Windows 7 64bit HDD imminent failure warning....

AllanWalton

AllanWalton

AllanWalton

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Joined
19 Aug 2010
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9
Howdy,

I hope you're all well (because I need your help lol ;-) )

So I got "Windows 7 64bit HDD imminent failure warning" last night and it naturally scared the hell out of me so would like some advice.

here's whats happened from the top:

- Firstly, my drive is a samsung HD203WI ATA 2TB.

- I recently replaced the PSU in my PC because it shorted out and broke completely. I have no idea what caused this and am trying to fix this as a seperate problem (i currently have my entire PC running on top of a cardboard box with 1 mem stick and a cheapo (but proven to work gfx card).

I believe that whatever caused this may have also screwed the drive at the same time but cannot be sure - looking at the components there was no physical damage or burn marks to give any clues.

- After replacing the PSU, The first time I turned it on, everything was fine - it ran and all seemed well.

- The second time onwards the power LED on the case stopped coming on when turning the PC on - apart from that, it all still worked and seemed happy.

- Forth or fifth time, windows stopped loading - it would stall on the "Starting windows" screen. Resetting and loading in safe mode would get me into windows, then restarting again in non-safe mode would load successfully.

I then got the HDD failure warning screen.

- I ran "chkdsk /r" last night and it appeared to complete successfully. windows would load successfully this morning but the power LED on the case is still out despite being connected to the mobo.

- I ran HDTune (lite) and performed a quickscan and got 100% green with drive health "Ok". Temperature of the drive never gets above 36 degrees.

- I *think* the drive is making a more aggressive noise now but I can't be sure - it may be just me listening for it because of what's happened.

- Unfortunately Samsung don't offer their diagnostic tools for windows 7 64bit - I'm emailing them later to see if they can do anything about it.

And that's about it - I'm going to run a full HDTune scan tonight (I've worked out it'll take about 7 hours to scan a 2TB drive to completion) and I'll post the results tomorrow but if anyone has any advice or suggestions I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,

Allan

:)
 
AllanWalton said:
- Unfortunately Samsung don't offer their diagnostic tools for windows 7 64bit - I'm emailing them later to see if they can do anything about it.
Click to expand...
You can run ESTool directly from a bootable CD, although it's a bit picky about the make/model of optical drive and it probably won't work if your controller is in AHCI mode.

If that applies to you, you could create a bootable DOS USB stick, and run the ESTool executable from there. :)
 
If you have data on it that isn't backed up I'd get that sorted before running any long scans which could upset it further.

And it's possible that sector scanning tools won't reveal anything if the drive is internally hiding bad sectors - you need something that'll readout its SMART data.
 
hmmm, that's a bit worrying about the SMART data - do you have any suggestions about scanners that can provide the information needed?

I've already backed up the totally essential stuff (high storage USB sticks ***! lol) - if anything else got wiped It wouldn't be a total nightmare - it would be a hassle having to reinstall everything on a new drive but nothing too strenuous.

Cheers for the replies.
 
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you know what - thats made me remember something - after turning my PC on for the first time in a month after replacing the PSU windows installed 6 new updates so it's probably one of those that has triggered this and ****ed my machine.

I'm happier now I've remembered this (as it hopefully points to it being windows rather than my drive) - thanks for that post - I'll disable hibernation and try the other things out - you'd think they'd have caught this kind of thing by now.

<head off table>

Cheers again everyone.
 
AllanWalton said:
hmmm, that's a bit worrying about the SMART data - do you have any suggestions about scanners that can provide the information needed?
Click to expand...
ESTool (the manufacturer's utility) will report SMART data amongst other things.

You really need to run this, it'll provide you with all the info you need if you need to RMA the drive (failure of a critical SMART attribute is always considered sufficient grounds for replacement).
 
I tried running a bootable CD with ESTool on it but got a dodgy looking error message:

//--

Cannot open CD Driver MYDVD SHCDX33E cannot load
Disc C has label TURBODSC
Your Ram drive is loaded at C:
File not found L:\*.*
Out of memory error
Bad command or filename 'run.bat'

//--

I've no idea where MYDVD comes from (guess it's the CD burner using a default name), where TURBODSC comes from or why it's looking for L\*.*

The only thing that makes sense is run.bat and it seems to fire it off correctly as the program does run (I get the title screen), it just can't continue for the reasons above.

I'll give a bootable USB stick a go tomorrow night.

:)
 
So I ran HDTune with a full scan and it passed with flying colours. However, I ran the diagnostic tool off a USB stick and unfortunately it failed :(

Read DMA Pass
Check SMART Pass
Spin up / down Pass
Surface scan Fail
Bad sector

its recommended formatting the drive so I'm going to do that this weekend.

I've not done this before so excuse the noob questions but if I use the diagnostic app to format the drive, then just restart the PC with my windows disc it should all be ok yeah?

What about reinstalling windows - is it going to complain about already being installed before? what do I need to do it?

Is this the best course of action - is the diagnostic tool being over zealous?

If anyone's got a noob guide to this (even if it's just "don't forget to back this up!" style) I'm all ears.

Thanks,

Allan
:(
 
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AllanWalton said:
If anyone's got a noob guide to this (even if it's just "don't forget to back this up!" style) I'm all ears.
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1. "Don't forget to back this up!"

2. RMA the drive - it's failed the manufacturer's diagnostic utility, so basically it's not trustworthy and even if it seems to be working OK in the short term, it would always be playing on your mind.
 
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