My hard drive might be dying. I need to verify

[jtfunkymojo]

View attachment 5249

Is my hard drive dying?
I've been getting really strange disk performance lately.

The screen shot was taken while I copied a folder from one location to another location on the same drive.

The model is
WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1

 

[Joe C]

you can download Data Lifeguard for DOS, burn the .iso to a bootable disk and boot your pc with it to run the diagnostic program to determine the health status of the drive.
WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD Caviar Green / GP


WD green drives have issues:

This series of WD drives with mode namel "EARS" use the new Advanced Format 4k sectors.

To take advantage of this new technology, you need to take some steps first. If you do not do this, your disk will be very slow! This goes for everybody that have these drives in any kind of configuration.

Do you have a Western Digital "Green" drive? Read this! - MPC Club Community Board

 

[jtfunkymojo]

you can download Data Lifeguard for DOS, burn the .iso to a bootable disk and boot your pc with it to run the diagnostic program to determine the health status of the drive.
WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD Caviar Green / GP


WD green drives have issues:


Do you have a Western Digital "Green" drive? Read this! - MPC Club Community Board

Thanks, but I thought that method was only needed if you ran windows XP and that the initial formatting by windows 7 would solve the problem.

On the drive, it says "All other OS configurations - drive is ready for use as is".

I haven't gotten to running the diagnostic test, yet.

 

[trynreadme]

You might try Steve Gibson Spinrite. It's not too expensive. And from what I have heard it works wonders on not only finding out if your HDD is dying or not, but will also fix, or tell your HDD about corrupted sectors.

 

[jtfunkymojo]

You might try Steve Gibson Spinrite. It's not too expensive.

Are you kidding me?

That software costs $89 (As seen here: http://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm), which is more than what my drive even costed.

 

[trynreadme]

lol, so purchasing 2 HDDs will be 178, or you can get Spinrite, fix that one and any future HDD issues. Cost-benefit, it's not me with the issue, I was just making a suggestion. Plus you don't lose any, possibly important, software and documents.

 

[MindoverMaster]

$89 is not too expensive? Sorry, but we aren't all millionaires. All Spinrite does is erase those sectors. It will not help his drive from failing. Sure, you can delay a few months, but it will die.

 

[carnageX]

Price on Spinrite really shot up...

I've used v5 before, and it's an amazing piece of software for HDD recovery.

Have you tried running a chkdsk /f /r on the drive yet? Did anything come back on the WD Diagnostic software? Run a chkdsk /f /r first, and see if that helps or not. If that doesn't help, look to see what the WD diagnostic software says, to see if there's bad sectors or the drive is dying.

@MoM: Spinrite doesn't erase bad sectors. You can never get rid of bad sectors. Spinrite flips every bit in the drive (from 0 to 1, and from 1 back to 0), and makes sure each bit is good. It blocks off bad sectors so they are never attempted to be used or accessed so problems don't occur.

Yes, if the drive is physically failing, Spinrite won't be able to do anything but prolong how long it is alive, but that's what Spinrite is mainly for: data recovery so you can attempt to backup the data and such.

 

[trynreadme]

on top of that you don't need to be a millionaire to buy something that is $89, just saying. Plus it will prolong it as long as the remainder of the drive is fine. If the rest of the sectors are good, and they could be fine for years to come, you will have essentially doubled or even tripled the life of your HDD. If you are having speed issues, like this guy is, due to faulty sectors it will correct those issues.

 

[-RockMan-]

Price on Spinrite really shot up...

@MoM: Spinrite doesn't erase bad sectors. You can never get rid of bad sectors. Spinrite flips every bit in the drive (from 0 to 1, and from 1 back to 0), and makes sure each bit is good. It blocks off bad sectors so they are never attempted to be used or accessed so problems don't occur.

Yes, if the drive is physically failing, Spinrite won't be able to do anything but prolong how long it is alive, but that's what Spinrite is mainly for: data recovery so you can attempt to backup the data and such.

I hope this isn't being rude, but if his drive has a few bad sectors, could he attempt to zero fill his whole hdd ?
Sure it may not do much at all, but it might give him a shortt amount of time to get his new hdd very soon.

I think one of the old western digital format tools may work or seagate tools.
If the utility makes a determination midwat through scanning or filling the drive and says it will fail, there is nothing more he can do.

If I were him, I would put that 89.99 towards a new 500gb, the prices for the hdds are bouncing up and down so he may find one on sale towards graduation month.