Hard Drive on its last legs!

netwhizkid

Hello,

The Hard Drive in my Dell Dimension 8400 a “ST3160023AS [Hard drive] (160.04 GB)” is slowly dieing, It all started Yesterday when I was logged on the internet using Firefox, iTunes and Outlook Express together. The PC froze up completely, (nothing new there for XP) so I unplugged it as you will and it came to the Windows Load screen and just kept loading with the XP bar whizzing across the whole time.

So I shut it off again and booted in under safe mode and ran my AVG free which found nothing despite it taking 2hours instead of the rudimentary 50mins. Ad-Aware found nothing but Spy-Bot found one piece of spyware nothing new as there is always some little piece of spyware to be found.

I shut down and restarted it and it worked normally and it was shutdown twice yesterday and worked since. I thought the Spyware found by Spybot was the culprit.

Now this afternoon, It would not start saying there was no Sata Drive to be found and I tried booting it from the Boot Sequence and nothing either, tried getting in under safe mode and yadda either, it seemed to suggest that the Hard Drive was gone. Anyway I booted into a OpenSUSE Linux Live DVD and the Hard Drive’s were present except I couldn’t access them, I can access them in Knoppix or Ubuntu though, can’t remember which TBH. After getting out of OpenSUSE, the pc started normally and I am on it now typing this. It looks to me as if the HD is dying and my first priority is to save my data. I am backing it up onto DVD’s this afternoon. I recently upgraded iTunes to version 7.02.16 and installed a new HP Photosmart C3180 all-in-one printer. I installed both of these on Saturday and my problems started yesterday.

I wonder does this look a case of hard drive failure or some corruption in windows? My plan of action is first to save my data, then tomorrow buy an External HD to do a better job of saving the Data and also possibly Buy Norton Ghost to save the pain of a new install when Dell replaces the HD (4yr next day on-site warranty). Any good freeware alternative to Norton Ghost?? Or how much should Norton Ghost cost?

Anyway thanks for reading this!

Cuddlesworth

Your hard-drive dropping and then being picked up from the bios might not be the hard-drives fault. Try it in a different machine, see how well it goes. Might be the board thats the problem.

zilog_jones

Look in the Event Viewer in Windows for any hard disk errors - it'll mention if it finds bad blocks. You can also scan for bad blocks in linux with the "badblocks" command - if it's the only or first disk in the pc try:

badblocks /dev/hda

If there's no bad blocks it won't say anything. It might take a while to run.

Also get SpeedFan - it'll show the SMART readings for the hard disk. If they're all OK (try the web thing on it) and there's no bad blocks the disk itself is probably OK.

netwhizkid

I did the online test with speed fan and everything seems okay so obviously my Hard Drive must be okay. Nothing has happened since so maybe this glitch might just go away.

As krazy_8s suggested it might be the Mobo that giving the trouble... I guess I'll just have to let it take its source and see from there.

zilog_jones

Maybe it's some power supply issue? Is SpeedFan showing the voltages?

bushy...

netwhizkid wrote:

.......
The PC froze up completely, (nothing new there for XP) so I unplugged it as you will .......

It sounds like you have done this a few times before , if you have that's probably why your hard disk is dying.

netwhizkid

bushy... wrote:

It sounds like you have done this a few times before , if you have that's probably why your hard disk is dying.

Not really maybe once a month I might have to do this, XP freeze regulary but thank god for Ctrl+Alt+Delete! The hard drive seems ok according to Speedfan but it is giving no Voltage reading. Whatever went wrong seems to have righted itself though. I am thinking that it mightn't have liked my printer at the start.

zilog_jones

SMART readings would report if the disk is "dying". Unplugging is certainly not going to kill your hard disk - this isn't the 1980s were HDDs had to have the heads parked manually - but it's still probably not the best way of doing things.

If you hold down the power button for a few secs it should turn off in most set-ups, otherwise the power button can be configured to do so in the BIOS.

I forgot your PC is a Dell. Programs like SpeedFan generally can't get the readings (voltages, temps, etc.) from Dell motherboards (also certain Compaqs and prob a lot of other branded PCs too), annoyingly.

Redisle

There actually happens to be a free hard drive analysis tool on http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ today. They give away software you would normally pay for for free with different things each day. I have installed this and it gives you your drive status and lots of other usefull info.. its really worth installing and see what it says about your hd! only 10 hours to download and activate this so hurry!

netwhizkid

When I have no choice I physically power off the PC by keeping the button pressed for a few seconds. Like Zilog said, I've know that since 1999.

I downloaded that free software from Giveaway of the Day, and it says my Hard Drive is 59% good.

Thanks for the help fellas!