Wierd hard disk problem

[ChrisOh]

Hey all, today I noticed a problem with my hard disk. It would take horribly long times to do anything disk intensive, even moving files. It would eventually do it but it would take al ong time and make swooshing sounds while doing it. The IDE activity light is always on while doing it. It is a 75GXP 30GB and I've been using it for a while, It is different from the click of death though. I have no clue what it could be. I have WinXP, how do I scan for bad sectors?

Chris

 

[sohcrates]

go to ibm's site and download the drive fitness utility. it will tell you whether your HDD is on its last legs or not

 

[ChrisOh]

i cant run that since I have to boot from a floppy and I've done away with those =P

 

[sohcrates]

ahhh. well, that's kinda important to run that if you have any plans of RMA'ing the hard disk

try this for scanning then:

Open Windows Explorer.
Right-click the drive you want to check, and select Properties from the context menu.
Select the Tools tab.
Under Error Checking, click Check Now.
If you want the scan to automatically attempt to make repairs or check the disk for bad sectors, select those options and click Start.

 

[ChrisOh]

I RMA'd 3 75GXP's so far, I dont wanna do this one, I'll try scanning it now, thanks

 

[KevinMU1]

Actually, you could probaby make a bootable DOS CD and put the files you need on that... just a suggestion.

I keep my floppy around just for reasons like this, there is no good reason NOT to include one in any system, and they have their uses from time to time. Personally, I'd rather be able to have the ability to run my HDD diagnostics software... but that's just me.