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Help! Hard Drive Failing!!

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steelle

Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2006
First hard drive I've had fail on me, need some advice on what to do next. It is a WD Black 1.5TB, but it's only a year old and is still under warranty so I can RMA it. However I was wondering if there was any way possible to retrieve anything off of it before I send it off? Currenntly running the WD diagnostic tool to make sure its actually faulty, but I'm 90% sure it is.



Update 1/23: It seems I spoke too soon. As of last night both drives would seem to have gone on me, I can't even get past startup screen (windows insignia after boot order). CHKDSK for the drive I thought crashed before, the WD 1.5TB storage drive, had 50 or so files that were unreadable. But like I said now the drive with my OS, the Vertex2, isn't working either. Would there be anyway this could be virus/malware related, or just really bad timing? I'm completely at a loss for what to do next...
 
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That's all going to depend on how faulty/dead it is. What happened when you noticed it die? Are you able to access anything on it in Window?
 
As ziggo asked, what is wrong with it? If the drive has suffered a catastrophic mechanical fault, you aren't likely going to be able to recover data. But, if it just has a few bad sectors, it should be easy.
 
Getting I/O device errors when trying to save stuff to it (things like "required data was not placed into memory because of I/O error status of 0xc0000185"). Windows explorer crashes when i try to open anything on that drive. However when I booted in safe mode and I could open folders and access some things.
 
I would switch cables and SATA ports to see if that helps.
 
Have you tried changing the cable?? In most cases I have seen where I/O errors were the problem it was due to a faulty cable.

EDIT: Thiddy bet me to it! lol
 
First like others have said check the cables and see if that does anything. After that if you are still having issues and feel the need to go ahead with the RMA I suggest grabbing a drive big enough to hold the data on the 1.5 TB and backing it up. Take permissions of everything on that drive and then use a program to back it up onto another drive. I use Roadkill's Unstoppable Copy to do all my saving. after its done verify that the 2 datas match up and wipe it if you want. WD will wipe it clean anyways when you send it to them.

after when you get the replacement drive you can transfer all your data back onto it and be happy.
 
Well it seems the cable was indeed the culprit. Thanks a million thideras and jmdixon85, I'm quite relieved, saved me a huge headache!
 
Glad it was an easy fix for you.

I had three cables give me I/O problems in my fileserver in just the space of 4 month! Maybe I was just unlucky as I can't imagine why cables would just go bad that often.
 
I also had a cable fail in one of my servers recently, which caused the RAID 1 array to break. Things happen, but I'm glad it was something simple. :thup:
 
Glad it was an easy fix for you.

I had three cables give me I/O problems in my fileserver in just the space of 4 month! Maybe I was just unlucky as I can't imagine why cables would just go bad that often.


I also had a cable fail in one of my servers recently, which caused the RAID 1 array to break. Things happen, but I'm glad it was something simple. :thup:



Where are you guys getting your cables? I've been running some long ones from monoprice for a while now..no issues, but I've often questioned the quality.
 
I generally collect them when they come with motherboards or hard drives. I've only had 2 or so cables, out of the 40+ I've used, fail.
 
It seems I spoke too soon. As of last night both drives would seem to have gone on me, I can't even get past startup screen (windows insignia after boot order). CHKDSK for the drive I thought crashed before, the WD 1.5TB storage drive, had 50 or so files that were unreadable. But like I said now the drive with my OS, the Vertex2, isn't working either. Would there be anyway this could be virus/malware related, or just really bad timing? I'm completely at a loss for what to do next...
 
It could be bad timing, an infection (not likely), bad hard drive controller, hard drive cable or other factors. You would need to narrow down where the problem is. Since both exhibited a problem at the same time, it is likely something they share, such as the hard drive controller, system memory/cpu, etc.
 
It could be bad timing, an infection (not likely), bad hard drive controller, hard drive cable or other factors. You would need to narrow down where the problem is. Since both exhibited a problem at the same time, it is likely something they share, such as the hard drive controller, system memory/cpu, etc.

How exactly would I go about pinpointing the problem? Unplug stuff and see what it does (only half kidding...)?
 
I'd start by using completely different or known working SATA cables and using different ports on the motherboard. If the issue persists, I'd try them on another computer.
 
I'd start by using completely different or known working SATA cables and using different ports on the motherboard. If the issue persists, I'd try them on another computer.

Okay so there were/are two problems:

The first, my overclock apparently was unstable and was causing most of the problems, random blue screens, random restarts, causing drives to act up, etc. I believe the deeper issue here is that there might be a problem with one of my sticks of memory, which I am going to look into further. Computer runs perfectly fine on stock settings though. The second is my storage drive has some unreadable/corrupted files, so I will need to RMA it once I recover what I can from it.

This leaves me with two questions. How can I tell which stick of memory is bad? Just take two out and boot with one, and rotate through until I see problems? And then lastly, how do I go about salvaging data from my storage drive?
 
Okay so there were/are two problems:

The first, my overclock apparently was unstable and was causing most of the problems, random blue screens, random restarts, causing drives to act up, etc. I believe the deeper issue here is that there might be a problem with one of my sticks of memory, which I am going to look into further. Computer runs perfectly fine on stock settings though. The second is my storage drive has some unreadable/corrupted files, so I will need to RMA it once I recover what I can from it.

This leaves me with two questions. How can I tell which stick of memory is bad? Just take two out and boot with one, and rotate through until I see problems? And then lastly, how do I go about salvaging data from my storage drive?

I'd try running one at a time, and run Memtest for each one and see if it gives you any errors.
 
I'd try running one at a time, and run Memtest for each one and see if it gives you any errors.

cheers. any advice for recovering stuff off the hard drive? whats the safest way to do it without further corrupting any files?
 
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