A Few HDD questions

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lunbux

lunbux

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Sep 25, 2013
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I don't know much about hardware and I'm in a bit of a bind. As of late, I'm getting I/O errors on my second HDD which is a 1TB WD. It's not that bad yet, but it seems the frequency is rising so I'm getting concerned. For now, I'm still able to access the folders, and the partitions are still detected by the explorer, but there will be times when I can't open the files. By the way, I'm running on Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. So what I do is totally shut down the PC (and it takes about 5 minutes to do it!) then boot up again and it will be as if nothing happened. My PC starts up just fine, BIOS detects the drive and I can still access the files and programs in that second drive. So what I'm thinking is that there could be something wrong with the cable itself or the jumper or something like that. I switched the SATA cable from my optical drive to the HDD and also plugged it in to the SATA 6 port. Like I said, I don't know much about hardware and stuff, so I'm not sure of the terminologies, but my motherboard has 3 pairs of SATA ports. The first two say SATA 3/4 on the side and the third says SATA 6/6. Before, I had my second drive plugged in on one of the 3/4. Also, for some reason, the plugs are kind of different. When I bought and installed my WD drive last year, I used a cable that has a longer plug at the end. The one I'm using now (the one from my optical drive) is the same as my primary HDD and has about half the length of the plug. Just for clarification, I'm not referring to the length of the cable itself, but the black plug at the end of the cable. Anyway, so when I did that and booted up my PC, it took a bit longer to get passed the Windows logo, and it seems that the system had to reinstall the HDD. That freaked me out a bit because I thought my data was wiped out, but it was all good. Data and partition are still good.

Here's a screenie of CrystalDiskInfo for my WD: http://i.imgur.com/69A3UJO.jpg

So here are my questions:
1.) What troubleshooting steps do you recommend? And did I do anything wrong with the steps that I've taken?
2.) Are there any differences with the SATA cables I use?
3.) When I checked SIW before, my WD harddrive was second in the list under 'Storage'. After switching cables and ports, it's now first in the list. Does that mean anything significant?
4.) I'll be googling this myself now, but what are the things I need to watch out for when installing HDDs? I'm afraid I might accidentally fry my board or HDD due to careless tweaking.
 
Solution
SchizTech
1) There's nothing wrong with your steps so far. Here's a program to run diagnostic tests on the drive:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=604&sid=3&lang=en

2) Cables are cables. Perhaps one is a SATA 3 cable (it supports faster speeds for SSD but is backwards compatible for older HDD) but the length of the connector isn't too meaningful by itself

3) Doesn't seem significant. Windows reset the driver because it was connected to a different port (you probably moved it from SAT&A 2 to SATA 3 port or vice versa; as above there's compatibility either way)

4) Turn the PC off and unplug whenever doing work. Put in new drive, connect cables, start. IN windows you'll need to format the drive before it can be used...
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azguard4

azguard4

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Aug 19, 2014
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1) Run a chkdsk from an elevated command prompt on the problem drive.
2) The only different in the SATA cables, that I'm aware of, is their data transfer rate.
3) No, that doesn't mean anything significant.
4) HDD's are plug and play, technically. There's really no special technological knowledge know-how needed.
 
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SchizTech

SchizTech

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Jan 16, 2011
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1) There's nothing wrong with your steps so far. Here's a program to run diagnostic tests on the drive:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=604&sid=3&lang=en

2) Cables are cables. Perhaps one is a SATA 3 cable (it supports faster speeds for SSD but is backwards compatible for older HDD) but the length of the connector isn't too meaningful by itself

3) Doesn't seem significant. Windows reset the driver because it was connected to a different port (you probably moved it from SAT&A 2 to SATA 3 port or vice versa; as above there's compatibility either way)

4) Turn the PC off and unplug whenever doing work. Put in new drive, connect cables, start. IN windows you'll need to format the drive before it can be used. Copy data from old HDD, shut down and remove old HDD.
 
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Solution
SchizTech

SchizTech

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Jan 16, 2011
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To format a new drive, go to Disk Management utility. In Win 7 you'd right-click "Computer" in the Start Menu and select "Manage". Click OK to admin prompt, then select Disk Management in the new window. Drives appear as separate rows. It will probably pop up with the format wizard right away, otherwise right-click the unformatted new drive and select "new simple volume" and go through the wizard. Do a "quick format" since a full format takes a long time.
 
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lunbux

lunbux

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Sep 25, 2013
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Thank you for the concise answers. I have done chkdsk when I first encountered the error and it came clean. No issue. I'll try WD's diagnostic later. For the meantime, I have no plans on reformatting my drive until I save up enough money to get a new motherboard. And since this came up, I might as well ask here. When replacing the motherboard, I have to reformat my HDD, right? But I have two. The first one has the OS. I also have another OS installed in my second drive but I don't boot to that anymore and I don't mind formatting it later. Now, I have 4 partitions in my primary drive (one of which contains the OS). My secondary drive is basically just for data. I also install games in my secondary HDD. Do I have to reformat the whole drive when I change motherboards or it's fine to just format the OS partition? And do I also have to reformat my secondary drive?
 
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lunbux

lunbux

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Sep 25, 2013
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That's good to hear. It will take the whole day just backing up the data in my secondary drive. For my primary drive, one partition has the OS. Another two partitions for data. And the last one for programs. I see a 101MB unallocated space in my disk management. I'm not sure if it's the one that holds the bootloader. So, do I still have to reformat my whole primary drive or just the partition holding the OS?
 
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lunbux

lunbux

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Sep 25, 2013
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Got it. So I just need to reformat my OS partition and reinstall my programs. At least, it will take less time since I don't have to backup all of my data. Thank you.
 
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