1 Topic by PhilFCS (edited by PhilFCS 2006-12-21 01:00:50)

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Topic: Error while reading block at sector

Error while reading block at sector 154869701

I get this when attempting to move an NTFS partition.

This is the situation, 2 partitions, Primary Partition (c: ) takes 80% of the drive, Extended partition 20%, inside extended is a logical partition (d: ).
Both are NTFS. (I converted D: from FAT32 to NTFS using Microsoft's convert.exe)

Windows system partition (the one with boot flag, and boot.ini file) is on C:
Windows boot partition (the one with the windows folder) is on D:  (whoever at MS gave those partitions those names is really mixed up imo)
And the guy is out of hard drive space on D:
I successfully shrunk C:
I successfully expanded extended partition so now C: is about 50%, extended partition is about 50%.
But if I resize or move D: it fails when moving the filesystem to the front of the extended partition.

I'm guessing a bad sector, but I've run Samsung HD Test, and chkdsk a dozen times, there appears to be no problem. But GPartEd fails at roughly the same sector each time.

Wish there was an attach file on this forum, but here is the results file:

GParted 0.3.3<BR><BR>
Libparted 1.7.1<BR><BR>
<TABLE border=0>
<TR>
<TD colspan=2>
<b>Grow /dev/hda5 from 6.25 GiB to 40.27 GiB</b>

2 Reply by plors

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Re: Error while reading block at sector

hmmz, afaik this means a bad cluster. It could also be a problem with the controller, but since it happens 'roughly' at the same place, this is not very likely.

Try moving /dev/hda5 to the left, without expanding it. If that works you can expand it afterwards.

3 Reply by PhilFCS

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Re: Error while reading block at sector

I've tried moving it to the left without expanding and same problem, it's not always the same sector, but it's usually around  the copy of 11323121 to 11600000 out of 12814065 total sectors.

I also tried making a copy of the partition and it also fails.

I read about the --badblocks switch, is this something I should try?

4 Reply by plors

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Re: Error while reading block at sector

another option would be to create a new empty partition with at least the size of /dev/hda5 at the desired destination. Then use 'dd' to copy the filesystem from /dev/hda5 to the newly created partition. I'm just curious to see if 'dd' has the same problem.

5 Reply by PhilFCS

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Re: Error while reading block at sector

We're on the same wavelength here, I created a new partition in the open space preceding /dev/hda5
And did an ntfsclone -f --rescue --overwrite /dev/hda5 /dev/hda6 (this is from memory, might not be exactly what i used)
In anycase it copied and had maybe 8 sectors that could not be read.
Upon reboot I could not enter the OS but I did get the OS selection prompt, it just froze when I made a selection.
I finally convinced the customer to just backup the data and start fresh with one single partition. Wish I could have got it working, but I learned a lot in the process.

Keep up the good work.
The responses on the forum are great, I know if I get a log I can post it and get some assistance, I can't say that about some software that we pay for; Symantec comes to mind.

6 Reply by plors

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Re: Error while reading block at sector

Ok, so most likely there were indeed bad clusters. Still it's kinda strange chkdsk and Samsung HD Test didn't pick them up.
It could be cool to connect this disk to another machine and try the same operation. That way we can make sure it's indeed the disk and not the controller.

anyway, thanks for the thanks smile