Dodgy HDD

[jim]

I've got a system here that won't boot into Windows anymore, just power cycles.

Tested the drive as a first port of call, and CHKDSK reports four unreadable file record segments and one dodgy index.

I'm more than happy to either swap it out, or fix the OS - question is whether it's worth it or not? If the drive is likely to fail in the near future, or do this again, then it's not worth the hassle. I've looked at the SMART data but without knowing what to look for, it's not a lot of use.

[mycarsavw]

Does it pass all the SMART tests?

Does it pass the drive manufacturer's tests?

I had two faulty drives that wouldn't even boot. I've had other drives that fail CHKDSK but have been fine since running CHKDSK/R - one, a 250Gb IDE drive has been up and running for 2+ years without issues.

It all comes down to how critical the data is and whether you can do without the machine while you wait for a fix.

[watercooled]

AFAIK most SMART programs will highlight any problems indicated by SMART data but you could post here if you're not sure, also run SMART +MFR tests like mycarsavw said.

[jim]

Well I've run a couple of disk scanning programs that have found nothing, and it came up as passed when I checked its SMART info. I just wasn't sure whether to trust them or not given that CHKDSK found so many problems when I ran it afterwards.

I guess it could just be a standard bad sector failure that's not a sign of impending doom, that just so happened to affect a critical windows file.

At the end of the day, nothing's critical - I just didn't want to risk having to do all this for a second time if the likelihood is that it's going to fail again. I guess I may as well get it up and running again and hope for the best then?

[watercooled]

CHKDSK /f checks for and fixes file system errors, and if other scanning tools find nothing I'd say it's probably 'just' a file system error rather than a disk surface error and BTW just one bad sector detectable by the OS is bad, just for reference. The error could have been caused by any number of reasons, from improper shutdowns to malware to cosmic rays but keep an eye out for any more errors. Keep in mind that if the drive passes the full MFR scan then it's unlikely to get replaced under warranty.

[jim]

Yeah I didn't think that was a good sign. I'm sure that the SMART status mentioned one unrecoverable reallocated sector (or something along those lines).

I'm not really fussed about the drive, it's only £30 for a replacement and I'm not footing the bill, so no big deal. I'm just trying to save myself effort, whether it's right now or in the long run

All the help is much appreciated, I'll just be optimistic and see what happens. I'm surprised really because it's a fairly new machine, and very low intensity usage. It just runs one software package automatically and isn't used all that frequently. Mind you, hard drives are fairly unpredictable things I guess. Who knows!

[watercooled]

Anything above 0 on the reallocated sector count isn't good so certainly keep an eye on it. There are external factors which can cause bad sectors, heat and shock are two if I'm not mistaken so it's not necessarily a drive fault but it would be worth checking it isn't running too hot.

[Behemoth]

My old work hprse Samsung 400 gig drive has just started devloping bad sectors, as someone rightly said hard drives are unpredictable !

I'd say its a corrupt os more so than a hard drive error. Have you run HDTune on the drive in question ?

[jim]

Well, it's now bitten the dust I think

WD Lifeguard Diagnostics quick test won't complete, HDTune Benchmark won't complete, HDTune also reporting damaged blocks.

I think it may be the end of the line for this plucky little 160GB Samsung.

[watercooled]

Strange SMART didn't give you more of a warning, just get anything important off it first, preferably by connecting it as a second drive in another computer or something just in case booting finishes it off. After getting anything important off it you could try saving the partition to an image so you could just copy it to another drive+expand it to fill space to get back up and running more quickly, I find Clonezilla (a bootable Linux distro) is really good for backing up/cloning partitions.

[pp05]

I've been getting this issue on my HD as well. Initially I thought it as Avira AV as I have heard it is responsible for chkdsk on win7 machines. So I uninstalled it and replaced it with avast.

But every few days I get the 'corrupt file system' error. You can only run chkdsk before windows boots, it asks this an awful lot. I click on FF and it won't open. It shuts down the Avast AV.

The other thing I noticed it would do a chkdsk and then go blank (as in just before it's suppose to load win7..) So I reboot and try repair, but of course win7 cannot find my sata drive, so I have to supply it with SATA driver from floppy. This takes care of problems for a few days before it asks me to chkdsk again. It's an old HD (4~5 years old), I'm like you Jim, considering grabbing a new one. Could be Windows too.

[peterb]

Hmm - four of five years old - I know some disks do go on for longer than that, but I'd sy you have had your moneys worth out of it, especially if you are getting these errors. Hard disks do re-map sectors during their life (the biggest remapping comes before the drive is shipped by the mfr to take out faulty sectors during manufacture - and those aren't reported in the SMART table )

If you can have a look at the SMART data that may give you a clue.