise you to either write these things down and/or attach a label to the physical drive.
I have between 10 and 15 drives flying around here and I put a label on each one. That really simplifies things, because I can see immediately which drive to grab and mount to perform a specific backup or access specific data or which drive I can remove.
I remember I had the same problem you have and most of the time I plugged in/removed the wrong drive. That was really annoying, so I began to collect and save information (vendor, size, UUIDs, Volume Group/Logical Volume name, passphrases) and attach a label to all disks.

[Garbee]

If you go under any disk in explorer (so, Start > My Computer > Right click on C:\ Drive ) go to Hardware. There it will list out what hardware is detected. From there you can select the disk drives ( It looks like model numbers to me, but could also be serial numbers ) and it will tell you what bus it is plugged into. 1 in the OS = 0 on your mobo/BIOS. So in Windows it goes 1, 2, 3, 4 for me, but in the BIOS it goes 0, 1, 2, 3.

[pyrosrockthisworld]

ok so as far as i can tell it is a green caviar wdc wd15ears-00z5b1, the download page is Here now i need to know what to get if there is anything(i cant see firmware).