Faulty HDD?

[Ricko97]

Yet again I come back to these forums in need of technical advice :(

A few months ago I ordered a 160GB Seagate Barracuda 9 SATA-2 HDD from Aria - and it has been working absolutely fine. Until yesterday.

While browsing the net I noticed a slowdown (practically everything become non-responsive), followed by a bluescreen. It didn't stay long enough for me to read it (or even to Pause/break), but I spotted the words \"Kernel\" and \"Data\" in the error message, which got me worried, naturally. So I rebooted, and it worked.

At that point I decided to download a HDD temperature monitor to see if my drive was overheating. It read 44*C and according to various forums, that is normal. But shortly after it crashed again. From that point forward it wouldn't even get into Windows without bluescreening for a split second each time.

So I turned it off, removed the cover and checked that all connections were properly in place (SATA and power cables in particular). I also swapped the SATA cable for a different one and made certain the memory was seated correctly, which it was. Then I booted it up again, and it prompted me to choose normal startup or safe mode. I let it start normally, and I was faced with yet more bluescreens. Safe mode yielded the same result.

What I did next was format and re-install. Windows Setup did not recognise my Windows partition so it gave me no choice but to format. So that is what I did. After a lengthy installation and a Scandisk, I got everything working again, and it was running fine from then until about half an hour ago.

Another slowdown, only this time it was more bizzare. I was playing NWN, and everything froze - as you'd expect in a typical crash - but the music continued, and every so often it \"grinded\" for half a second. As I had no control over it I did a hard reboot only to find it would start loading XP, then go blank. After a few restarts it wouldn't even get to loading XP - instead it would stop at the screen you'd usually confirm booting from CD at (with the list of drives, IRQs etc). The strange thing was that several letters and numbers simply disappeared at that point - the same ones, each time I rebooted it.

So then I cleared the CMOS, swapped my 7300GTs round (SLi setup), swapped my RAM, checked the connections again, and started it up one more time. It loaded the default BIOS settings, as expected, then Windows entered scandisk and repaired the filesystem. I re-installed audio and graphics drivers as they had been uninstalled for some reason, and now it's working fine again. Right now the drive is running at 39*C, bearing in mind I have the case off and the window open :).

What I'm really after though is some advice - the drive is still pretty new and definitely under warranty, but I don't want to simply return it without knowing if it really is bust, or if something else was causing problems. To be honest I'm hoping it's the latter, because the drive is new and should have years of use to go, especially since I hardly over-used it. I only ever used about half the diskspace and rarely messed with installations/uninstallations. In other words, I probably haven't put it under nearly as much strain as it should be able to handle.

So, please, if someone has any advice I would really, REALLY appreciate it :cry:

[Ricko97]

Update: I downloaded SeaTools, which is a diagnostics tool from the Seagate website. I booted with it, ran a full-length test and it detected 5 errors. All 5 were repaired but now it takes about 3x longer to boot up.

:?

[Sl4x0r]

There're a couple of things I'd suggest doing;

If you've got a 32bit windows OS download PageDefrag from http://www.sysinternals.com and get it to run at every bootup - it defragments parts of your hard disk that other defragmentations can't reach.

It may even be worth doing a fresh install of Windows...

If the 5 errors that were fixed were bad sectors then I'd suggest returning the disk as they're like Cancer to a hard disk - they probably will come back and it's best to swap it before it's terminal.

Take a look to see if there're any other reported compatibility issues between the HDD in question and your MoBo... It may be worth running the drive in SATA 1.5GBps mode if you can.

[Ricko97]

Thank you, Sl4x0r. I'll keep those things in mind and will try PageDefrag first thing tomorrow.

The slow start-ups have ended now, as I turned the thing off for a while, and when I came back to it, it was fine. I also installed an extra case fan, which brought down idle temperatures by a few degrees across my whole system :). That was about 3-4 hours ago, and everything seems to be in working order still, even after moving a few files and installing Rome: Total War, which totals 3gb of consumed space. Fingers crossed, I won't run into (m)any more problems, otherwise I'll return it ASAP. The drive is definitely still under warranty due to it being only a few months old now. I can't return it to Aria but I can return it to Seagate.

Anyway, thanks again.

I had best stop typing before I jinx my drive :roll: ...

[Ricko97]

Well, damn. The drive does indeed have bad clusters, and they do indeed keep coming back. Luckily I can now return the drive and get a replacement in 3-5 working days, no questions asked, no money taken (lol).

:?

:)

P.S. sorry to bump my own topic, just thought I might as well explain what I'm going to do.

[Hosser]

Glad you got it sorted.

Remember that instead of creating a new post you can always edit your last one. But that doesn't bump it obviously. I wouldn't worry anyway; it's only really double-posting when both posts are donein rapid succession.

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]