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[dcwebman]

Just mentioning it but this build didn't work for me at all. Tried to play music and eventually had to close MC. Did this about 4 times. Tried installing the previous version and got a message my system needed to be restarted in order to install. After restarting I decided to just see if this current version worked at all. All my music is on an external USB drive at work (fortunately a subset of all my music from home). MC didn't recognize anything and Win 7 is telling me I have a Data error (cyclic redundancy check) and the drive needs to be formatted. Wonderful. I'm not blaming MC for killing my drive but now I have to figure out how to easily get all my files back on to this drive or a brand new one if this one doesn't work anymore. I exported all the library in a playlist but have to determine how to easily copy the files from one drive to another, probably writing a simple batch file with a modified version of the playlist.

I do have the log file if anybody was interested in trying to see why it didn't work initially.

[Matt]

Win 7 is telling me I have a Data error (cyclic redundancy check) and the drive needs to be formatted.

That's no fun, but software doesn't cause CRC errors.  That's a hardware problem.

Good luck.  I had something similar recently.

[rjm]

Win 7 is telling me I have a Data error (cyclic redundancy check) and the drive needs to be formatted.

You might try to repair the drive with SpinRite. It's worked many times for me.
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[dcwebman]

You might try to repair the drive with SpinRite. It's worked many times for me.
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I actually finally got the computer to recognize the drive and am attempting to copy files folder by folder. Very slow process because I'm sure it's spinning on some files.

[JimH]

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I actually finally got the computer to recognize the drive and am attempting to copy files folder by folder. Very slow process because I'm sure it's spinning on some files.

Is it hot there?  Try putting the drive in the freezer for 20 minutes.  I'm serious.

[dcwebman]

Hot, but not here in work. I think if I had not forgotten to safely eject the drive before I restarted the computer for MC, I would have been okay.

So we've gotten into this topic being about a bad drive. What was forgotten is that for many releases after an install, MC hangs after starting and trying to play a song. Usually on the first close and opening again it works. OK, I guess we can blame that on a starting to fail drive.

[glynor]

CRC errors on a drive are almost always either a failing drive, bad data cable, or a faulty controller (driver or hardware).  I've also seen it happen with a bad power supply, but this is probably much more rare (and you'd likely see other strange issues with the system and bluescreens and whatnot).

Other than SATA/IDE drivers, there is very little any normal software could do that would cause this.  You'd really have to try hard, and be doing some weird low-level direct ATA command stuff to pull it off.  Perhaps the only exception is if Windows crashes hard (bluescreen) right in the middle of a write to disk.  Then, on the first reboot you could see this.  But, Windows shouldn't crash hard right in the middle of a write, so if it is doing that, something else is going on...

If it is a bad drive, SpinRite can sometimes save them for a while, but I'd start planning to replace the drive anyway.  Bad sectors are not good, and once a drive starts to show wear like that, it usually "grows".  Once the number of bad sectors exceeds the overprovisioning they provide on disk, then your hosed even with SpinRite.

[glynor]

PS. I'd strongly suggest replacing the IDE/SATA cable before you do much else.  These go bad MUCH more often than people think, especially if they are "tucked in" with hard bends in the cable, and then suddenly get moved.

SATA cables are much more robust than the old IDE cables, but the connectors can be finicky.

For the $1 it'd cost for a new one (if you don't have 100s lying around like me), it is always worth trying the cable first.  Then, run the disk through a thorough exam.  Best plan is to use the disk-checking software from the drive manufacturer.  Both Seagate and WD have software you can download and burn to a CD, then boot to that CD, and it'll check your disk in a non-Windows environment.  I prefer these because it takes the drivers and anything else with Windows totally out of the equation.

[rjm]

I agree SpinRite should only be used to try to get out of jail free. You should replace the drive regardless.

[dcwebman]

A Seagate drive has been ordered and hopefully arrive on Friday. This one has always been a subset of songs from home since it's only 40GB and a much older drive. I decided to just get a bigger drive this time and copy all my songs. This should make it easier to sync up songs and also provide a third backup since I already do a weekly offline backup.

I looked at Spinrite but I'm not going to pay the $60 for it since I didn't really "lose" anything as I have the songs at home. I did try MiniTool Power Data Recovery which got good reviews and even though it did recognize the drive, show lost files, it just cranked overnight at trying to save files and only ended up saving 4 songs.

Thanks everybody for the suggestions.