"Windows has detected a hard disk problem" Samsung spinpoint f3

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

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Windows just came up with this message, which is a little bit scary to say the least.

Any chance that this is a false positive?

Could anyone recommend me some good diagnostic tools to check the drive.

The best I can come up with so far is this:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...el_cd=507&dType=G&mType=SW&tab=down&ppmi=1087]

or this:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

Worryingly the latter states that it may wipe your data!

I have an 80gb ssd as my boot drive, so hopefully the computer should continue to work if the drive fails. It also contains my documents.

I dont have a spare 1TB drive sitting around, so i cant really backup the faulty drive. It mostly contains non-essential stuff - games etc that i should be able to replace.

What would you suggest i do here?

I was thinking that I maybe need to order another 1TB drive -> back up the faulty drive - > run diagnostics -> RMA if it is faulty
 
Right, i have this drive and im having slighly similar problems , mine is drive lettering but anyway, have you looked what it says for the drive in the BIOS does it say OK or something different this is were you could start.

HAve you got another drive you could back up to, i have had windows saying this to me with USB flash drive, have you tried swapping with another SATA cable or Power supply Connection.

Have you tried following the steps of the problem in windows and seeing what the troubleshoot comes up with and what it says about the drives problem.

What Version of windows are you running is my final question at this point
 
I am running windows 7.

The troubleshoot didn't provide me with any details of the problem, other than which drive it was detected on. It was essentially just ushering me to doing a backup.

I should add that currently the drive appears to be running fine - i.e I can access all the files on it.
 
Best use a cd rather than dvd, estool is only a few mb.
Or ideally if you have a floppy drive or bootable usb.
 
Everyone recommends the F3 on this forum as it's fast. Clearly not reliable however. Western Digital Black is a better drive by a long shot.
 
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Can someone help me out.

I have downloaded es tool and burnt it on to a dvd.

I restart my computer go to the boot menu, and select boot from CD(DVD)

windows just starts up normally.

What should I have done to get ES tool to start?

Would it be easier to just start into DOS mode, if so how do I do that?
 
Did you download an .iso file? If so...

How did you burn it? Usually when this happens the .iso has been burned as a regular file. Not the right way to do it! You need to burn an image rather than a data disc. How you do that depends on what software you have. Try just opening the .iso file like a document.
 
EdwardTeach said:
Windows just came up with this message, which is a little bit scary to say the least.

Any chance that this is a false positive?

Could anyone recommend me some good diagnostic tools to check the drive.

The best I can come up with so far is this:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...el_cd=507&dType=G&mType=SW&tab=down&ppmi=1087]

or this:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

Worryingly the latter states that it may wipe your data!

I have an 80gb ssd as my boot drive, so hopefully the computer should continue to work if the drive fails. It also contains my documents.

I dont have a spare 1TB drive sitting around, so i cant really backup the faulty drive. It mostly contains non-essential stuff - games etc that i should be able to replace.

What would you suggest i do here?

I was thinking that I maybe need to order another 1TB drive -> back up the faulty drive - > run diagnostics -> RMA if it is faulty
Click to expand...

Last time I had this message in W7 my backup drive died a couple of hours later. Would have been just enough time to get everything off if it was my data drive. I double checked it in SpeedFan which confirmed it was on it's way out, not to mention the fact that it started to disappear from Explorer.

As Berserker said, you'll need to burn the ISO image properly. Use something like InfraRecorder if you have nothing else available. Saying that, Windows 7 has a built in ISO burner :D
 
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How can I check if it was done properly?

when i opened the disk i was given the option to treat it like a usb key or to burn the files on it like a CD (i may not recall the exact phrasing!)

I did the latter, so assumed i burned it like an iso image?
 
EdwardTeach said:
How can I check if it was done properly?

when i opened the disk i was given the option to treat it like a usb key or to burn the files on it like a CD (i may not recall the exact phrasing!)

I did the latter, so assumed i burned it like an iso image?
Click to expand...

Nope. You need to double click the ISO in Windows 7 and burn it like that. Quite often another program will associate itself with ISOs. If this is the case then your easy way out is to download and install InfraRecorder and burn the image with that.
 
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Thanks for the advice, using infrarecorder I got estool to work.

Currently running a surface scan which looks like it is going to take over an hour.

If the scan comes up ok does that mean my HD is fine?
 
EdwardTeach said:
Thanks for the advice, using infrarecorder I got estool to work.

Currently running a surface scan which looks like it is going to take over an hour.

If the scan comes up ok does that mean my HD is fine?
Click to expand...

Not always, but if you do get an error code/error message it will make the RMA process MUCH easier. If you don't get an error code then I would recommend contacting Samsung and tell them Windows is warning you the drive is about to fail.
 
I did not get an error message.

Is it possible the error message was incorrect? It was over a week ago and i have not had one subsequently.

I don't currently have a space to backup the "dodgy" drive. Would suggest assume the worst and buy a replacement even if a successful rma looks difficult?
 
I suppose it's possible a bad block was found which was simply replaced by one of the spare ones on the drive. Windows may have picked this up as a problem - it will have been sorted out automatically by the drive's firmware.

My guess is you could still get an RMA with no error code and no other 'proof', but if they receive it and find it's not faulty then you may be charged. I'm not sure what Samsung's policy is on this, you'll have to read up or ask them.

I personally wouldn't buy a new one, but definitely wouldn't store anything on there that hasn't been backed up.
 
a lot of replies to this thread, all of them being useless.

first thing you shoudl do is check the SMART status of the drive, use something like hdtune, crystaldiskinfo, or hdd sentinel.
post a screenshot of the smart info in this thread. then take things from there.
 
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