Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
I'm trying to check my hard drives health, but every time I open an app to do so, I get a complete system freeze. I've tried using HDD Life and seatools, but have had no luck with either. Same problem with both. It requires me to switch off the computer using the switch on the power supply - even the power button doesn't work.
I've tried leaving the computer after, but even after an hour it's still the same. Nothing can be done when this occurs - no mouse movement and CTRL + ALT + DELETE doesn't work either.
Any ideas? I've used HDD life before and never encountered the problem.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Does your computer work normally otherwise? Have a look in your BIOS and see if you have SMART turned on. It shouldn't cause health checks to crash though if it's off. Perhaps try running the free version of HD Tune and see if that works.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Computer works 100% otherwise. Although I do get a strange noise when turning on and off - a single click when turning on which didn't happen before I installed my barracuda and when turning off its like a scraping noise that lasts maybe half a second. I'll try and record it. Any ideas where to upload it?
I'll check the bios when I get home.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrRockliffe
Computer works 100% otherwise. Although I do get a strange noise when turning on and off - a single click when turning on which didn't happen before I installed my barracuda and when turning off its like a scraping noise that lasts maybe half a second. I'll try and record it. Any ideas where to upload it?
I'll check the bios when I get home.
Can upload to Youtube. Agree with the BIOS. Check if the SMART is enabled. And if you can, check several programs that can read SMART (wonder why Windows can't).
HDDScan or HDTune. While you are there, you can do a quick or even a long health check as well (if you say prior to the installation of the HDD weren't the strange noises you have now).
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
I'll check when I get home. Weird thing is I'm able to check smart on my other hard drive without any problems.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Checked my BIOS for SMART and it was enabled. Tried the programmes listed and the problem persists. I have no idea what's wrong with it, and most annoyingly I can't check it for errors!
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
SmartFan is another useful utility that can read the SMART data.
Have you done a CHKDSK?
Is this drive the boot drive or an additional data drive? You could perhaps try changing the SATA port it's plugged into, or even the SATA cable if you have a spare handy.
What other drives do you have in the system?
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Its my main boot drive. I've got another 500gb blue, but no more sata cables.
I haven't done a CHKDSK either yet.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
CHKDSK came back clean. Still can't run the other programmes though. When using seatools it freezes on searching for ATA devices.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Have you tried an HDTune scan?
I'm inclined to think the drive/cable/ports are dodgy somehow and a standard disk test is pushing it over the edge, but hard to say.
You can also check the performance on HDTune and compare to other people's results on the same drive. If your result is way off then that's also an indicator of it having issues.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Even with different cable?
How about to try to read SMART under a different OS? Maybe even a liveOS.
Did the benchmark results compared to similar drives shown anything abnormal?
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Wouldn't open before, but after a reboot it now does. Doing an error check now etc.
Getting 170 MB read speeds consistent with it.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
If you can't try a different cable at the moment, at least try another port on your motherboard. I've had motherboards where certain ports mostly work fine but cause problems with certain things, whilst other ports will work perfectly.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
I've done that, and used the cable I use for my WD Blue but no luck.
Re: Freezing when attempting to check hard drive health?
Could it be because I have Mac installed on a separate hard drive, so when it attempts to scan it it freezes? I'll try unplugging the other hard drive and then see if it works.