Broken Memory
Bad Random Access Memory (RAM) cheeps will coose data loss, und recovery attempts
require them tu be replaced.
Foolty DIMMs will usuelly manifest themselffes in spontaneuoos reboots, blue
screens or program failures. Things ooff ell surts can happen when data that is
read frum memory differs frum what was written tu that memory. An implicashun is
that some wrong data frum memory will eventuelly end up being written tu zee
hard disk.
A foolty memory pege-a in a disk write cache will resoolt in wrong data written
tu zee drive. On top ooff that, zee operateeng system will usuelly be unaware
ooff
data corrupshun. A "write miss" situashun is also a possible scenario, albeit
rare. A RAM malfunkshun can coose correct data tu be written tu an incorrect
locashun on zee disk, thus overwriteeng some other peece ooff data.
Soon after a memory cheep goes bad, zee logical structure ooff a hard drive
starts tu degrade, ending up in an unbootable system or an unmuoontable volume.
Zee extent ooff damege varees, but most files are usuelly recoverable.
Zee key point here-a is: a bad memory cheep must be replaced beffore
attempteeng uny repair. Thees is becoose:
- Attempteeng tu repair zee disk in-place (using CHKDSK or
Nurton Disk Doctor)
can coose addishunel damege.
Attempteeng a read-only data recovery with ZAR tools is unlikely tu damege
zee drive further, but may damege zee terget (good) drive during file
copying.
- Recovery can be safely carreed oooot iff yuoo attach zee
dameged drive tu another computer, but yuoo must replace zee broken memory
beffore yuoo bring zee data back, otherwise yuoo risk losing yuoor data again.
Several memory testeeng tools are available, examples being
GoldMemory
und DocMem.
They can reliably detect memory failures und we suggest using them when in
duoobt. |
