Is my HD Broken?

BlackDragon · 22 Aug 2006 at 12:28

Well im having some odd PC problems. I reformatted last week as i was having some other PC probs then i reformatted again as i had some other problems.

After the reinstall everything seemed fine. After a while i get odd stuff happening. Such as my right click not working for a while, or when i open up IE the File, Edit, etc menu is gone but the other buttons are there. Or my PC just becomes slow and unresponsive for a while after i've opened up a program (e.g. winamp). Also a couple of times, the shutdown/restart buttons have no effect in the start menu. Another time before my reformats, i would start a file download from any site and then my task bar and start menu become completely unresponsive for a while.

Do these scans by HDTune suggest my HD is dieing and causing all these problems? These were done after a reformat.

Maxtor 300GB HD
2GB of PC3200
AMD 4000+ San Diego
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (replaced the failed chipset fan with a passive one)
These two i fitted just before my reformat: Leadtek Winfast 7900GT Extreme (pre-overclocked) and an X-FI Xtreme Music.

jbloggs · 22 Aug 2006 at 20:22

BlackDragon:

A couple of things you could try:

1) Run CHKDSK.

2) Download the HDD diagnostic utility from the Maxtor website and run it on your HDD and see if that throws up anything.

BlackDragon · 23 Aug 2006 at 00:33

chkdsk doesn't report anything.

I already tried to use the maxtor tool, but i was unable to run it. This was because it only runs off a bootable floppy and i don't actually have a FDD. When will modern companies realise that FDDs are an old technology and that not everyone actually has one nowadays! :mad:

Well i will get my two HDs tomorrow so hopefully that will fix my problems

ByteJuggler · 23 Aug 2006 at 11:58

BlackDragon said:
chkdsk doesn't report anything.

I already tried to use the maxtor tool, but i was unable to run it. This was because it only runs off a bootable floppy and i don't actually have a FDD. When will modern companies realise that FDDs are an old technology and that not everyone actually has one nowadays!

Well i will get my two HDs tomorrow so hopefully that will fix my problems

You can get an .iso CD image for it as well, burn it to CD and boot from that. (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=maxtor+powermax+iso+cd+image)

BlackDragon · 23 Aug 2006 at 12:24

Description on the site says it won't work with nforce 4 chipsets

ByteJuggler · 23 Aug 2006 at 12:55

BlackDragon said:
Description on the site says it won't work with nforce 4 chipsets

Bummer. While it's obviously best to go with your manufacturers tools, it is the case that some of the tools work reasonably well even with other makes of drives. (Obviously drive/model/make specific features only work on that particular drive/model/make of drives.) See if maybe Hitachi's DFT (Drive Fitness Test) work for you: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/technolo/dft/dftnew.htm
Or maybe Seagate Seatools destkop version: http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

Hope that helps