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My D: drive is not accessible. The computer displays some `Ö+¦Mr.&+ë' type of characters. I am able to open the computer but not able to access the data in D: drive.

When I checked it for errors by `windows chkdsk,' it corrected errors in every cluster. It displayed the message, `error in cluster ... corrected.'

I have run it for about four hours but the process is not complete. What does `cluster' mean? Is there any way to make this check faster or any alternative for `chkdsk'?

Shubham

A hard drive consists of a number of disks known as platters. Each platter is divided into tracks, sectors.

A sector is the smallest physical storage unit on a disk, and is normally 512 bytes in size. Operating systems, say Windows 98, 2000, etc, apply some kind of logical structure over the physical structure of the disk.

These logical structures are also known as Disk Formats (such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS etc.).

A cluster is the smallest logical unit of disk space on a hard disk and it is taken care of by the operating system.

Clusters are mapped to a set of physical sectors. Every file must be allocated an integer number of clusters.

The cluster size for a drive is decided by Format, depending on the size of the logical drive (partition).

While mailing us your doubts, please provide more information about your problem, hard disk manufacturer and model, operating system, etc, which will help us give an appropriate solution.

In this instance, you can first try with the hard disk manufacture's diagnosis tools. For example, if your hard disk's manufacturer is Seagate, then download "Seagate SeaTools 3.02.04" from this URL: http://www.majorgeeks.com/

Seagate_SeaTools_d2858.html.

If it is a Samsung hard disk, download "shdiag HUTIL" Hutil 203.exe (size 438 KB) from this URL: http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/hutil.htm.

If it is a Maxtor hard disk, please select "Download PowerMax 4.23" from this URL: www.maxtor.com/en/support/

downloads/powermax.htm

Alternatively you can use any third-party hard disk diagnosis tool too.

One freeware tool, "Emsa DiskCheck 1.57" (size 190KB), can be downloaded from this URL: http://www.download.com/

Emsa-DiskCheck/

3000-2086_4-10285212.html.

If you do not have important data on your D drive, then it is advisable that you format it.

Solution by M. Sampath

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