Author Topic: Hard Drive Going Sour? (Read 280 times)

Tigger29 · « **on:** April 19, 2007, 09:30:37 PM »

I have a 160GB WD SATA drive.. only a couple months old.

Started off when my computer locked up trying to load FIREFOX. Rebooted and found it would lock up anytime I accessed my Program Files/Firefox Folder. Rebooted yet again and did a surface scan.. would not complete the scan. Installed the WD diagnostic software.. let it do ITS scan and it found and corrected a few bad sectors, but still reports the drive as "good".

Now I can access the Firefox folder, but it is reported as empty and will not allow me to delete. I installed Firefox into a different folder, and it now works fine.

Windows still won't finish it's sector scan and checking the event viewer, I find a few references to "HD0 BAD Firmware" and "WD0 Write Error during paging operation" errors.

I'm currently in the process of backing things up, preparing for the worst.. but can you guys think of anything OTHER than a HD going out that could cause this?

XP now takes about 30 seconds to get past the WINDOWS screen, when before it would fly through it so fast you could barely make it out, but once it is booted it seems to perform just as fast as before.

llama · « **Reply #1 on:** April 19, 2007, 10:37:38 PM »

No, that drive is going south NOW.

If I were you, I would buy a second hard drive TOMORROW, and then use a disk cloning tool like Ghost 2003 or Acronis Disk Image (or similar) and try to copy the failing disk's contents to the new disk. At least that will save you from having to reinstall Windows and all your apps.

THEN worry about getting that drive replaced under warranty.

TONIGHT, I would copy all your important files, address book, and email folders to another device, such as your old drive, a thumbdrive, iPod, or whatever.

A lot of people who experience drive failure and data loss tell me that they wish they had some warning. Well guess what -- you're getting warned.

Good luck!

-Llama

Fulmar · « **Reply #2 on:** April 20, 2007, 11:18:39 AM »

Yea, I wouldn't put trust in your drive anymore. It's always good to have a backups of important data. Some of my friends just had their Laptop HD crash and did they back up their Wedding photos from the year before? Or course not! They may be able to get them back but even with that I don't take chances. I usually format 1-2 twice a year to keep things running good and I have burn DVDs for backups (sometimes 2 copies) and I utilize an external HD for backups as well (as a 3rd copy of stuff).

Data management is a tough job at times. CDs, DVDs degrade over time, and hard drives fail often times w/o notice.

Tigger29 · « **Reply #3 on:** April 21, 2007, 04:57:22 PM »

Well luckily it's stall a fairly fresh install, and all important data was already backed up before I set up this computer, so there's not much I'm afraid of losing. Maybe some save-game files from a few games my wife plays...

I also have a 60GB IDE drive laying around from my old system.. I can use that until I get this one settled, as far as shipping and warranty and all that.

Reinstall.. no biggie.. I have an install disk I created with Nlite... has most of the updates with SP2 integrated into it, along with a few drivers, with an unattended install setup... should be a simple.. boot up.. go to bed.. finish 'er up in the morning kind of thing.. not worried about it. Or maybe I'll just dust off my Norton Ghost disk and go ahead and ghost it all onto the 60GB... wouldn't be the first time I've ever done that either.

I was wondering if anyone has ever run into these kinds of errors, and it NOT be a hard drive, is all.

Thanks for the tips!

Roscoroo · « **Reply #4 on:** April 21, 2007, 06:49:26 PM »

its the hard drive when your getting Bad sectors ...

if it was the ram it would be corrupted window's instead of sectors.

Tigger29 · « **Reply #5 on:** April 23, 2007, 08:05:37 PM »

I think I got really lucky.. when I went to bed last night, I started the "ghosting" process. My old version of ghost wouldn't recognize my SATA drive, so I found a free program called "xxclone" and decided to try that one out. Anyways, I started the process and went to sleep (it had an auto shut-down option that worked great, computer was off when I got up).

Before work this morning, I hopped on and wanted to boot it to the original drive (SATA)... to make sure it copied ok... got a BSOD everytime during the windows splash screen.

I unplugged the SATA and rebooted... now it boots up from my IDE drive, booted about 20X faster... and is working great! Now I get to deal with WD on the warranty process, but at least I'm up and dependable!

Funny thing is during the clone, I was watching the file copy process... and it would ZOOM through a few hundred.. then hang up for 15-20 seconds each for a few files.. the ZOOM through a few more. Funny thing is most of the files it was hanging up on were small... such as... readme.txt... or something.cfg. I'm thinking either the drive couldn't stay spinned up at a consistent speed.. or it was having to re-read some sectors several times... was just interesting to watch is all.

Thanks for the help, guys.

Sting138 · « **Reply #6 on:** April 24, 2007, 10:10:19 AM »

Tigger try using node or slash N when ghosting because you probably have an older version of ghost and this is why it wont detect the sata hdd.

Tigger29 · « **Reply #7 on:** April 24, 2007, 02:28:14 PM »

Nah.. too late now. The freeware program XXCLONE worked perfectly... I'm on the other drive right now and the system works identical as before.

I do like Norton's interface a lot better.. and a like the sector by sector copy much better than the file by file copy type, but still it worked out.

I had downloaded a trial version of Ghost 10.0 but it won't allow me to do a disk to disk copy (without buying it)... and it took me about an hour to get all the Symantec junk off my system after uninstalling it. As far as I'm concerned, all Symantec stuff these days is just as bad as a virus!

If the wife didn't use this computer so much, I'd put Linux on it. I've played around with Linux on older systems and it seems to perform about 150% better than windows.. I'm curious to see what it'd do with this duo-core setup!

Sting138 · « **Reply #8 on:** April 25, 2007, 08:40:14 AM »

Sorry I was too late but I am glad you got it working!
I also agree with you about symantec ghost now days. I also cant stand their anti virus and the one from McAfee, both are resource hogs and cause more issues than they prevent. The new PC Cillin 2007 is a resource hog as well.