Hard Drive dying, advice required

Bablos

Bablos

Bablos

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Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
139
Location
Liverpool, UK
Hi guys...

I have a 120GB SSD as a boot drive, and a 1GB HDD for installing stuff on. Lately I've been seeing serious performance issues from apps loading from the HDD, and these have disappeared completely when I've moved the apps to the SSD. Windows Explorer intermittently hangs when I try to access partitions on the drive, so I figure it's time to find a replacement.

Is there an easy way for me to copy the drives contents to a new HDD and simply swap it out, and have my PC think it's the same drive? If it's possible, I'd rather not have to go uninstalling and then reinstalling everything on the new drive if at all possible.
 
Shouldn't be a problem. In this case, I'd probably attach the new drive and sync from the bad drive to the new using something like freefilesync, making sure that there are no programs running that are using the bad drive. Then remove the bad drive and change the drive letter of the new drive to existing letter of the bad drive.

There are a few other ways to do this but this is the way I'd go about it if I only had the two drives to work with.
 
Are you sure windows isn't putting the drive to sleep? this would cause a delay when accessing the drive.
 
It's definitely not fragmented, typically showing 0% or 1% at the most fragmentation.

Don't think the drive is being put to sleep, as it's not being left for long periods of time and just being slow occasionally. It seems to be intermittent.

As well as seeing it hang when I try and access certain files, I've ran games stored on it that run into a variety of problems freezing and stuttering, then when I've tried them on the SSD then all seems OK.

Ran checkdisk, and it found problems with one of the partitions initially, but subsequent checks have turned nothing up.

Not sure if there's any kind of software out there than can tell me what's up with it. It's definitely not behaving itself.

It's a Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drive.
 
Yeah also try deleting the device in device manager and removing drivers and getting Windows Update to reinstall.

Can you hear the drive beeping? (usually means it is boned)
 
Sorry for digging this up after a week guys.

Seems I was wrong about the drive I have - it's actually a WD Black 1TB drive.

I've tried different cables, ports, changing the drivers, and there's no difference.

Now that I know the actual type of drive, I've tried to use the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software, but I'm seeing mixed results. For starters, the SMART status of the drive is showing as Not Available, when all other drives in the PC are showing as PASS. The quick test goes fine, doesn't report any problems at all.

Any time I've tried to run the extended test however, I've come back to a frozen system that I can only get back into with a reset.

I've tried to run the DOS version of the software too, but that doesn't recognise any of my drives as a WD drive, and so it fails.

So now? I just want a new drive, and I've no idea where to turn. Think the faulty drive is still covered by it's lengthy warranty, but I still need something to copy everything over to.

So, what are the best mechanical drives out there right now? It seems that the Samsung Spinpoint drives have disappeared these days, and I'm seeing bad reports of seek/sleep clicking from the Seagate Barracudas, so I've no idea what to opt for.

I'll be upgrading everything pretty soon, so whatever I opt for will move on to a new LGA2011-based machine. Storage there would either be a single 256MB Samsung 840 Pro, or a pair of them in RAID0, then a chunky mechanical drive for various bits and stuff that doesn't need blistering speed, then probably a large mechanical dedicated to backups. Obviously the new drive would perform one of those roles in the new machine once I upgrade, but for now, it's just replacing my drive for software and games.
 
Nobody got any thoughts on which mechanical hard drive I should add? Just hearing bad things about the latest batches of Seagate drives with reliability and noise issues, then the more expensive Western Digital drives are being reported as noisy, when I'd rather have a quiet drive.

It was always so easy when I could just go and pick up a Samsung Spinpoint :(
 
samsung f3 1tb or the now rare f4 2tb

you could choose a seagate if the above arnt available but they are known to be noisy in comparison
 
Nah, the Samsungs seem to be old and hard to get hold of these days. I'd rather have a newer drive, but the Barracudas are just getting bad reviews everywhere I look, and their questionable 1 year warranty is a concern too.

I just want something reliable and quiet, and speedy would be a bonus too. Seems like nothing fits the bill from what I've looked at. Unless I just opt for a noisy WD and hope that my future PC has some decent soundproofing to lessen the blow.
 
Bablos said:
Think the faulty drive is still covered by it's lengthy warranty, but I still need something to copy everything over to.
Click to expand...

When i last exchanged a drive with Western Digital that was still under warranty i had the option for WD to send out the replacement drive before i sent my faulty one back, but you had to give Credit Card information, so that if you don't send the faulty drive back within 15 days or something, they will bill you for the replacement drive, but at least this way i was able to copy data before sending back, so this could be a way out of the situation, if WD still do this, you will have to check.
 
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