chkdsk found errors on my laptop hdd

[fffblackmage]

i ran chkdsk on my >one month old dell inspiron 1520. It came with Vista Home Premium, but it was just sluggish so I reformatted and installed XP Pro. I ran chkdsk on the command line and it came up with:

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors <stage 3 of 3>...
Security Descriptor verification completed.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.


after i ran it with the /f switch, i got:

Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
CHKDSK discovered free space maarked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.


I've ran chkdsk several times with the /f switch, but similar errors kept appearing.
Apparently, chkdsk isnt repairing the disk... im wondering what possible fixes there are and what these errors may imply.

Thanks in advance

 

[hennessy1]

Backup your data asap. Then run manufacturers diagnostics. If it doesnt pass then talk to dell to get a new drive. If the drive passes then reformat but do a full format not a quick one.

 

[cubby1223]

My money is on the bad hard drive being the cause of Vista being sluggish. You're getting repeat errors, it's time to change the drive. I'm not sure what the procedure is to get a replacement from Dell.

 

[robisbell]

run the HDD Manufacturers diagnostic, report back the results.

 

[fffblackmage]

Alright, My laptop HDD is made by Seagate and I ran SeaTools' Long Drive Test. The first couple of times, it kept aborting at the end of the test, but after a system restart, it managed to pass. Since then, I did a long reformat using a slipstreamed XP disc. After a fresh install, I ran chkdsk from the cmd line again several times, all good. It was still good after installing drivers. After I installed Ad-aware, chkdsk found errors again, but when i did a second run, chkdsk didnt find anything. Since then, Ive installed other programs like MS Office and a couple games.
I just ran chkdsk again now, it corrected some errors in the index:

Correcting error in index $I30 for file 37487.
Deleting index entry unp227409925.tmp in index $I30 of file 12980.
Deleting index entry UNP227~1.TMP in index $I30 of file 12980.

On the second run, it was good.
I ran it a third time, and got a message about errors in the MFT's BITMAP attribute.
A fourth time says it found errors in the Volume Bitmap and problems in the file system.

I decided to run chkdsk on my desktop computer as well. It's getting similar errors. I ran SeaTools for the desktop's Seagate HDD using the Long Drive Test and it passed. Both computers have a fresh reformat and XP SP2 installed. Both happen to have HDD by Seagate. And the two drives are also less than 2 months old.... Did i just get unlucky? Or could it be something I did?

 

[RebateMonger]

It wouldn't hurt to run an overnight memory test on a PC that's having logical drive errors.

Also, take a look at Vista's Windows Event viewer, looking for disk-related errors. The Event logs can really be helpful.