Harddrive issue...

[mack]

Okay, last month we had a power surge and my PC shut off. When I booted it up, it detected no harddrive (primary) which is a Western Digital Raptor HDD (150GB). BIOS did NOT detect the hdd. When I shut down the computer for the day, went to work, etc, came back - computer booted perfect.

Now, it did this AGAIN but simply shutting it off and turning it back on (restart didn't work) helped it. I noticed that Windows Event Log was reporting "Bad Block/Sector" type errors. I did a HDD diagnostics scan, and everything came back fine. I can't remember 100% but I do believe there was two bad sectors.

I've been having these random freezes where my ENTIRE computer just STOPS. Not sure if this is hdd related, or what. I noticed whenever Visual Studio AUTOSAVED, it would freeze up for 10-15 seconds. It wouldn't freeze all the time. But the sad thing is, I store all my programming on a secondary harddrive (and mirror it to the external)... I don't know if VS just autosaves temp files to the primary Hard drive.

So now, today, I woke up and my entire computer was frozen. I tried to get it to come back to life, ctrl+alt+delete didn't work, nothing worked. The mouse moved, but Windows Explorer crashed. So I reboot, right before the "Starting Windows" screen and nothing shows up - just black. Eventually Windows 7 "repair" mode activates and asks me to repair. But it can't find the primary harddrive partition.

I just burned Ultimate Boot Disc Tools 4.11, and I am about to try that and then burn WD Diagnostics boot disc.

My questions:
Is my hard drive failing? If so, this would be my 3rd Western Digital hard drive failure.
Does the random lock ups and freezing have to do with the harddrive failing?
Suggestions on repair tools?

 

[Ste]

Probably is failing, just make sure you have back ups of important data and RMA it if still under warranty.

If not under warranty just back up data and wait for it to die, or replace it.

 

[Hefemeister]

I would also try a chckdsk /r from an OS disk.
But yeah it is failing. Have all your data backed up.

Were all of the WD drives raptors? They do run hot and have a higher failure rate.

 

[mack]

I would also try a chckdsk /r from an OS disk.
But yeah it is failing. Have all your data backed up.

Were all of the WD drives raptors? They do run hot and have a higher failure rate.

No they were not. I don't even think it's more than 3 years old. This is my first and last raptor. So spend top dollar for a small amount of speed and they die faster? Wow. Great..

What are other good brands? Samsung? Maxtor? Seagate?

 

[Hefemeister]

Samsung is my second choice of Hard drives. If you want the ultimate in speed then look at picking up a ssd drive.

 

[Ste]

For most parts I just purchase one warranty periods, You can find drives with 5 year warranties if you look.

Im pretty sure the raptor is a 5 year warranty, so you can just rma it.

 

[mack]

Samsung is my second choice of Hard drives. If you want the ultimate in speed then look at picking up a ssd drive.

I'm so far behind in times, lol. I didn't know SSD's were for desktops now... thought they were for just laptops.

Problem is they are so small. What brand do you recommend? How much faster are they? How reliable?

Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow V-Series SNV125-S2BD/64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) Desktop bundled accessory kit - Solid State Disks

But it says SATA II. I don't know what my Asus A8N32 supports... Would it even be compatible?

I don't want to spend over $200 on a hard drive.

I may just go with a Samsung 300 GB hdd 7200 rpm.. no more 10k hdds.

For most parts I just purchase one warranty periods, You can find drives with 5 year warranties if you look.

Im pretty sure the raptor is a 5 year warranty, so you can just rma it.

I will if I can't repair the issues.

Wow, here is it:
Newegg.com - Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
10/11/07 I purchased it.. Customer Award winner and then 1 year later everyone says how much it really sucks.

I'll never buy WD anymore.

 

[Hefemeister]

They are still too expensive for my taste but if I was to buy one it would be this one.
Newegg.com - Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M080G2R5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Solid State Disks

I am waiting for $2.50 a gb. or $200 for 80gb.

 

[mack]

I think I am going to buy a good Samsung HDD, RMA this, and make it my secondary drive.

Ok, SWEET! I managed to get Win7 to boot. Login, and it says "Application failed to start properly. " for explorer.exe.. awesome.

So I did chkdsk, sfc /scannow, but nothing works. CHkDSK reports 8kb bad sectors, but thats it.. no repair attempts.

SFC /scannow just says "There is a pending system repair. System reboot is required" (something along those lines)

Any ideas?

 

[Ste]

Theres really nothing you can do, the HD is on its way out. chkdsk and other utilities rarely are able to do anything at this point.

Read the first reply to this thread again.