Possible hard drive death :(

Yeggstry

Yeggstry

Yeggstry

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Joined
8 Aug 2005
Posts
1,101
Location
Reading, UK
Hi guys,

Just before I went out for the weekend on Friday my machine suddenly restarted and said that it could not find ntosknrl.exe. Naturally I guessed this was pretty bad judging from the program name, and did a repair of windows. Didn't last very long and came up with the same problem :(

After that it wouldn't even get to that error and would say "error reading disc". I decided on biting the bullet and reformatting the whole drive - it was pretty useless in its current state, and it only contained the os,games and downloads (all of my important files are stored on a seperate drive).

However, it took 15 minutes to do 1% of the drive and its coming up to 30 minutes now with only 20% done. I also heard a clicking sound every few seconds at the start, which has lead me to the conclusion that the drive is screwed. Luckily I still have the old drive so I should be back up once I've confirmed my worst fears

My questions are:

Is there a program I can run from startup that can test the drive for any problems? If not are there any other suggestions on proving that my drive is screwed for my RMA.
What is people's expirience of returns for OCUK? The only item I've had to return via RMA was a graphics card and that took about 1.5 months to do via one of your competitors (granted this was about 4 years ago). I would rather not have to go through the same experience :) Is it worth going directly to Seagate?

Oh, and FYI this drive is the new single platter 250Gb from Seagate: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-138-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768
 
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Does sound like it is on the way out. You could try knoppix:-

http://www.knoppix.org/

Linux on a DVD basically. You might be able to access the contents that way.

OCuk returns are good, and lose the name of that competitor! It is probably worth going straight back to Seagate, as that is all OCuk are going to do once they get your drive.
 
Well as I said I'm not bothered about the data since it was only os, games and downloads that I can get again :) I tried to reinstall overnight and the reformat happened, but after I had put my key in it was trying to install network components for an hour :/

Sorry about the competitor's name, I was actually bad-mouthing their customer service and returns department, but I forgot that I wasn't suppose to mention it :)
 
Download the Seagate diagnostics CD image, burn it, boot from it, and run the diagnostics on the disk. It's likely bust, running the diagnostics will confirm it. See the forum sticky for download locations etc.
 
Thanks guys for your advice :)

Thanks for the info about the diagnostic image as well ByteJuggler, that was the kind of thing I was looking for. One of the problems I had in the past with the graphics card I mentioned was that they were asking for proof that it wasn't working correctly, since it worked for them. I had to explain that it didn't work with the mobo I had at the time. So if I can just say to Seagate "ran your diag tool and it says the drive is screwed :)" then hopefully it won't take as long to sort it out.
 
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