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Thread ID: 88953	2008-04-15 22:54:00	Suspicious HDD Problems	pctek (84)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
659276	2008-04-15 22:54:00	The history: 1 partition NTFS on sata 250GB HDD. Suddenly after a few months it hung in XP, on reboot it wouldn't, stopped at a blank screen after POST. I ran a chkdsk and it fixed a couple of things and booted happily back into Windows. No symptoms until now, no weirdness at all. I was running malware scans (nothing much, couple of tracking cookies) and after a bit it locked up again. On reboot same thing. This time however the XP CD reported an unrecoverable volume error. Took it out, hooked it up via USB to my PC. Its now 0GB. Er.... Formatted it, fine. 250GB. Ran the latest Seagate Tools on it, it passed. Reinstalled everything, fine. I then ran my older Seagate Tools, as it checks controller and stuff too, it passed. I'm suspicious though, whats your opinions?	pctek (84)
659277	2008-04-15 23:35:00	Does your XP cd have SP2 on it? If you boot from an XP disc without SP2, drives larger than 137gb lose all their data and appear as a 137gb drive. I tried this when I got a large drive. Luckily I was just testing it out so I didnt lose anything important. If its not making any sounds and the SMART data seems ok, I'm out of ideas. What do you mean by 'after a bit it locked up again'?	utopian201 (6245)
659278	2008-04-15 23:50:00	Could be dickey sectors on the drive. Obviously when its formatted the formatting will mark any as bad so data wont write to them, but if others fail then that can cause problems. You can try downloading HDD Regenerator (http://www.dposoft.net/) , I use that to test drives, brings up any bad sectors, the trial only fixes 1 sector at a time, but will at least show if any are bad - does take a long time to run on a 250Gb Drive ( several hours) In fact I have a Vista PC here right now running that test, its freezing up even on a fresh install, seagate tools says its OK, but there is some "odd" error messages in the event files that just don't look right. Is there any thing "sus" in the event log ??	wainuitech (129)
659279	2008-04-16 01:02:00	Just a Update to my comment above regarding this customers drive freezing, and dropping data like yours - Picture says a thousand words (www.imagef1.net.nz(Large).JPG) this is after approx 1 hour. Usually if It finds more than 2 or 3 I dump the drive - this is under warranty still - could be interesting ;) Edit - just jumped to over 300 in a few seconds :eek:	wainuitech (129)
659280	2008-04-16 01:32:00	Could be dickey sectors on the drive. Is there any thing "sus" in the event log ?? Thats what I suspect. Or some worse problem? Nothing in event viewer. The old Seagate tools does the same thing, scans every sector, it took hours too.	pctek (84)
659281	2008-04-16 01:44:00	Thats what I suspect. Or some worse problem? Nothing in event viewer. The old Seagate tools does the same thing, scans every sector, it took hours too. Yep ! The test I did with seatools ( old version as well ) showed as being OK. Sometimes that HDD Regenerator finds faults others miss. Personally I wouldn't trust to "Fix" bad sectors, but for testing its fine.	wainuitech (129)
659282	2008-04-16 03:22:00	I ran stuff in Windows for a while. It finally reported a controller error. And now its got the click...............RMA time.	pctek (84)
659283	2008-04-16 05:12:00	Where is it made? Apparently the seagate drives made in china generally fail more often than the ones made in singapore...	utopian201 (6245)
659284	2008-04-16 05:28:00	Where is it made? Apparently the seagate drives made in china generally fail more often than the ones made in singapore... All my seagate drives are made in Thailand...	zcc (50)
659285	2008-04-16 05:45:00	[QUOTE=utopian201;664005]Where is it made? /QUOTE] Who cares? The failure rate is still low compared with certain others and they have a 5 yr warranty.	pctek (84)
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