Computer is fooked, help!

Zascar

My pc is acting really really weird. I've had some problems in the past but not like this. Firstly, i have two hard drives in my pc. The C Drive for Windows Xp, and the E: drive for all my files. It's a brand new 2TB Seagate Barracuda, I got it about 3 months ago after my last hard drive started going crazy. Anyway all of a sudden my pc starts acting funny, slow, hanging etc. I usually leave it on all the time but when I restarted it it started making some weird beeping noises. Like a truck backing up. Strangely sometime the beeps get progressively slower. It has started beeping as I type here.

So later then it starts asking me to do a chkdsk when I restart. A few times it took 20+ mins to do them. Here are some screenshots.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3dicmqjbic2u0nu/2012-12-02%2010.54.23.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4m9k1bhgxn8o2e8/2012-12-02%2010.55.30.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cuac2wwaki3pj62/2012-12-05%2022.31.54.jpg

So, after this happened a few times, now the drive won't recognise at all. I've tried disconnecting, changing sata port and cable but it won't show up

I've had weird problems before that a format got rid of, but I'm not sure this time. Can anyone suggest how I might start to try to troubleshoot this?
Thanks

Zascar

Quick update, I put my hand on the 2TB Seagate drive and it seemed like the beep was coming from it directly. It was definitely vibrating along with the beeps. Does anyone know what this means?

Freddy Smelly

the hard drive itself should not beep... ive never seen a speaker on a hard drive.

the motherboard beeps when hardware is faulty.

with your hard drive disconnected does the pc boot and run ok?

Zascar

Yeah it boots and runs fine at the minute - but does go weird from time to time. Fine now though. What I just did is rehouse the ram and the graphics card just in case, swapped the cables around and restarted. It did another chkdsk but was doing something different this time (video). I left it for ages and when I came back windows had booted but the drive was not being recognised.

Really annoyed if this is gone now. I have most of it backed up but not all. Doing some quick searching others seem to think it might be toast.

Are there any tools I can use to check the hard drive?

yoyo

I would guess the hard disk is on the way out, you can try and recover your files through a bootable linux disk, something like Ubuntu. Download and burn the ubuntu disc and boot off it on the computer, do not install but choose try Ubuntu. Hopefully when you get in you can mount the Windows filesystem and recover the files to another drive (such as the second disk or and external hard disk). You can confirm your suspicions by running a diagnostics on your drive using Seatools for Dos, another bootable application

Nick

Look at the smart data with CrystalDiskInfo. It will flag the drive if any parameters look dodgy.

I would never use a 2TB drive for an OS drive, if used heavily they are massively unreliable in my experience. Ive spent more time RMAing 2TB drives in the last few years than I care to remember...they just completely went downhill when they broke that barrier. I can tolerate some downtime on my data drives but I want my OS drive to be as reliable as possible.

riclad

This is good for recovering fies,even if filesystem is damaged on a drive,
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

same page photorec recovers photos,
better buy a new hd, make partition 1, OR 200gig, for os windows ,operating system,
other 2 partitions 100 or gig size.
IE each partition bout one third disk size.
Set old hd as drive 2 , slave drive.
TRY ubuntu or mint inux 10 livecd.
boot from cd,dont install to disk, backup important files
to a usb drive .
mint 10 fits on 1cdr ,google get mint 10 linux.

i think its risky to just have say one tb partition,
if windows crashes,filesysytem gets corrupted, it may be
hard to acess your data.Format DRIVE IN ntfs format if you are buying one.
i put most of my data on a 500gig external drive.

OR just use linux, backup files you need,then reformat the hardisk ,reinstall windows.
try reboot,hold f8, ten seconds,safe mode, directory service restore mode,
use arrows up,down, enter to acess safe mode menu when it appears.enter =confirm choice ,eg launch vga mode windows bootup in vga 800x600resolution .etc

zenno

The bios sounds off. Did you go into bios and set everything to default and try again ?. If you set the bios to defaults you might need to configure the hard drive settings in there as well.

Sounds like a corrupt bios to me but usually you can fix this by clicking set defaults in bios and restarting.

How old is this computer ?. Does the bios battery need replacing ?

Zascar

Thanks lads. Computer is less than a year old, a self build. Hard drive is only 3 months old so I'm amazed it would fail this quick. I have two other hard drives that are years old and have been working fine. I have win XP on one and Win 7 on the other, I occasionally alternate but mostly xp. The drive that seemed to have failed only has personal files on it - no OS.

I'll try resetting the bios - not sure how but I'll take a look - how should I reconfigure the E drive?

yoyo

Zascar wrote: »

Thanks lads. Computer is less than a year old, a self build. Hard drive is only 3 months old so I'm amazed it would fail this quick. I have two other hard drives that are years old and have been working fine. I have win XP on one and Win 7 on the other, I occasionally alternate but mostly xp. The drive that seemed to have failed only has personal files on it - no OS.

I'll try resetting the bios - not sure how but I'll take a look - how should I reconfigure the E drive?

To reset the bios shut down, unplug the computer and pop the motherboard bios battery out for a few mins (3 or 4 would be grand). This will erase the bios settings.
What do you mean reconfigure the E: drive? Recover the data off the damaged one?

Nick

riclad

try plugging drive in a different port last port, sata drives take drive with os windows on it as boot drive,
remove drive ,plug in new drive port 1 ,install os,
Then switch off pc,plug drive old one into port 3 or 4.
sata interface 4.
Theres no jumpers or switch on sat drives to set.
go to bios,set autodetect all drives.
try a linux cd livecd, or buy a 2.5inch sata caddy cost 12 euro , it sata is 3.5inch you,ll need a powered caddy
one with its own power supply.
CAN you try drive out in another pc.
SOME company drives are not reliable ,if you have 2tb,drive ,
make 4 partitions, less chance of losing all your data, put os on partition 1 300gig
whe plugging in drive, knock off pc, remove power cable from esb socket,
even when knocked off pc motherboard has power going thru it,
how did you switch from xp,to win 7 boot mode ?

in my experience ,pc beeps =
faulty device,component, eg hd or graphics card ,sound card,
or else ram chip,dimm is loose.
or drive is loose ,not plugged in properly .
i,m assuming motherboard is not faulty.
any pc or drive is covered under 2 year warranty under eu law.

i have 2 pcs, my external drive doesnt work on pc1 properly,
works fine on pc2 hp pc win7 pro pc2 is 2 years old.
i think its a software issue ,ie theres nothing wrong with the drive 300gig media drive.

Zascar

Thanks guys! Ok so I reset the bios/cmos by changing the jumper settings and then changing them back - when I booted it asked me did I want to reset - that worked grand.
So, I then plugged the 2TB E: drive back in and started up again - it came up with wanting to do a chkdsk - i assumed it was still buggered so I cancelled, but when I booted the drive is now accessible! I can read files fine

Hmmm. Not quite sure now. Is the disk damaged but I'm getting temporary access - or is the drive fine but reporting damage for some reason? I don't have a spare hard drive I'll have to get one - no other pc also but I could ask a friend and see if it works in his pc.

What would you guys do at this stage?

riclad

download ,install ,run cccleaner, it gets rid of temp,old files,garbage files,
if you power off pc,pc crashes ,windows will run chkdsk to clean up, get rid of temporary files.
run it for a few days, its probably fine.
google programs test hardrive, you can get free programs from drive manufacturer website to test the drive.
eg http://www.seagate.com/support/internal-hard-drives/
google how to test hardrive
Just cos chkdsk comes up doesn,t mean there,s any problem


with the hardrive.

try seatools for windows here
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

its designed for seagate or maxtor hds.if you have a seagate or maxtor hd.
if you have hitachi drive try hitachi drive fitness test

CHKDSK is for lost ,files or temp,duplicate files
its not a sign of a damaged or faulty drive normally.
there may be a few bad sectors on the drive ,thats normal.
windows writes temp files to hd for cacheing reasons,
it runs chkdsk if pc crashes or powers off suddenly,
ie non normal shutdown.

riclad

If that was my pc i,d reboot pc,,,let chkdsk do its job.
clean,delete old temporary, or orphan files.
when its finished it,ll boot up windows,
if theres 1000 s of files it may take 30 plus minutes to do this,
otherwise chkdsk will run every time you boot up pc
until you allow it to complete the clean up process.
you only need to do this once.