Is my hard drive hosed?

[Dannnn]

Hi,

I've had a strange problem for a while, with Windows resetting occasionally without warning. Most of the time it works fine. I ran chkdsk /r, and got stuck at 11% of stage 4. It does the same if I boot from my spare hard drive, so I guess it can't be a software problem. The seagate diagnostic tools (run from a boot CD) hang as soon as they start the quick or the full disc check.

Seems fairly clear there's a hardware problem. Before I get a replacement drive... is there a way to check that it is the drive at fault and not the controller/motherboard? Some more sophisticated diagnostic software, perhaps?

(Ideally I'd test the drive in another PC, but I don't really have access to one.)

The drive is a SATA Barracuda 7200.8 and the motherboard an Asus A8V.

thank you for your time!

 

[Lord Evermore]

Run the diagnostics on the spare hard drive with the same cable and controller. If it runs fine on that drive, then the other one is likely failing in some way. You can also use chkdsk from the Recovery Console on the Windows XP or 2k CD. Also test it with other cables and on alternate ports on the mainboard.

I'd also suggest trying Maxtor's PowerMax, I've had more luck over the years getting it to actually run, whereas most of the other brand utilities give me issues hanging and not loading. It may or may not actually detect the drives on newer chipsets though.

 

[Dannnn]

Thanks for the suggestions! Trying each in turn:

The hard drive with the errors is SATA and the spare is PATA, so I can't try the working hard drive with the same controller.

chkdsk from the recovery console also gets stuck at 11%

switching cables and to the other channel of the VIA SATA controller didn't make a difference

Maxtor PowerMax didn't even start - it just hung on the opening screen.

I then tried connecting the SATA drive to the Promise SATA controller on the motherboard, and then booting from my spare PATA drive and running chkdsk. It worked, finding a fixing a few cluster errors. I swapped the SATA drive back to the VIA controller and chkdsk still hanged.

So... perhaps there's something very odd wrong with the VIA controller. Do you think it's safe for me to ignore the VIA controller and move the SATA drive over to the Promise controller for good?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Very strange. You might want to use chkdsk with the /r switch, which will do a complete scan of the drive (or try some other manufacturer's diagnostics to see if they will work to do a complete scan; PowerMax won't work with newer chipsets and also wouldn't detect it on the Promise controller, other brands may have similar limitations). As long as no bad sectors are found, then it seems like it ought to be safe to use it on the Promise controller (as long as you've already got the drivers loaded in Windows so that it'll actually boot of course). There's a small chance this is an indication of a problem with the electronics on the hard drive which only manifests under certain conditions, but if it works fine and you don't have any problems with it on the Promise, then it doesn't seem like it'd be anything to worry about.

The Promise controller is probably connected via the PCI bus, so you may see some small differences in benchmark performance testing of drive throughput during burst transfers, but real world shouldn't make any difference you can see.

 

[Dannnn]

really appreciate your speedy reply

Hopefully I can boot into XP on the SATA drive on the VIA controllers, install the Promise drivers, swap the drive over onto the Promise controller and then try booting from it. But I've an awful feeling XP will throw a tantrum that it finds itself booting from a controller it didn't expect, in which case I guess I'll need to run a repair install.

When/if I can get this to work I'll run chkdsk /r and whatever other diagnostics I can find.

As I'm one of those sensible people who run daily backups, I've nothing to lose if the drive fails catastrophically (except time, expense, aggravation, hair...)

Will let you know how it goes!

 

[Lord Evermore]

As long as the Promise controller is enabled and Windows detects it, you can install the drivers for it, then move the drive over to that connection and it ought to boot fine.

 

[Dannnn]

Thought you might be interested in a follow-up: after working for a month or so wired to the Promise controller, I started to get sector errors on the drive. I've bought a replacement drive, ghosted everything across, and it seems to work fine. So perhaps you were right, and it was some kind of weird issue with the drive electronics.

In any case, I think I'll take advantage of that Seagate warranty...