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General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: mandingo on December 08, 2006, 05:01:36 PM

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: mandingo on December 08, 2006, 05:01:36 PM

hi,

I was running a raid 0 array and when i tried to start the machine up, the disks werent responding.  so i smacked them and finally it worked, but a whole lot of registry files for windows were lost (i guess the HDD's has dead sectors/).

How can i tell which of the two hard drives is broken/

thanks.

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: Krusty on December 08, 2006, 05:13:44 PM

This might be a stupid question, but can you open the case, and feel for vibrations? Listen? Is it out-and-out dead, or just have some bad sectors (but otherwise still running)?

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: mandingo on December 08, 2006, 05:18:08 PM

the case is open.  it seems both hard drives are running, but again i cant really run any programs because all the registry info is gone.

one of them is making a slight scratching sound, but i cant tell which one it is (thats why i posted).  

thanks

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: Roscoroo on December 08, 2006, 06:59:09 PM

unplug them one at a time ... fire it up and listen/feel the drive

the other option is to slave it up in a different pc and test it (if said xtra pc is availiable)

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: eagl on December 08, 2006, 06:59:14 PM

Some system monitoring programs like speedfan will read the SMART data from the hard drive, and you might be able to determine from that data which drive is going bad.

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: Auger on December 08, 2006, 08:12:50 PM

Just out of curiosity, what type of data are you storing that would require RAID 0?  Granted, it makes the drives appear as one big drive, but the probability that you'll lose all of your data increases with each drive in the array.

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: Wolfala on December 09, 2006, 12:19:00 AM

If yr running RAID 0 and 1 of them takes a dump, yr pretty much just ****ed b/c 1/2 yr data is going to be living on the bad drive.

My suggestion would be to get an external drive, get both of those RAID 0's running long enough to do a massive dump onto the external.

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: Krusty on December 09, 2006, 01:18:00 AM

Isn't there a very good chance that almost all your files will be corrupt? Incomplete, missing sectors, and all that jazz? Maybe the entire drive isn't defunct, because I've heard when a drive goes bad in RAID 0 you can't even boot. It's just gone.

Maybe the drive is starting to go bad, and you can salvage the files first? Can you run a physical scandisk (not just the FAT, but cluster-by-cluster)? See what that turns up.

Title: Which Hard Drive is Broken?
Post by: CptA on December 09, 2006, 08:03:38 AM

If your drives are Western Digital, you can download the DataLifeguard Diagnostics and DataLifeguard Tools software from the WDC website.

When extracted, the software will create a bootable DOS disk (Floppy or CD).

Boot from the newly created disk and run the full version of the test for each suspect drive.

The software will give you a report with error codes and an explanation of each error that it finds. It will also fix any errors if possible.

Keep a copy of the report, so that you can use it if you contact WDC about warranty replacement of your drives.

If your drives are still within the warranty period, and their Diagnostic software shows that warranty replacement is called for, WDC will usually replace them without question.

Good Luck,

CptA