Dodgy HD?

Davey182 · 19 Feb 2009 at 10:57

I have one of these:

500Gb Hitachi SATA-2 P7K500 Hard Drive- 16MB

For the past three weeks the system has been getting progressively slower, freezing randomly on all applications and then coming back to life or crashing just as randomly.

In the last few days, a very audible clicking sound has started coming from the HD. Which from past experience I know is bad.

Today, as I booted up, Chkdisc kicked in and did an auto scan (vista) and found several corrupt sectors (which it deleted) and several unreadable sectors. Now, the question is, are these the problem with the drive? OR have they been caused by the drive failing?

I have a P5Q Deluxe Mobo so it should be easy for me to set up a new drive system in a RAID array if needed. I play a lot of online games, and I have wondered if this is killing the HD. Advice?

Thanks,

Dave

Admiral Huddy · 19 Feb 2009 at 11:03

I would certainly run the Hitachi Fitness test.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

If this comes back as fail, then you have a faulty hard drive.

Otherwise, check your memory too. Use memtest86 for your memory diagnositics.

Make sure all your drivers are upto date, run CCclean and run a defrag too.

Also, check the event viewer for any clues. This is often overlooked and it can sometimes point you in the right direction.

ChrisLX200 · 19 Feb 2009 at 11:51

If it's clicking loudly it's likely got a fault, backup what you can from the drive ASAP. Corrupt files can cause a similar symtpom as the drive attempts to recover the data, so clicking alone is not a definitive fail (unless it's a regular click during which time the drive cannot be accessed). Corrupt sectors are not a desperate problem and can be fixed, however unreadable sectors (bad blocks) are a problem and mean the disk is failing. You need to confirm whether there are any bad blocks using the fitness test, if it finds any the drive is history - RMA it if you can, or just replace.

Playing games will not kill a disk, the drives are built to withstand such usage provided excessively high temperatures are avoided.

Davey182 · 19 Feb 2009 at 15:36

ok..

So I ran the test program, it eventually told me it had some corrupt sectors that it could fix or that it could format the whole drive. I ignored both options (I want to back everything up before I do either) and it gave the following error message:

Serial Number: RE1KKNVA

Failure Code: 0x70 - Defective Device

Technical Result Code (TRC): 700014D3

So, I'm guessing its broken, options are:

1) By another 500 GB disc and clone it onto that? Is it possible? I don't want another 4 hour vista install...!

2) Get several new drives in a RAID configuration. What would people reccomend for speed AND reliability?

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Dave

edit: just checked event viewer, it says the hard drive has a bad block

edit 2: can't back up files as it says a sector is corrupt! aaaaaaaaaargh