Dying hard drive

[Torn Mind]

Somebody I know complained that their computer was acting up, and it would always BSOD at bootup. System Repair would reach the splash image but no further. I removed the hard drive from that system and took it to my own to analyze it. I ran System Repair from a Windows 7 disk, and the system repair found disk errors. The System Repair was unsuccessful in fixing the issue, so I ran chkdsk in read-only mode. It found errors and stopped.

I don't here any "clicking" sound, so I'm not sure if the controller board is having difficulty reading from the drive and/or causing errors or if the drive is physically dying. It IS however, sluggish in responsiveness and seems to have bad sectors.

The symptoms can after the person started up a dehumidifier in the basement. Perhaps the crappy PSU, which is some Just 4 PC 450W unit, caused something to break?

 

[denis280]

Swap Hdd.

 

[cubby1223]

The symptoms can after the person started up a dehumidifier in the basement.

99.99% sure it was pure coincidence.

Drives sometimes fail, they are not perfect.

Try to copy off any files you can, beginning with the most critically important data files.

 

[Torn Mind]

99.99% sure it was pure coincidence.

Drives sometimes fail, they are not perfect.

Try to copy off any files you can, beginning with the most critically important data files.

Perhaps, but the PSU was a certainly a bad one; it was a featherweight and the manufacturer is out of business. Hell, it only had 20 pins and the motherboard has a 24 pin connector. I was not there, but an undervoltage situation at the outlet when the dehumidifer was started up could have sent some "bad commands" to the disk.

 

[Ketchup]

Perhaps, but the PSU was a certainly a bad one; it was a featherweight and the manufacturer is out of business. Hell, it only had 20 pins and the motherboard has a 24 pin connector. I was not there, but an undervoltage situation at the outlet when the dehumidifer was started up could have sent some "bad commands" to the disk.

It is probably a junk psu, but I don't think it killed the hard drive on it's own. A power supply would blow the motor in the drive, possibly causing the arm to crash, but not create the bad sectors you are seeing.

However I would still replace both.

 

[Torn Mind]

Well, it's not my rig, so I've got to inform the guy to his problem and propose the proper solution to him. What are my chances of cloning the drive to another successfully? Would running chkdsk /r do anything? He was blaming it on the moisture and some supposed gunk on the chipset heatsink of the Asus P5N-D and at the very least, I need to set him straight on the real reason his computer was acting..

 

[denis280]

there are 2 possibility hard drive or psu. as Ketchup79 mention i would change both

 

[Torn Mind]

How likely is that dd_rescue or GNU ddrescue can clone the hard drive to a new one in a salvagable state? I'm probably not going to do the repair, but just curious.

 

[Ketchup]

If the drive won't boot windows now, it would mean that files windows needs are possibly in a bad sector of the hard drive. If the hard drive can't release those files to memory, I don't see how it would release them to another hard drive. What you could do is copy the contents to another drive and then to a windows repair install.

 

[Torn Mind]

If the drive won't boot windows now, it would mean that files windows needs are possibly in a bad sector of the hard drive. If the hard drive can't release those files to memory, I don't see how it would release them to another hard drive. What you could do is copy the contents to another drive and then to a windows repair install.

Well, ddrescue might try more times to pull a successful read over a failing sector.


Thankfully, badblocks seems to report only 30 bad blocks in read-only mode, so most of the data is hopefully still salvagable.

These are the bad blocks recorded by badblocks:
845440
845492
845493
845494
845495
3249128
3249180
3249181
3249182
3249183
3694224
3694244
3694245
3694246
3694247
28994968
28995028
28995029
28995030
28995031
45611080
45611108
45611109
45611110
45611111

 

[denis280]

badblocks seems to report only 30 bad blocks in read-only mode

That is not good. you could do like Ketchup mention.but i doubt it.

 

[Torn Mind]

That is not good. you could do like Ketchup mention.but i doubt it.

Well, as long as the Windows Registry files are intact, a "Frankenstein" approach in which a simple copy and paste of those files to the new HDD and windows could restore the computer to "as it was" when it died, thereby keeping the Adobe Suite and Windows license intact.

Anyway, I'm going to let the guy go to Micro Center and have him do the service(s). He's still blaming the dehumidifier leaving a "sheen" of moisture all over his room, which in turn supposedly killed the HDD. Yes, condensation could wreck circuit boards, but a dehumidifier will not create it, even if it is malfunctioning. The worst it can do is be a poor man's space heater and decrease the relative humidity. He also blames gunk on the chipset heatsink, which is even more nonsensical than the dehumidifier blaming. Last thing is that he believes the whole thing is dead based on the dead drive + weird errors and BSODs, which is almost certainly due to the hard drive already sputtering.

Such a combination ignorance and impudent skepticism means altruism is not the way to go for me here, as he probably thinks I'm out to rob his coin.