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how to test hard drive for fault?

T

toronado455

Member
Been having a problem that I believe may be a bad hard drive. Sometimes the hard drive activity light will light up solid - not even flickering - and the system becomes unresponsive. Seems totally random and can happen while I'm using the system or the system is just idle. And it can also happen during POST before any OS has loaded and I'll get a Boot Failure message from the BIOS. After pressing the reset button, the HD activity light eventually goes off and the system boots normally. I've tested running both Linux and Windows and the same problem happens in either OS.

Is there a way to test the drive for some sort of fault?
 
First thing you should do is to make a backup of all your data from that hard disk drive.

After that, you can start troubleshooting: first look at SMART parameters, then you could use a diagnostic software from the HDD manufacturer. Also, try with another SATA cable.
 
How do I look at the SMART parameters?

Some more observations:

There will be a steady HDD activity light when the drive is unresponsive (as I stated previously). Also, sometimes there will be a flashing HDD activity light. I'm talking about a steady, regular, on-off pulse, not the normal flickering that happens with drive activity. This pulsing light appears to be some sort of trouble indicator or warning of some kind. It isn't the sort of thing that could be caused by drive activity.

When the drive becomes unresponsive there is a "click" sound from the drive.
 
toronado455 said:
How do I look at the SMART parameters?

Some more observations:

There will be a steady HDD activity light when the drive is unresponsive (as I stated previously). Also, sometimes there will be a flashing HDD activity light. I'm talking about a steady, regular, on-off pulse, not the normal flickering that happens with drive activity. This pulsing light appears to be some sort of trouble indicator or warning of some kind. It isn't the sort of thing that could be caused by drive activity.

When the drive becomes unresponsive there is a "click" sound from the drive.
Click to expand...
Get CrystalDiskInfo to check SMART status.
 
To see SMART parameters you can use Disk Utility in Linux. Or HD Tune in Windows. Or other utilities.

It could also be a problem with the motherboard (but the "click" sound usually points to a faulty HDD). Do you have other hard disk drives in that PC?
 
Thanks for the responses. The PC has 4 IDE drives. The drive that I originally suspected was at fault, the OS drive, may not be the problem after all. I ran Crystal Disk Info and it found no problems with that OS drive, but did find some issues on another drive which I then disconnected. After that, the machine ran fine all day long without becoming unresponsive, or any HDD click sounds, or any weird HDD light things happening.

I have since reconnected that drive and deleted its partition. I'm now testing with the drive reconnected but unformatted to see what happens. So far, the only thing bad that happens is I get a steady-on HDD light for about the first 11 seconds or so at bootup, then the light goes off any everything is OK.

A steady-on HDD light during the early phase of POST for 11 seconds does not seem normal to me, and does not occur with that drive disconnected.

However, I haven't really ruled out that the problem could be on the IDE channel that the drive is using. I would need to try that same drive on a different IDE connector (or a different drive on the same IDE connector) and see what happens.
 
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I ended up narrowing down the problem to one IDE cable. Becuase, after changing that one cable, the problems stopped and have not recurred. Anyone else ever experience similar simptoms being resolved by replacing an IDE cable?
 
toronado455 said:
I ended up narrowing down the problem to one IDE cable. Becuase, after changing that one cable, the problems stopped and have not recurred. Anyone else ever experience similar simptoms being resolved by replacing an IDE cable?
Click to expand...

I haven't had/used an IDE (!) drive in ages, do you mean SATA?

If so, yes I already encountered this problem, SATA connectors, especially the cheap ones which often come with boards are extremely prone to problems especially if you plug/unplug them a few times. They have a very short life-span, basically unplug them 10x or so and you might want to replace it. (The best are the ones with the metal clips).
 
toronado455 said:
IDE. It's an older computer with four IDE ports, and six IDE drives. Running OpenFiler NAS.
Click to expand...

I remember when they began adding SATA-150 ports into the motherboard mix. It was around 2003. So that is definitely an old computer. Maybe my 2007 flagship motherboard had one or two IDE plugs in addition to SATA-II ports.

I still have IDE drives in external "IDE-to-USB" Thermaltake boxes. Thermaltake doesn't even make that model anymore.

EVEN SO!! Troubleshooting a 7-to-10-year-old system -- that's something I'd like to see more of in these forums!! No less a challenge and addition to shared troubleshooting experience!

And now I'm thinking about purging my four parts-locker chests of old stuff -- like about four lbs of IDE ribbon cables . . . :\

If you need any, I probably have several that were never used -- shielded, 18' to 24" long, I think . . .

Don't get me wrong, though! My first server was a '93 486 system that was still running in 2003. The second was a 1997 "Seattle" SE440BX motherboard and Pentium II -- from 2003 to 2009.
 
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BonzaiDuck said:
I remember when they began adding SATA-150 ports into the motherboard mix. It was around 2003.
Click to expand...
I have a ASUS P4PE motherboard (currently not using) which has two IDE ports and two SATA ports. Unfortunately I've never been sucessfull getting the SATA ports working on that motherboard.

The one with the four IDE ports is a MSI 6380E KT3-Ultra-ARU. The two extra IDE ports are for motherboard RAID, but you can use them as regular IDE ports with a single master drive on each port. That's what I'm doing, and then letting OpenFiler do software RAID.

I've got some even older hardware and I really should start getting rid of it. 🙂 I've got an old motherboard with a single ISA slot below the PCI slots. One day I found a new, unopened Adaptec ISA SCSI card in my closet and put it in and it works fine. I used to have a SCSI scanner which I used with that system, got rid of the scanner, but still have my SCSI SyQuest EZ135 in case I ever want to use it. LOL

I've been building new systems lately, so I have less use for the old stuff now.
 
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