Hard Drive Help

Nichololas

I have an 120gb seagate hard drive and it's recently started to act up on me.

When booting the computer it now stops for about 45 seconds on a black screen right after the Windows loading screen. This in itself is annoying. Also I'm noticing that folders and desktop are taking a little bit extra to load up. This happened before and I used Disk Defrag which cleared the problem up. I tried running Disk Defrag but it cuts to Non Responding when I try and use it and then I get a windows error. I also get a non responding sign and windows error when I try and check the hard drive in System Information. Can someone please help me. I can reformat but I'd rather avoid that.

Also i'm running Windows XP sp2.

Khannie

Run a thorough scandisk (one that scans the surface). Your hdd could be on its way out, and politely warning you before it does

Optikus

I had similar problems recently with my seagate, tryed loads of different things in the end i got pissed off with it , backed up my data a did a reformat and fresh install seems to have solved the problem and everything runs nice and smooth, although it may be a bit extreame for some, but at least it worked.

StRiKeR

go to maxtor site and download the hdd utilitiy and run a test on the drive! have you heard any weird sound from the drive when its not responding?

Nichololas

Nope I don't hear and weird or unusual sounds. Just finished the scandisk it didn't come up with any errors though. Tried the disk defrag option after that and it just went to non responding again.

I'll get the maxtor utility then (thanks for the tip).

Optikus

StRiKeR wrote:

go to maxtor site and download the hdd utilitiy and run a test on the drive! have you heard any weird sound from the drive when its not responding?

Why Maxtor if they make their programs as good as their Hard Drives it could cause more damage.. surley Seagate have their own ultilities for this

Nichololas

Yep, Seagate do have their own hard drive utilities (I just found them). I figured it would be better to run a seagate diagnostic than a maxtor one since my drive is a seagate.

There's a note on the bottom of the Seagate Online diagnostic (runs on browser plugins) that says:
SeaTools requires an Intel-compatible system. At this time, only Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported by SeaTools Online.

Does this mean that it will only run on Intel systems running Windows or does it mean EITHER of them? I'm running AMD so this isn't very helpful if it's Intel only.

Optikus

I think Seatools Desktop the lastest version 3.**** should be ok, even if tis not compatible its not going to do any damage, so its worth a try.

kmb

Seatools is for amd too,all that it is saying is that its windows only i.e.win98,me etc.

regds kieran

Nichololas

Um ok I've just finished running the Seagate diagnostic tools. Took a while because I had to put floppy drive back into case and find two spare diskettes. The two partitions on the hard drive failed the test - confirming what I thought. Now what? Is reformat the only option?

kmb

Standard reformat probably wont do.You may need to do a low level format which brings drive back to factory condition .ie writes zeros and ones on it.I think you need a diferent seatools disk for this.Put in your seagate model and it will list available downloads.
If you have a abit cd it is also on this.

Regards kieran

deckie27

Is there any warranty left of the disk?
They used to give 3 years.

Dec

StRiKeR

the maxtor one works for all drives, every hdd works off the same pricinple if you think about it, every hdd controller are working off the same way, unless if you are using scsi, i used the maxtor tools on various make of hdd's and found that it is very helpfull, i ran that on a seagate drive which found the problems and fixed it, and the seagate tools didnt even see the drive!

Optikus

kmb wrote:

Standard reformat probably wont do.You may need to do a low level format which brings drive back to factory condition .ie writes zeros and ones on it.I think you need a diferent seatools disk for this.Put in your seagate model and it will list available downloads.
If you have a abit cd it is also on this.

Regards kieran

I agree, if your having no luck with Seatools or Maxtor utillities, then a Low Level format is the way..just make sure you back up all needed data.

kmb

Just a quick one....Did you try changing the ide cable?Swop it with the cdrom or dvd for testing.

leeroybrown

I presume you went through the full range of scan's, surface checks, etc. I've never used SeaTools myself but based on past experience with similar tools it should have told you what course of action it needed to take to remidy the problems. If it needs to perform low level fixes (such as marking bad blocks) then you'll need a full format but otherwise you probably just need to repartition and reinstall.

deckie27 wrote:

Is there any warranty left of the disk?
They used to give 3 years.

Any Seagate drive sold after June 1st (I'm about 95% certain that was the date) this year was automatically upgraded to a 5 year warranty by Seagate.

StRiKeR wrote:

the maxtor one works for all drives, every hdd works off the same pricinple if you think about it, every hdd controller are working off the same way, unless if you are using scsi, i used the maxtor tools on various make of hdd's and found that it is very helpfull, i ran that on a seagate drive which found the problems and fixed it, and the seagate tools didnt even see the drive!

Up to a point every hard drive is the same but they are proprietary parts and their underlying workings may not be perfectly abstracted. While using the Maxtor diagnostic tool may work fine, there is a Seagate alternative that eliminates the minor possibility of damage and has no possible effect on your warranty.

Nichololas

Ok thanks for all your help. I'll try the Maxtor utility (which one specifically) since you said it fixed your problem - the seagate one only seems to scan to see if there IS one.

If that doesn't work, well, I've already made preparations to back up everything needed. Thanks again.

Nichololas

I just finished running the full scan in PowerMax. Unfortunately it didn't show up any problems and Past all the tests I threw at it (I know it sounds weird, but it's not when you know theres something wrong with it). I'll begin backing up stuff tomorrow and start a low level format. Thanks for all your help anyways.