How can I repare my secondary physical NTFS slave Hard Drive? I've tried everything I know of. I have 2 physical hard drives. The first HD is divided into 2 partitions & seem to be working fine. The second partition has 1 partition and my family photos. The following error is found in computer management event viewer. "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume E:" I ran chkdsk and no errors were found. Im still getting the same error message. Everytime I rebooted my pc it would run a chkdsk on my 2nd physical NTFS HD. I was able to turn off auto chkdsk as it was finding no errors. I can't defrag the problem drive because it says that it is scheduled for chkdsk even though it isn't. Here are the solutions I've tried: system restore, repair current version of windows, run HD diagnostic utilities; it found no errors, after backing up data I cant even reformat the drive-- says that I must close applications using the disk even though no utilities are even on the disk only family photos & no programs. I have a great firewall, up2date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. No errors are found during scan Im affraid that even if I did a complete clean install of OS, the drive will still have the same issue.

Since you've backed the data that you had on it, go ahead and write zeroes to it. You can find details about using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows linked here just scroll down to it and get a new one. The utility will attempt to test the drive simulteanously so if it fails to write zeroes to it, the drive is hosed and you need to toss it. B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

Ooops! time to catch some zzzzzzzzzzz. Since you've backed the data that you had on it, go ahead and write zeroes to it. You can find details about using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows linked here just scroll down to it. The utility will attempt to test the drive simulteanously so if it fails to write zeroes to it, the drive is hosed and you need to toss it.....and get a new one. B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

The fact that you're getting the message to close apps, means you're trying to format the drive with windows running. Boot on a DOS floppy; fdisk & format from there. M2

You should be able to format it from a CMD window with the command: format D: /x Substitute your drive letter for D. Also you could delete and recreate the partition with XP's Disk Management.

Please verify the condition of your backup before making such a drastic move as formating or writing 0's. Your backup may be as unusable as is the disk. Have you attempted to relocate the drive to the other IDE cable as either slave or master? The file structure doesn't change with use, the error message notwithstanding. There is another problem here. A poor cable connection, a confused BIOS, possibly failed drive.

I wrote zeros to the drive. Restored all the data to the previously corrupted drive. 1 hr. after the process. All is well. Thx for your support :)