New HDD

[IainM]

Hey,

My Samsung Spinpoint is dieing on me i think..

I've only had it for 6 Months and everytime i do something it makes a terrible grinding noise.

Am going to get a new one to replace it as i don't want to take any chances..

Any advice?

Thanks,

Iain.

EDIT:

I just done a benchmark on the driver and it's getting a transfer rate of 25MB/s..

Seems slow to me but i don't know nout about HDD's

[Thorsson]

1. Back up your data
2. RMA the HDD

[danroyle]

before you rmqa it check teh samsung site see if they have a diagnostic tool to run on the drive (not sure if they do WD and such have one)

run the test first then take it back to the shop or E-tailer if it failsn this test

also do simple things like change the cable for a new one make sure its not damaged etc
then do as thorson says

[peterb]

Backup the dat first before you start running any diagnostic tests. Oh, and before you do anything else BACK UP YOUR DATA!

[ajones]

Backup the dat first before you start running any diagnostic tests. Oh, and before you do anything else BACK UP YOUR DATA!

You trying to suggest he back up his data first?...

[Mit321]

Guys you forgot to mention to him to BACK UP HIS DATA lol

[peterb]

You trying to suggest he back up his data first?...

Something like that!! However the point is that if his drive is about to fail, there is little point faffing about testing it to see if it going to fail or not.

Disk drives are cheap as chips, so if it is suspect, shut down the computer, get a second drive (either internal or in a caddy) and clone the suspect one. Once that has been done, and the backup verified, then is the time to start messing about with diagnostic tools. If the disk is OK, nothing lost - if it is about to go TU, then the data is safe.

Thorssen was spot on in the second post.

[Mit321]

Well you don't need diagnostic tools to realize something is wrong when it makes crunching sounds

[[GSV]Trig]

Back up, back up now!!!

[Mit321]

LOL me thinks hes got the message by now

[IainM]

How would you suggest backing up?

Just using the backup tool intergrated into windows?

EDIT:

Also,

If i was to buy an identical HDD and then just copy the data over to it would it boot?

[Mit321]

I've always wondered that about the identical drive thing.....

[peterb]

How would you suggest backing up?

Just using the backup tool intergrated into windows?

EDIT:

Also,

If i was to buy an identical HDD and then just copy the data over to it would it boot?

Yes, the windows backup will backup the system and or selectively backup your data - you can back-up to a USB based hard drive. You can then do a basic reinstall of the OS and then restore the system backup over it.

Copying the disk using normal copy tools will not give you a bootable disk because yoiu won't copy disk areas that are outside the filesystem - particularly the master boot record and the partition table data.

You need to make a logical bit by bit copy of the disk, and the easiest and cheapest way is to download a linux live CD (Knoppix or Ubuntu) and us the dd command from a terminal. It needs a little understanding of how Linux names its disks but teh basic command is dd if=source drive of=destination drive when the source and destinations will be something like /dev/hda and /dev/hdb. (the actual drive letters will vary depending on whether they are IDE or SATA, and which channels they are plugged into - post back if you want more info)

Having cloned the disk, you can then install that as the boot disk, and the system will be identical to what it was on the old disik.

[RoBe]

acronis is good if you're wanting to clone a drive. I cloned the data off a 150gb hdd to a 250gb samsung drive and i only had to change the boot order in the bios to get it working.

[KiMi-Tech]

As everybody has said back up your data now! then buy a western digital aaks harddrive.

[IainM]

OK..

Only problem that i have is that i haven't got a spare HDD..

So it looks allthough to RMA it i'm gonna have to copy the data over to another HDD.. Meaning i'm gonna have to buy another hard drive anyway..

Since it looks allthough i'm going to buy another do you think it would be worth buying an identical driver nad then putting them both into raid?