Faulty Hard Drive?

cameron-reese

Reputable
May 26, 2015
9
0
4,510
Hi guys, I hope someone could help me with this as I been pulling my hair out these past few hours.

I was playing a PC game earlier today and a few hours in the screen freezes completely and a loud buzzing sound kept looping. I couldn't cntrl alt delete out of it and had to restart via the power button. I come back on and try and play again and the same thing happens, but this time while I was browsing on my desktop with the game minimized.

After this crash however, I get a black screen on boot up with just the words "missing operating system" on top.

I tried using my windows 8 installation disk to repair with the system refresh and startup repair, but neither of them worked. The first option kept saying my drive was locked and the second didn't give a reason, just said it couldn't fix it after running for 3 hours.

I tried fixing the locked drive message by using all the command prompt options available off here and other google searches but that didn't work.

I am starting to think my hard drive is dead. It's about 4 years old now and I've heard that's a lot give out around then, especially since my computer is a gaming rig and runs pretty hot.

Before these crashes, my roomate was using my computer and said navigating the desktop was extremely slow. I also notice my disk usage was at 100% even when I didn't have any programs open. My hard drive fans also seem to be running unusually high these past few months. I never really paid any attention to it though as I never heard any strange sounds coming from it (sounds fine) and the slowdown issues only really became apparent earlier today.

I am not entirely sure though if it is my hard drive as this only happened after I accidently knocked my graphics card video connector loose mid game. The slowdown occured before the game, but I am not sure if forcing power off twice caused a corruption on my boot file. I don't know too much about software so I don't want to jump to conclusions as I will feel a bit silly replacing my entire hard drive and OS if it's only a corrupt file or something.
 
Solution
Welcome to the community, cameron-reese!

I'd recommend you to test the HDD using the manufacturer's diagnostics tool. It will help you determine the health and SMART status of the drive. If you are unable to boot into the OS, you should consider using a DOS version of that diagnostics software. Check your HDD manufacturer's website, if you cannot find it, you can also use this DOS version utility: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=93omFP
if you have access to drive on your roommate's computer, I'd suggest you to back up all the data you get your hands on, as there is a high possibility that it might be failing after all.

Keep me posted with the results.
SuperSoph_WD
Welcome to the community, cameron-reese!

I'd recommend you to test the HDD using the manufacturer's diagnostics tool. It will help you determine the health and SMART status of the drive. If you are unable to boot into the OS, you should consider using a DOS version of that diagnostics software. Check your HDD manufacturer's website, if you cannot find it, you can also use this DOS version utility: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=93omFP
if you have access to drive on your roommate's computer, I'd suggest you to back up all the data you get your hands on, as there is a high possibility that it might be failing after all.

Keep me posted with the results.
SuperSoph_WD
 
Solution

Crashmaster

Reputable
May 18, 2015
116
0
4,710
Try plugging your HDD in the SATA connector immediately after BIOS post.
Your problem should be fixable since I had the same issue a couple of times. The HDD should still work for a while even if it does have a problem.