Dying hard drive..?

[clone63]

After a week of being off, I came home, booted up my machine and noticed the OS load screen lasted a minute or two. Abnormal but didn't think a lot of it. Consistently it started doing this, so I ran chkdsk and it hung at 0% at "verifying file data". Restarted it, hung at 1%, restarted it, seemed to go normally..

Ran western digital DLG which always passes short tests, but extended either works normally and passes, OR estimates over 100 hours when doing a sector scan. HD Tune behaves similarly. Once it crashed just after a prompt arose, stating something like "too many bad sectors". Benchmarks are atrocious for transfer rate, as it will plummet to 4mb/s transfer intermittently.
Occasionally I'd get a BSOD or "UNMOUNTABLE BOOT MEDIA" bsod on boot. Those went away except for one instance after a clean os install.

Tried: Reformatting, re-installing OS, different sata port, different cable... I think that's it.

To me, it seems like my hard drive is dying but I can't get a definitive answer. Thoughts of any kind?

++also, when trying to backup a clone with Acronis it said the partition was too damaged, or something of that nature. I will see if it does so now..
--Got as far as the prompt to reboot this time. Didn't continue, need the data on the 2 remaining drive i have.

[_dangtx_]

tried another sata cable? almost ripped me riggie down because of such bugger the other week.

try hdtune, you should see yellow or red. probably rma.

[clone63]

Yes, I have, when I switched the port.

Nothing but green on HD tune.

I've run several tests and have had a harder time simulating the results, it is normalizing, but get the odd slow down..

[_dangtx_]

cool. put it in another box and do a proper wipe, say 24-48 hrs. if its fine afterwards, i dont know. if 'it dies trying' ? you know what to do.


Ultimate Boot CD - Overview


Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing


after youre done yourself not even wd will get your stuff

[enaberif]

Your better off running HDat2 which can be found on the UBCD for Dos or from their website.

I find it works wonders for hard drives that may have issues.

[clone63]

Will give HDat2's "Most powerful test" a go in the AM
Thx guys

[_dangtx_]

no worries man. also, even if the utilities give you a go but you ISOLATE the problem to the hdd, do wipe it and rma it. better be safe then...hmm..what was it? :)

35 passes, 7 passes, one more 35 passes should be more than enough. had some guys from..umo or poly i forgot try to get some of me data back, failed miserably

[Perineum]

Sounds odd but I would do at least one pass of memtest86. Whenever I have a problem that shows up and then goes away and is always hard to get a solid definitive answer half the time it ends up being bad system RAM.

If you're not tripping SMART and you just seem to be corrupting data it points more towards a RAM issue, especially since you've already ruled out the SATA cable.

In my experience I can't see a HD passing a drive self test and still being bad. However, bad system RAM will slowly corrupt all data on the HD as stuff is read into memory and then written back corrupted.

[clone63]

Ran 3 passes of memtest. Turned down its speed a notch too, during the initial frustration. Is there anything else I could do to test the memory, I'm not completely satisfied its my hdd, though I am starting the "Most powerful test" of all time.

[_dangtx_]

prime the system? but put it in another puter and keep it there till it does it again to be sure.or if you had enough just rma it.