Has my drive failed? PLEASE HELP

Associate
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
Hi guys, desperate message for help here,
My boot drive and important programs are all on my C:\
I have Steam and all games (inc non-steam games) installed on my D:\ so in case it fails from a lot of use etc it won't kill my important stuff.

I was playing Brink, a game I have only ever played for less than an hour before, and not played it for ages, don't know if that's relevant, and the game froze, eventually responded to CTRL+ALT+DEL, then ended the task etc and went back to desktop as if nothing is wrong. Steam also died, and I immediately went to My Computer and D:\ wasn't there.

I powered off and checked connections; both HDDs were running off one PSU cable (one trail with 3 SATA connections on it) so I plugged another 3xSATA trail in (modular PSU) and connected that to my secondary drive in case it was pulling too much power from one SATA trail.. (if 'trail' is the right word- one cable from the PSU with 3x SATA power plugs on)

Switched back on and D:\ is present but when I try and open it it says Windows needs to format it, then an error comes up saying unrecognized format etc,
so I can't access it whatsoever.

Is it dead?!
It's less than a year old. Right by an intake fan so no heat problems. Good power and data connection at all times, i thought.
Edit: Seatools reports 1400 hours uptime only.

WHAT DO I DO :/

NB I used to play AvP through Steam from my old WD Green 640GB secondary drive and this did a similar thing where Steam and the games failed to respond then the D:\ failed to open... but that was with a different PSU!
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
11 Jul 2009
Posts
27,049
Location
BenefitStreetBirmingham
i doubt its psu,hdd's and ssd's draw very very little power,its more likely the game crashed badly and corrupted your data on the hdd and it saying to format but dont,you might be able to recover it but dont mess yet as the more you mess the less chance you have of recovering it,i dont know much about this though so ill leave it to someone else to advise/comment further

is it the wd green btw? ive seen a few of those die on other forums,i hope it hasnt though
 
Associate
OP
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
'(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count Current=89 Worst=89 Threshold=0 Data=5918 Status=warning
Number of interface communication errors:5918
There were communication errors. This may be caused by a damaged cable'

Whaaat is going on :/

nothing else reports a problem, just (C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Sep 2006
Posts
13,483
Location
Portland, OR
Sounds like either your SATA controller on your mobo is going out or the controller on the HDD is bad. Do any of the other drives on the same sata controller have CRC error counts?
 
Associate
OP
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
Yes gurusan, HD Tune is mid-scan so I can't check but my WD Green boot drive had at least 1 CRC error count; it had warning written by it.
Have I got crappy cables spoiling everything?
I could always whack the drives into GSATA?
I've also been having trouble with my DVD drive dropping in and out lately, occasionally it wouldn't be visible etc, that seems to have gone now but still.
Don't tell me my motherboard is going... :(
 
Associate
OP
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
is this bad?

5by00j.png


The drive on the left is my WD boot drive.
The right is the Samsung Spinpoint F1 that got wiped.
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
25 Jul 2003
Posts
40,098
Location
FR+UK
I have access to some pretty good recovery tools through work, and am more than happy to try data recovery on your disk(s) if you've got important things on there.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
I have access to some pretty good recovery tools through work, and am more than happy to try data recovery on your disk(s) if you've got important things on there.

Platypus that's very kind of you, but I think I can manage, the only important stuff is a backup of an old music folder I had. I think I can access that with a basic undelete tool I managed to get hold of. The games can always be replayed! But thanks for offering. If it was my boot drive I would 1,000% take you up on that.

I've just bought myself an enclosure for my spare WD 640GB (I thought it failed but seeing as though this second drive has done it I'm guessing it was my board's fault all along) so I'm gonna backup my important stuff on C:\ before doing <b>anything</b else to fix my D:\.

Think I'll drop into OCUK for some new SATA cables! And will swap my HDDs to GSATA slots on the bottom of the board, I think I'm right in thinking they have a different controller?
 
Associate
OP
Joined
27 Apr 2009
Posts
592
Pretty sure both disks have totally failed now, a standard NTFS format through windows gets to about 5% and I get an error message and no more progress. I've bought 3 new SATA cables and switched them to the GSATA ports too
 
Back
Top Bottom