Disk I/O error

[dbmmicro]

have a 5.1 hard drive c, d, e
when reading c it says error reading drive
and gave me disk I/O error

any ideas
can read d, e

[Glynn R Harris]

It sounds like something happened to scramble the directory structure of C:. You could possibly improve the situation by running scandisk and having it just do the files check (not the surface scan).

I think you need to decide just how important the data inside C: is... if it is not all that important or can be loaded again from somewhere else, then formatting that C: will fix the directory structure, and then you will have to get your OS reloaded and all your applications installed.

If what's on C: now CANNOT be replaced or rebuilt, Data Recovery is what you need to do next. My first suggestion for disks I don't think got virus damage is a $89 program called Spinrite 5.0. It is from http://www.grc.com
and read the info all about it; it's a really good tool. If, however, you think you got a virus at some point, Spinrite won't fix that kind of damage, but Norton Utilities 2000 from Symantec helps out a lot in finding and recovering files that would otherwise be lost: http://www.symantec.com
Good Luck.