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| Thread ID: 30103 | 2003-02-10 09:40:00 | Strange HDD Faults | craig_b (2740) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 120035 | 2003-02-10 09:40:00 | I am servicing an HP Pavilion box, it is old but has been having problems with the HDD for a while. The HDD is a Western Digital Caviar 12100 (2.1 Gb). The PC was running win95 on a P200 w/ 32Mb RAM. A long while ago it started displaying SMART errors on startup, saying drive failure was likely and to back up and replace the drive. Continueing into windows, scandisk (surface scan) runs every time and finds no bad sectors. (I have run a full scan most weeks since this began). The owner of the system has little knowledge of PC's and didn't follow up on the backup messages. Windows booted OK, and all data was good - I think this has been happening for more than three months now. I have taken an image of the drive with no errors, and recovered all important data of it as files - with no problems at all. I then tried to format it thru XP with no joy - it froze at about 60% so I did a successful quick format. I then booted it in the orig machine with dos disk and tried to "sys" the drive. no joy, so i deleted the partition with good old "fdisk" and formatted it with the dos tool. The first 30% proceeded quickly, but after 40% until i gave up at 55% took nearly 2 hours - my 80Gb drive formats with the same tool in less time... What is the likely problem with this drive - given that I was able to read it with no worries? Is replacing the drive likely to help?? Cheers, Craig. |
craig_b (2740) | ||
| 120036 | 2003-02-10 09:56:00 | Yes, I'm afraid the drive is history :-( It must have some hardware failure somewhere (possibly the surface of the disk is damaged or worn in some way). It happens. Possibly you are able to read from it successfully but writing to it (reliably) may not be possible, hence the inability to format it, etc. Replacing it is the only feasible option. | Rod J (451) | ||
| 120037 | 2003-02-10 09:59:00 | And in your opinion not likely to be caused by say faulty data cables or something minor?? - the ppl I am servicing it for have a very limited budget. | craig_b (2740) | ||
| 120038 | 2003-02-10 10:03:00 | Did you try partitioning/formatting the drive in another PC? If so, and it also failed I would say the drive itself is definitely the problem. | Rod J (451) | ||
| 120039 | 2003-02-10 10:20:00 | This page has a good description of what the SMART (www.ariolic.com) technology can detect. It's amazing what it can tell you about the condition of a hard drive. | Rod J (451) | ||
| 120040 | 2003-02-10 15:34:00 | You can try the Western Digital diagnostic program from HERE (support.wdc.com) Cheers Steve |
Steve Askew (119) | ||
| 120041 | 2003-02-10 22:00:00 | get a 2nd hand 13 or 15 gig HDD from trademe they are cheap as and use the old HDD as emergency storage for none essential stuff like mp3s etc that have been backed up already | kiwibeat (304) | ||
| 120042 | 2003-02-11 00:56:00 | > get a 2nd hand 13 or 15 gig HDD from trademe they are > cheap as and use the old HDD as emergency storage for > none essential stuff like mp3s etc that have been > backed up already And how do you know that the HDD being bought isn't stuffed or has problems? |
tommy (2826) | ||
| 120043 | 2003-02-11 01:01:00 | Thanks for the help diagnosing the drive - I ran the western digital diagnostic tool and it told me that the drive had failed and would need immediate replacement. I tried this test in three different PC's where only the drive was the same and it failed three times. I have ordered a new drive. After purchasing some "working" ram from trade-me and having it die after two weeks with no guarantee I am not trusting any other 2nd hand parts from trade-me... Cheers, Craig. |
craig_b (2740) | ||
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