New paperweight?

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 09:59

My friend has been having problems with his computer and it wasn't booting the OS.

I took it off his hands and I couldn't get it working at all. I hooked it up to my computer as a secondary drive so I could check it and my computer would refuse to boot.

I tried running the installation disk and it would constantly hang and do nothing.

Finally I managed to reformat the drive use the cmd prompt Shift + F10 on the installtion. Managed to install Windows 8 which took a good hour.

First thing I did was get HD Tune and here are the results I got.

Current Worst Threshold Data
Reallocated Sector Count 77 77 36 7720
Current Pending Sector 80 72 0 843

I think it's a gonna and I have let him know he will need a new hdd but would it be worth me do a Zero Fill on it or is it a lost cause?

Sorry for the terrible formatting. You can't insert tables can you? :/

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:12

Current
Worst
Threshold
Data
Status
Reallocated Sector Count
77
77
36
7720
Warning
Current Pending Sector
80
72
0
843
Warning

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:13

Ignore previous posts! Have no idea what I'm doing haha

PooKer · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:42

What brand is the hard drive inside the machine?

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:44

PooKer said:
What brand is the hard drive inside the machine?

It's a Seagate 500GB.

Don't know the exact model as I'm not at home at the moment. It is extremely old anyway but I know he could do with using it a couple of more months until he can get a new one.

PooKer · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:48

In that case I recommend giving SeaTools's a run as they will give you an error code that can confirm if its gone.
Or if you've got another hard drive you can chuck in just to install windows and see how well it runs. No point buying a new hard drive to then find out its a dog of a machine to start with

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 10:51

PooKer said:
In that case I recommend giving SeaTools's a run as they will give you an error code that can confirm if its gone.
Or if you've got another hard drive you can chuck in just to install windows and see how well it runs. No point buying a new hard drive to then find out its a dog of a machine to start with

Nothing wrong with the machine mate.

Perhaps I haven't explained myself properly.

HD Tune has shown errors on the Harddrive, I've ran my HDD in his machine at first to make sure that it was none of his hardware stopping the computer from booting and I pinpointed it to the HDD.

I got Windows 8 installed on it as well.

PooKer · 12 Mar 2015 at 11:02

Then the option Seatools and see if any error code is provided. If so then check the S/N against http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-GB/warranty_validation_multi.jsp
In the off chance is still under warranty. All comes down to the age of the machine.
Presuming its out of warranty then see how much space your friend needs as a 120gb/250gb ssd maybe the way forward.

you can try filling it with zero's but if its on its way out no point setting it all up for him to run into issues again. In terms of data protection a good old stress relief with a hammer and safety equipment is way more fun than zeros

drumlegend · 12 Mar 2015 at 11:08

In the off chance is still under warranty. All comes down to the age of the machine.

Doubt it but it's worth a try as you said

Presuming its out of warranty then see how much space your friend needs as a 120gb/250gb ssd maybe the way forward.

I've suggested he gets an SSD for his OS and a WD Black or Blue

In terms of data protection a good old stress relief with a hammer and safety equipment is way more fun than zeros

Haha, I don't think he would be too pleased with this.

He needs it for another month but I was just wondering if Zero Fill had the possibility of increasing it's life span for a little bit longer.

Justintime · 13 Mar 2015 at 11:44

77 bad sectors and no warranty? Get all data off and chuck it out.

drumlegend · 13 Mar 2015 at 11:55

Justintime said:
77 bad sectors and no warranty? Get all data off and chuck it out.

No data on it haha. It wouldn't even boot before so had to be formatted.

I tried everything to boot it. Even trying to access it as a secondary drive was impossible. My computer would refuse to boot even when changing the boot option in the bios and it would just constantly try to repair my drive!

Yet when taking it out my computer was fine again. I think it's just a lost cause.

Justintime · 13 Mar 2015 at 12:08

Any multiple bad sector case is a lost cause, shows its either consistently having more bad sectors especially if the pending bad sectors is active or its taken a fair bit of damage somehow, would'nt trust that drive ever. Saying that i have a 2Tb WD green with 1 bad sector for the last 2 to maybe 3yrs and i trust it as its never gotten worse and i've tested it occasionally with a read/write wipe test in hdd sentinel.

drumlegend · 13 Mar 2015 at 12:10

But as you said... this doesn't just have 1. I advised him a couple of days ago to get a new one. I guess he can just install a couple of games and keep himself busy. As long as he doesn't save important data on it. Nothing to lose then.