Is my Hard Drive Faulty???

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bil_san1

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Oct 31, 2013
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Hi,

I'm using Acer Aspire 2930z.

Last night my laptop switched off due to no power and later I tried to switch on my laptop but the windows doesn't load. I tried to reinstall windows but it doesn't allow me to do that, So I went into fdisk option and tried to re-partition the hard drive. I have got 200+ gb hard drive but it only showed me 40 gb over there still I made partition again and tried to reinstall
the window. When I get in option to choose where I want to install windows it doesn't show me any hard drive (except the 10 gb acer on hidden hard drive).

So I took my laptop to a local shop and he formatted the hard drive for me through some software (I don't know which) and install windows on it by making one partition of 58 gb.
After windows installed I asked him to make one partition of the rest of the unallocated hard drive. He did so and after shut down I bring the laptop home.

After reaching home I switch on my laptop and it gives me an error Bootmgr is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart. I tried to fix this in Bios by selecting thehard drive as a first boot priority.But it didn't work.

So I re-install the windows. By deleting the rest of the partition he made earlier and formating the C drive.

After installing the windows I made one more partition of 57 Gb and checked both drives through check disk and the both volumes are clean.

My question is what went wrong with my laptop??

Should I make the partition of the rest of the unallocated hard drive??

And how can I check further to make sure that hard drive is safe??

Any opinion or information on it would be highly appreciated.

Regards
 
Solution
mjmacka
Sounds like your hard drive or some other component went bad... but i would be it's your hard drive.

Some OEM PC's have built-in diagnostics available before windows loads. Usually those are available by entering the Bios, boot menu or by hitting one of the "f" keys during boot. There are third-party diagnostics tools too made by hard drive manufacturers for testing hard disks.

If you run tests and find out it's the hard drive, that's an easy, inexpensive replacement. If the hard drive is bad, I would also go back to the computer shop and request a refund because they didn't do due diligence and missed a bad drive when they installed the OS.

Hard drives going bad is common, most last for 2-5 years depending on heat, ventilation...
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mjmacka

mjmacka

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May 22, 2012
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Sounds like your hard drive or some other component went bad... but i would be it's your hard drive.

Some OEM PC's have built-in diagnostics available before windows loads. Usually those are available by entering the Bios, boot menu or by hitting one of the "f" keys during boot. There are third-party diagnostics tools too made by hard drive manufacturers for testing hard disks.

If you run tests and find out it's the hard drive, that's an easy, inexpensive replacement. If the hard drive is bad, I would also go back to the computer shop and request a refund because they didn't do due diligence and missed a bad drive when they installed the OS.

Hard drives going bad is common, most last for 2-5 years depending on heat, ventilation, and use.
 
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Solution
R

redstar

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Aug 31, 2001
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sorry to hear about your difficulties ...

since you are back in windows you can run the chkdsk command

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/

(don't worry that link is also windows 7)

you can check for and try to fix any errors.

You can also use your event viewer under administrative tools to look for any hard drive related errors.

If you do see even a few errors then I would recommend getting a new hard drive (now would be a great time to replace it with an SSD --solid state drive)
 
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Shaun o

Shaun o

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Oct 7, 2007
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On every drive that is formatted and partitioned.
You always have a primary partition.
The primary partition is where the OS is in most cases installed.

The primary partition also holds a file called a Master Boot Record.
MBR for short.

There are always Two MBR`s of a hard drive.
One is a duplicate or backup of the way the drive structure is mapped and all of the locations of files, over each of the partitions created of the overall drive.

Pointers or locations of data and files, and where to go to get them.

What happened due to the unexpected shut down was a corruption of the master boot record.

So it lost the mapping of the drive and extended partitions created.

You could of fixed the problem very quickly since as i said there is a backup or copy of the MBR in such cases.
For such events as an unexpected shut down of windows on the primary partition of the drive normally C: by default.

That is why the partition disappeared due to the corruption of the MBR and windows would not load and you may of been left with a blinking whit cursor. Or a message saying no boot device.

To fix the problem, often due to an unexpected shutdown of the working partition.

You can boot off a windows OS Cd/dvd and go to for example the tools menu.

From there you choose to drop in to the command line interface option
And type Fixboot and Fixmbr.

The drive by all chance would of been restored back to the way it was with out a disk part or format.

It would of restored the primary partition as boot able C: and any extended partitions that disappeared recreating the drive mapping and data structure including the extended partitions and there split sizes.

I doubt the drive is faulty in anyway, what is listed above is the cause since it was an unexpected shutdown of the laptop due to a drained battery.

Seen it lots of times and this is the quickest fix other than formatting and disk parting.
I am surprised the guy at the shop did not try this. Because you would of retained all the existing data of the drive.

Anyway there`s a great tip for next time it happens.






 
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mjmacka

mjmacka

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May 22, 2012
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The first thing that you have to do is run diagnostics against your drive. No amount of formatting or chkdsk will fix a drive that can't read from itself or write to itself. Run diagnostics first period.
 
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bil_san1

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Oct 31, 2013
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Please tell me the easiest method to run diagnostic for the hard drive and please do mention will it diagnose the unalloacated drive too??

( I have performed the check disk on both primary and other partition and both are clean does it mean that part of hard drive is clean)
 
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