I have a PCV RX-402 (circa 2002). Specs are:
AMD Athlon 2200 (1.8GHz)
1Gb DDR 2100 RAM (upgraded from original 256MB)
1 Internal 40Gb HDD (original Seagate Drive)
1 Internal 120Gb HDD (Western Digital Drive Upgrade)
1 External 300Gb HDD (Seagate)
1 Internal Pioneer DVD-ROM (original)
1 Internal NEC CDRW (original)
1 Internal DVDRW (DRU-700A Sony) - connected via Firewire (ilink) using 5.25" enclosure
1 Internal DVDRW (AW-G170A Sony) - connected via IDE to USB(2.0) converter
Wireless network PCI card (Belkin upgrade)
USB 2.0 PCI card (adds USB ports - Belkin upgrade)
My problems are two fold. A couple of weeks ago I tried to re-install my VAIO using the recovery disks. I have done this many times before with great success. When I insert the disks I get a message stating that partition information cannot be found the and utility exits.
I ran a complete virus scan, found a couple of viruses and this seemed to sort the problem out so I forgot about the re-format. Now, I find that the DRU-700A DVD RW which normally writes at 8x will only write at 4x even when I try using different brands of media...(Verbatim 16x DVD-R and Samsung Pleomax 8x DVD-R) whilst the other (later model AW-G170A) DVD-RW drive states it will write at 16x, it takes around 10mins to create a disk (implying that the actual write speed is closer to 4x.)
I have written at full speed using these drives even though they are connected using
external enclosures so these are not part of the problem. Thus, I decided to utilise the system recovery utility. During the recovery I noticed that the format of drive C was taking a long time and that neither of the drive access lights were active. I then noticed that the external drive was being accessed so immediately aborted the utilty and headed straight back into Windows.
At this point I discovered to my horror that my 300Gb drive (which I use for all of my personal files) had been formatted and I have lost around 200Gb of data. I am now in the process of recovering this data using my laptop and recovery software.
Having accepted the loss (it was like losing an arm 
) I decided to utilise the recovery utility again only to be faced with the error that originally reared its head)
I have ran a virus scan and spyware scan and the system is clean. 
Now, this would suggest to me that there is a problem with Windows or there is a problem with the physical drive itself and the best solution would be a clean install avoiding the recovery utility. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way of installing windows without the utility and i have copy of windows that I have obtained legitimately (and would like to keep it that way!) on the recovery CDs (it also might be a good time to mention that the PCV-RX402 does not have a recovery partiton on the main disk.)
Anyway, any suggestions would be welcome (sorry about the extra long post!)
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