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Hard Drive Diagnostics and Issues

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What a great thread... no wonder it has become a sticky!!!

Okay... My laptop refused to boot into windows (XP-Pro) the other day... It's a Toshiba 80Gb 16Mbcache model MK8026GAX.

After much experimenting, seems like sector0 is bad.

I have tried a few tools, not the least of which was spinpoint... said it was going to take over 2300hrs to complete whatever it was doing; and various other prog's under the disk tools part of Hiren's Boot CD.

Just wondering whether or not anyone has had any experience with sector0 stuff, and what I might try.

Hiren's CD btw is available here... http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hiren.thanki/bootcd.html

Thanks
 
np

I'm thinking I will have a play with HDAT2 tonight if I have time and see if it fares any better with the Toshiba drive. If I have some success... you'll be the 2nd to know.
 
Hey guys, my Problem is im experiencing Problems with my PC in 3d Games, i already switched the drivers and reinstalled the games. At the beginning it was just ONE Game failing by now more or less every game is making trouble. The 2nd Thing was that i had no trouble when i bootet in Vista (vs XP) but NOW i also got the same Problems under Vista, so my first suspect DirectX is out of the Game. Now its the HDD which may do the harm.
So i need a Diagnostic Tool for a Samsung Hdd, the Problem is: its SATA and all the tools i found are for 'older' drives or its known that they do not support SATA. Does anyone have a commendation for me ??

-da`Paule
 
Check out my post (101) above, and download that Hiren's Boot CD... you will find plenty on there to help out.
 
Yeah... it has a bunch of great resourses. I ended up running HDAT2 on my drive for around 3 days, but it was too far gone, so simply replaced it in the finish.

Hope your's fares better tho, and let's know what you tried and the results you got mate
 
Have a quick question. Would using those tools with the hard drive in an enclosure affect the results of the tests?
 
As long as the tools can see the drive (and on most modern PC's they will) the tests will work just fine.
 
[sAn]Assasin said:
are we all aware that this "tests" are pretty useless...

and that when a h/d is gonna die there is normaly no warning...


All these tests speed up the self destruct process....


And if it does die....use the old IT Trick of putting it in the fridge...


it DOES work..
Click to expand...

First of all you can have a read/write error for weeks before the drive fails.
also running the test doesn't do much more than normal use would do.

second stick a drive in the freezer can ruin it. water condensation = bad for drives.
 
The trick of putting it in a freezer or fridge is only an attempt to get it so you can retrieve info, because the drive is crapping out anyway. Has nothing to do with condensation or drivers. Running the tests, if it does nothing else, might give you some small warning to let you know its coming, and also gives you codes to send to drive manufacturers for warranty and/or replacement purposes.

Wannaoc, I will spend some time after the first of the year and update my links.
 
I kept getting NTLDR on a HDD that I didnt use, so I reformatted it, same thing, then I deleted the partition and booted it from the Win7 cd and it worked, then I got this message

" Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disks controller is enabled in the computers BIOS menu"

Anyone know why??

These are my specs

Case: HAF 932
Motherboard: Foxconn Bloodrage
PSU: Corsair TX850
CPU: Core i7 D0 stepping
Cooler: Xigmatek Dark Knight
Video Card: EVGA GTX 275.
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 6GB
HDD: WD 120GB.
 
anyone know of any good reliable disk cloning software out there compatible with vista 64bit?

I really just want to clone a second harddrive from the working first one. I don't need any other features other than that.

The drive I want to make a copy of is larger than the drive I want to copy to... I am having a lot of problems so far finding software that can handle this fact.
 
stool said:
The trick of putting it in a freezer or fridge is only an attempt to get it so you can retrieve info, because the drive is crapping out anyway. Has nothing to do with condensation or drivers. Running the tests, if it does nothing else, might give you some small warning to let you know its coming, and also gives you codes to send to drive manufacturers for warranty and/or replacement purposes.
Click to expand...

I wanted to add in that this DID work for me the one time I tried it. Another trick is to hook it up to a computer via USB adapter......both 2.0 and 1.1 ports. I've been able to access a HDD on the older standard, when I couldn't on 2.0.
 
I'll nominate Passsmark DiskCheckup http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm for inclusion in the list. It does a pretty thorough job of reporting drive information and SMART attributes and is free for home use. Here is an export of the information it collects from the PC I'm posting this from:

Code: 
*** DiskCheckup V3.1 Build: 1001 Report ***

SysInfo DLL Version:                                                  SysInfo v1.0 Build: 1014
Time of export:                                                       07:51:23 01-Feb-2012

Device information:                                                   
   Device ID:                                                         0
   Interface:                                                         ATA
   Device Capacity:                                                   476937 MB
   Serial Number:                                                     S2W7VN6Y
   Model Number:                                                      ST9500325AS
   Firmware Revision:                                                 0011LVM1
   Partitions:                                                        
      C:         431937 MB
      D:         29690 MB

ATA information:                                                      

   Disk geometry:                                                     
      Cylinders:                                                      60801
      Tracks/Cylinder:                                                255
      Sectors/Track:                                                  63
      Bytes/Sector:                                                   512
      Total disk sectors:                                             976773168
      Logical sector size:                                            512
      Physical sector size:                                           512
      Media rotation rate:                                            5400 RPM
      Buffer size:                                                    8192 KB
      ECC size:                                                       4 Bytes

   Standards compliance:                                              
      ATA8-ACS Supported:                                             Yes
      ATA/ATAPI-7 Supported:                                          Yes
      ATA/ATAPI-6 Supported:                                          Yes
      ATA/ATAPI-5 Supported:                                          Yes
      ATA/ATAPI-4 Supported:                                          Yes
      Serial/Parallel:                                                Serial
         SATA 3.0 Compilance:                                         No
         SATA 2.6 Compilance:                                         Yes
         SATA 2.5 Compilance:                                         No
         SATA II: Ext Compilance:                                     No
         SATA 1.0a Compilance:                                        No
         ATA8-AST Compilance:                                         No
   World Wide ID:                                                     5000C5004681B2A6

   Feature support:                                                   
      SMART supported:                                                Yes
         SMART enabled:                                               Yes
      SMART self-test supported:                                      Yes
      SMART error log supported:                                      Yes
      LBA supported:                                                  Yes
      IORDY supported:                                                Yes
      CFast supported:                                                No
      DMA supported:                                                  Yes
         Maximum Multiword DMA mode supported:                        2
         Multiword DMA selected:                                      None
         Maximum UltraDMA mode supported:                             5
         UltraDMA selected:                                           5
      Maximum PIO mode supported:                                     4
      SATA Compliance:                                                Yes
         NCQ priority information supported:                          No
         Unload while NCQ commands are outstanding supported:         No
         Phy Event Counters supported:                                Yes
         Receipt of power management requests supported:              No
         NCQ feature set supported:                                   Yes
         SATA Gen2 Signaling Speed (3.0Gb/s) supported:               Yes
         SATA Gen1 Signaling Speed (1.5Gb/s) supported:               Yes
         Software Settings Preservation:                              Supported, Enabled
         In-order data delivery:                                      Not supported
         Initiating power management:                                 Supported, Enabled
         DMA Setup auto-activation:                                   Not supported
         Non-zero buffer offsets:                                     Not supported
      Trusted Computing supported:                                    No
      Host Protected Area (HPA) supported:                            Yes
      Read look-ahead supported:                                      Yes
         Read look-ahead enabled:                                     Yes
      Write cache supported:                                          Yes
         Write cache enabled:                                         Yes
      Power management supported:                                     Yes
      Security mode supported:                                        Yes
         Security mode enabled:                                       No
      Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) supported:                   Yes
      48bit Addressing supported:                                     Yes
      Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) supported:                        No
      Power-up in Standby (PUIS) supported:                           No
      Advanced Power Management (APM) supported:                      Yes
         Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled:                     Yes
         Current APM level:                                           Minimum power consumption without Standby
      CompactFlash Association (CFA) supported:                       No
      General Purpose Logging (GPL) supported:                        Yes
      Streaming supported:                                            No
      Media card pass through supported:                              No
      Extended power conditions supported:                            No
      Extended status reporting supported:                            No
      Write-read-verify supported:                                    Yes
         Write-read-verify enabled:                                   Yes
      Free-fall control supported:                                    No
      TRIM command supported:                                         No
      SCT command transport supported:                                Yes
      NV Cache enabled:                                               No
      NV Cache Power Management supported:                            No

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
 ID	Description                         	Status    	Value     	Worst     	Threshold 	Raw Value 	TEC                 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1	Raw Read Error Rate                 	OK        	114       	99        	34        	70349891  	N.A.                
  3	Spin Up Time                        	OK        	98        	98        	0         	0         	N.A.                
  4	Start/Stop Count                    	OK        	100       	100       	20        	74        	N.A.                
  5	Reallocated Sector Count            	OK        	100       	100       	36        	0         	N.A.                
  7	Seek Error Rate                     	OK        	61        	60        	30        	1439386   	N.A.                
  9	Power On Time                       	OK        	100       	100       	0         	196176926212140	N.A.                
 10	Spin Retry Count                    	OK        	100       	100       	97        	0         	N.A.                
 12	Power Cycle Count                   	OK        	100       	100       	20        	69        	N.A.                
184	End-to-End error                    	OK        	100       	100       	99        	0         	N.A.                
187	Reported Uncorrectable Errors       	OK        	100       	100       	0         	0         	N.A.                
188	Command Timeout                     	OK        	100       	100       	0         	0         	N.A.                
189	High Fly Writes                     	OK        	100       	100       	0         	0         	N.A.                
190	Temperature Difference from 100     	OK        	65        	52        	45        	639500323 	N.A.                
191	G-sense Error Rate                  	OK        	100       	100       	0         	1         	N.A.                
192	Power off Retract Count             	OK        	100       	100       	0         	8         	N.A.                
193	Load Cycle Count                    	OK        	100       	100       	0         	470       	N.A.                
194	Temperature                         	OK        	35        	48        	0         	35 C      	N.A.                
195	Hardware ECC Recovered              	OK        	57        	53        	0         	70349891  	N.A.                
196	Reallocation Event Count            	OK        	100       	100       	30        	165656888606761	N.A.                
197	Current Pending Sector Count        	OK        	100       	100       	0         	0         	N.A.                
198	Uncorrectable Sector Count          	OK        	100       	100       	0         	0         	N.A.                
199	UltraDMA CRC Error Count            	OK        	200       	200       	0         	0         	N.A.

Unfortunately it does not support SCSI drives or those on a H/W RAID controller. It does claim to work with USB, Firewire and S/W RAIDed drives.
 
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