My HDD really bad?

Hey folks,

Hope all is well. How can I thoroughly check if my HDD is really going "bad"? Are there any trusted programs you guys run to check the "health" of your HDD?

I currently have a fairly new, 3/4 month old Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB:

Spindle Speed: 7,200RPM
Formatted Capacity: 931.51GB
Platter Size: 2 x 500GB
Cache Size: 32MB
Model Number HD103SJ.

In the past few days Windows 7 (Home-64 bit) has been prompting "bad hard disc" warning and asking if I want to back up hard drive. Also, now, upon boot up, I get a system message asking if I want to backup drive. Followed by CHKDSK verifying 3 stages of "fixing" drive.

Thanks in advance.

Hello

Have you tried to run chkdsk? If you run that it should give error numbers fr any bad sectors etc. Note these down then you can do searches to see how bad the issue is.
Samsung do a really good service on returns. I had one go bad and received a new one within a week of sending it back.

Not sure how computer savvy you are, so aplogies if you know how to run chkdsk, if you don't know how:

1.Open "Computer" window
2.Right-click on the drive in question
3.Select the "Tools" tab
4.In the Error-checking area, click <Check Now>.

First things first:

Get an external drive and back up EVERYTHING off that disk IMMEDIATELY.
Then run things like CHKDISK and any other tools you might want.

If you suspect your drive is going or is bad, you ALWAYS want to get your data off BEFORE you start beating on it with diagnostic tools (which might cause it to give up the ghost).

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

CrystalDiskInfo is handy for identifying hardware issues with drives, though in reality it's mostly just reading the SMART data off them and formatting it nicely.

Thanks for info folks. Forgot to mention that I did run CHKDSK and was told nothing was wrong. However, I continue to get "Windows detected a hard disk problem...," and requesting

1. Start the backup process
2. Ask me again later
3. Don't ask me about this...again.
4. (Care to pull your hair out...j/k).

Luckily I backed everything up already. Just wondering now if I have a legit disk problem or software and such...

Thanks again.

If the drive is less than a month old, pull it and have the manufacturer replace it. Anytime Windows starts complaining about a drive I replace it immediately.

Drives are cheap, data is irreplaceable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.

You might find a utility program that will show you the SMART status of the drive. SMART is the drive's internal diagnostics, which should tell you how close the drive is to outright failure.

Also, most drive manufacturers offer free diagnostic tools you can download to test the drive. (Some might need to be put on a bootable DOS disk, though there may be ways to put them on a bootable USB flash drive or CD-R instead.)

But, yeah, a relatively new drive should not be causing errors. Back it up ASAP and look into getting an replacement from either the place of purchase or the manufacturer.

I use the SeaGate DOS HDD utility to check HHH. It's free and works well.

I had a similar situation with a hd in an xp box. I looked in the eventlog and noticed that there were hd error reports--at every logon iirc.

So I backed up and swapped the drive out. I put it in a different xp box--I mean it wasn't dead yet after all--and since then, nothing. It's new home has no complaints about it. It's been about 7-8 months now I think. ;shrug

It seems there's something significant to that story that's slipping my mind's grasp at the moment. If I remember I'll post it.

Other than Window's own Chkdsk the only other tool I would suggest is HD Tune which does have an error scanner as well as a way to display the SMART registers on that drive to see what is bad.

And back up, back up, back up before running the write testing.

Stole my post, Father, but that's ok, great minds and all that, right?

*waves*

Before you panic too much - try reseating the data and power connectors to the drive - both at the drive and also at the motherboard - its possible it could just be some corrosion or dirt on the connectors.
This could cause data read or write errors so it is possible there could be data corruption if this has been the problem. However, if a critical file has been corrupted you may need to reinstall affected applications or even windows.

On a related note...

If I buy a second hard drive how do I go about making it my primary drive, if my comp (yes a pre-built don't shoot me Father it was a couldn't pass up deal) did not come with a copy of windows? Do I have to buy a copy and just start over? And can I use the old drive as a storage drive(with an external backup) until it goes out?

Thanks folks for suggestion.

Within seconds of using HD Tune, as suggested by Father Xmas, the program said: "Read Error. Test Aborted". And the health menu states:"Raw Read Error Rate....(Status) Failed" And this message is highlighted in red.

Currently the Error Scan is running and showing "red" damaged areas.

Guess my drive is about to die...