Hard Drive problem?

[QueBert]

My XP locked up the other day, I rebooted, the XP loading screen came up, it went black and it never did anything. I rebooted and tried last good configuration, it didn't work. I couldn't get safe mode to boot, when I tried it would show the files it's loading then the PC would reboot before XP came up.

Today I got a delayed write error when I booted the PC up (which took 4 boots to get XP up) when I rebooted again chkdsk did the 3 stage check. When XP came up, it said some error message about F: when I looked at F: it showed it as empty. The rest of my partitions looked okay. so I rebooted chkdsk found tons of problems with my F: and fixed them. I don't remember the types, but it wasn't the usual cross link stuff, it said something about Master Fiel Record or something, but when XP loaded I checked F: and all the files were there.

So I pulled out my Spinrite CD, SMART on both on my HD's showed them as fine, on one while scanned it got stuck on a sector, I let it run for hours and it made little headway. I assume it was doing something as I saw the bit count go up, but it never went past 81% so I exited Spinrite and ran it again. All my drives tested out fine.

My initial thought is it's PSU related, I have a regular Thermaltake, I'm not getting any other problems, like I can play Stalker and it seems to be fine. Also the lock ups, and the chkdsk stuff just started happening. Not sure, but when chkdsk runs the 3 stage scan is that a sign of problem? The regular cdkdsk doesn't bother me, but this one takes forever and seems to be doing a lot more.

What should I do to test the HD to make sure it's not the problem before I RMA it to Western Digital. Also what other sort of tests should I run overall? My guess is it has to be either the HD or the PSU. System has been running for months with no issues

I'm a bit confused what to try next.

 

[Fardringle]

Western Digital has a drive diagnostic tool available for download on their web site that you will want to run before you request an RMA on the drive.

 

[QueBert]

WD diagonostic program says the drive is fine, On Track Data Manager says there's a file structer problem, but the program is old maybe it doesn't work well with NTFS? I'm running Spinrite on level 5 (highest level) while I'm at work. But I don't think it's the HD.

interestly enough Disk Doctor is saying my E: is bad but isn't elaborating on what's bad about it. I don't know what else to use to scan the E: patition to find out.

anyone have ideas? I'm about to break down and buy a new MB, not sure it's the problem but I really am out of ideas.

 

[Alopez777]

QueBert,

I HIGHLY recommend u backup any data that is important to you on both partitions and do a LOW LEVEL FORMAT on the drive......

1 of 2 possibilities here:

Either MBR was corrupted

or

HD is and will take a dump SOON!

NOTE: I wouldn't take for granted those HD diagnostic utils from manufacturer (eg. WD tool) as they are basic software tool to detect basic HD problems. WD requires you to perform the test as a PRE- RMA request diagnostics...

A low level format should pick up any problems those diagnostics tools don't detect.

good luck.

alan

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Over the years, I have seen many oddball hdd problems caused by failing and/or low voltage on the rail of the PSU. I would check that out before getting a new MB or hdd.

 

[QueBert]

humm running Spinrite on level 5 seemed to bring out the error, I didn't let it finish but on my 320 gig HD I had gotten 52 cabling errors, don't know exactly what this error means. I would assume it means a bad cable (SATA) but I've never heard of a program that can detect a bad cable *shrug* of course Spinrite's web site seems to have zero info on what the errors in the program means.

I switched the SATA cables on my drives and am running level 5 again, if the drive that tested fine yesterday gives me cabling errors today with the cable from the drive that was reporting errors I guess I figured it out. If not, back to square one