Not sure if HDD is toast or windows is dumb. Computer full sleeps randomly..

Dabba · Jul 21, 2015

Hey all.

Kind of a stupid question here. Ill be using my windows 7 pc and suddenly the screen goes quickly fades blank like its going into sleep, and then you hear the HDD click off. From here it is unrecoverable and unwakeable and I need to restart. I'm also running ubuntu, and have one instance of not being able to wake the computer after the monitor turned off. I turned all sleep settings off in windows, and the computer will "sleep" mid use!

I suspect the HDD is on its way out, but normally wouldnt it just lock up and blue screen? Maybe not in 7? Im not sure. If anyone has any input please let me know, so I can start saving for an SSD ha

Thanks

trents · Jul 21, 2015

Before replacing the hard drive, try turning off all the sleep/hibernation settings in bios. The fact that this happens much more often in Windows than in Ubuntu makes me think it's not a hardware problem but some kind of incompatibility issue between the bios mechanisms that control sleep/hibernation and the parallel OS code. It could also be a buggy bios. Do you have the latest bios for the motherboard installed?

When hard drives start to fail it will usually manifest itself on startup, not after it's already up and running.

Dabba · Jul 21, 2015

Funny you mention that, Ive just had the screen shut off multiple times on me just as I got to the logon screen for ubuntu and windows! I opened the computer and tried listening to the HDD while restarting a few times but could not replicate it.

Ill look at the sleep settings in the BIOs, and I'm not sure if my bios is up to date, ill check on that and get back to you. I also switched a plug for the HDD on the PSU in case it's a power supply issue. Fact is though, I'm too poor to replace both, and would rather not test things by buying new components unless I'm sure

trents · Jul 21, 2015

Download and run CrystalDiskInfo. It's a hard drive health checking utility. Not a perfect tool but more often than not what it reports needs to be heeded.

Dabba · Jul 21, 2015

I'll do that. So my mobo doesn't have the latest bios but I can't find any sleep settings in it. Something tells me its not that. But I'll flask the new bios later and pray

Automata · Jul 21, 2015

Dabba said:
I'll do that. So my mobo doesn't have the latest bios but I can't find any sleep settings in it. Something tells me its not that. But I'll flask the new bios later and pray

It might be labeled as "C states". State 3 is sleep.

Dabba · Jul 21, 2015

I take it this isnt good.

In the meantime I reset my cmos so Ill look for those settings again, but from the above picture.. it looks like the drive is having problems?

(That is a really good utility, the other one I used had nothing like this)

Edit: Bios doesnt seem to have C states or sleep. I turned power saving settings off, but that was in relation to the CPU I believe. Odd that the bios has a lot of options, but sleep not one of them.

Automata · Jul 21, 2015

Reallocated sectors means there are sectors that have failed, and the drive is using the spare ones it comes with. The problem is either going to stay the same, or get worse and eventually fail entirely. I wouldn't trust a hard drive with reallocated sectors to store any data.

It seems to also have read errors, which is likely related to the reallocated sectors, but is still bad. Seek error rate and hardware ecc recovered are also very high. Backup your data and RMA the drive if you still have a warranty.

RJARRRPCGP · Jul 21, 2015

thideras said:
Reallocated sectors means there are sectors that have failed, and the drive is using the spare ones it comes with. The problem is either going to stay the same, or get worse and eventually fail entirely. I wouldn't trust a hard drive with reallocated sectors to store any data.

It seems to also have read errors, which is likely related to the reallocated sectors, but is still bad. Seek error rate and hardware ecc recovered are also very high. Backup your data and RMA the drive if you still have a warranty.

Seagates always show absurd values with the
Hardware ECC Recovered attribute and the Read Error Rate attribute.

Seagate reports differently than Western Digital and Samsung. (Before Samsung sold their HDD business)

Dabba · Jul 22, 2015

Im not too knowledgeable with hdds, but are the bad sectors possibly causing the drive to shut down when it encounters them? Or did I just stumble across another problem. Hopefully replacing the drive fixes the issue. I'll start looking for SSDs.

Kind of torn between a 500gig ssd or a smaller ssd and storage hdd.

Dlaw · Jul 22, 2015

If you need more than 500GB of space, you'll want to go with a smaller SSD and a storage HDD. If you don't need more than 500GB, the 500GB SSD would be easier to work with and set up.

trents · Jul 22, 2015

Dabba said:
Im not too knowledgeable with hdds, but are the bad sectors possibly causing the drive to shut down when it encounters them? Or did I just stumble across another problem. Hopefully replacing the drive fixes the issue. I'll start looking for SSDs.

Kind of torn between a 500gig ssd or a smaller ssd and storage hdd.

Bad sectors corrupt the data stored on them which can mean corrupted OS files. Try running this command from an elevated command prompt (Elevated means with administrator privileges. Search for cmd.exe. Right click on the file name and choose "Run with Administrator privileges"):

chkdsk /f /r

This command will tell windows to check for bad sectors and attempt to read the data on any bad sectors and then relocate that data to healthy sectors. It doesn't always work perfectly but is worth a try. Could buy you a little more time until you get a replacement drive. After you execute the chkdsk command you will need to restart your computer in order for the operation to be carried out. Takes awhile.

Dabba · Jul 24, 2015

I haven't had any additional problems and I'm going to keep an eye on the reallocated sector count. It might be/have been a PSU issues so I'll keep you updated. If it happens again I have a spare PSU to swap in. Probably will go with the 500g ssd then.. sooner or later!

Automata · Jul 24, 2015

Reallocated sectors shouldn't be caused by a bad power supply. The drive is detecting sectors as bad and using the spare ones it has.

Not sure if HDD is toast or windows is dumb. Computer full sleeps randomly..

Dabba

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trents

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Dabba

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trents

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Dabba

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Automata

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