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Harddrive causes various errors

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Western Digital
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Laptop Tech Support
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April 8, 2014 8:52:54 PM

I have a Asus G73 in which I have been running a SSD and the stock WD 500GB HDD.
Lately the WD has made some sounds (off/on switching) and the Intel rapid Storage Manager found and lost a device over and over.
However the HDD was working.
Today then the HDD did show up in the BIOS and shortly in Windows, then however disappeared.
I removed the HDD and connected it with a SATA/USB adapter externally and it worked perfectly fine.
Then I installed the HDD internally again, which now caused the screen post BIOS to be in the first row only.
Removed HDD and PC boots up fine.
Installed HDD and same issue (keep in mind that in the BIOS everything is fine).

Any ideas on what the issue can be and how to fix it?

More about : harddrive errors

a b D Laptop
April 8, 2014 9:01:43 PM

I would try new cables in case that is the issue.

Use the USB to SATA adapter to check the SMART status of the drive with something like CrystalDiskInfo(it supports most USB - > SATA and IDE controllers).
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html
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April 8, 2014 9:42:53 PM

I think it boots up, but the screen is not showing right.
Cant be a cable issue as it is in a tray hard plug in the laptop.
will run smart once it is connected via USB
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a b D Laptop
April 8, 2014 9:48:49 PM

Let us know what you find.

I personally have had about the same luck with WDC as other brands(they all have a failure at one point or another. Just another reason to backup often.) I have used. Old maxtors seemed to fail quite a bit more than average.
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April 9, 2014 12:54:30 PM

OK, I let chkdsk on the command line run through and there have been 0 errors.
SMART status is a PASS as well.
Now running WD LifeGuard Diagnostics... However I think the HDD is not the issue.
Any ideas what the issue might be?
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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 2:38:06 PM

The controller may be dying. The hard drive will not show errors in that situation.
It will be intermittent and hard to track.
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April 9, 2014 3:07:12 PM

Yeah, I am thinking to take the SSD and move into the other "bad" bay and see what happens...
Maybe it's an issue with that bay.
However I am thinking it might be a software issue and a clean Win install is in order...
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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 4:18:05 PM

Moving the SSD would be a good check for sure.

While no smart attributes have been tripped did any look out of place(pending sector or remapped)?
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April 9, 2014 6:47:35 PM

So, while CHKDSK did not find anything the WD tool did find some broken sectors. I used the repair function and at the same time the Windows update installed 23 updates.
After a reboot it now works like a charm again.
So either the bad sectors caused a boot up crash or the windows update fixed it...
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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 6:57:15 PM

I would be very interested in seeing a SMART report from the drive if you do not mind.

Sample Image with CDI.


If you have started to remap sectors, It may be ok or it may come back fast(the nature of these things).
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April 9, 2014 7:07:44 PM

Sure no problem, if you help me understand it.

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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 7:48:31 PM

The controller may be failing.
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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 7:52:16 PM

You have a single reallocated sector(most likely reallocated by the WDC software). So if it was in a critical spot it could have caused all kinds of things.

Keep an eye on the pending and that number over time to ensure it does not start to grow.
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a b D Laptop
April 9, 2014 8:28:03 PM

Just keep an eye on the hard drive and you should be fine.
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June 17, 2014 2:03:46 PM

So things had been going well for now 2 month.
The other day the BIOS did not find the SSD anymore.
So I removed the HDD and swapped the bay of the SSD, everything is back to working now (HDD is no longer in the system).
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a b D Laptop
June 17, 2014 3:03:29 PM

Good idea! SSDs are much faster!!
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June 17, 2014 3:21:50 PM

Nathan Willis said:
Good idea! SSDs are much faster!!

The SSD was in there for years as my main drive, the HDD was holding all my documents.
Those I moved onto the HTPC, which serves as a file server in my home network.
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a b D Laptop
June 17, 2014 5:21:59 PM

I know that. :)  I was just saying it is not really a loss because SSDs are faster.
Because hard drives are so cheap I would just get another one and test if the problem is gone.
With a new hard drive and the problem is still there the MOB's SATA controller may be dying.
A new CMOS battery may fix it too.
If the CMOS battery is week it will have trouble keeping BIOS settings and cause strange problems.
It really does depend on the MOB though.
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