Apologies if this is tl;dr. I'd greatly appreciate any advice you might be able to offer.
Details of problem:
A few days ago during the extreme heat in Europe I suffered a computer freeze and subsequent blue screen while loading a game. I just restarted the computer and didn't think too much of it. During the following days I suffered random computer freezes when doing things like closing twitch.tv tabs in chrome. Eventually I realized it wouldn't go away so I began looking for a cause.
As the computer was running I opened the case and felt the harddrives. Two of the three were fine but from the last one an intermittent "thump" could be felt and I realized something had gone wrong with it. Removing this drive made the computer function normally.
The drive in question is a Seagate 2TB drive used only for storage, with no "non-manual" writing being done to it apart from hosting a ~2GB page file. I began to suspect that this page file was the problem maker.
Solutions and measures conducted:
I have run the harddrive through Seatools in Windows. It failed to finish the "Short Diagnostics Test", the test seemingly freezing at 90%. The drive did pass the S.M.A.R.T. test though.
Around this point I began having problems using Windows when the drive was connected to the computer. I would be able to get into Windows but then the mouse cursor would start freezing for a number of seconds even if I just moved it for a bit. The computer would freeze or otherwise be very slow if I tried to open even a Windows Explorer window.
I managed to get into Seatools for Windows again but the problem drive would not be detected anymore (the others were).
However, I have no problems getting the drive to work if I boot into DOS. I have run the drive through both Seatools for DOS and HDD Regenerator (a program I've used in the past to "fix" smaller numbers of bad sectors).
In Seatools for DOS, if I run the short test it again freezes at 90%. With the long test it scanned to about 70% of the drive before finding bad sectors, and it quickly corrected about 70 of them, then stopped running the long test and ran the short one again which frooze at 90%. I aborted the test and it stated that the long one "Passed after Repair". Trying to boot into Windows after the drive was no better and it still had the "thumps" when running.
Running HDD Regenerator yielded similar results. The disc scanned just fine up until the problematic area about 70% into the drive. Upon running into the bad sectors the scan slowed down significantly. Since this program allows you to start the scan at a specific sector I did so in order to locate the "problem area" and was able to do so. The area is about 4 million sectors, or 2GB of hdd space, which once again reafirms the page file as the culprit, as it was around that size, unfragmented and placed at around 70% into the disc.
I have also attempted to boot Windows with this harddrive using a new, unused power supply with no difference in results.
I have since run "CrystalDiskInfo" to check the S.M.A.R.T. and temps of my two other drives and there are no issues at all there.
Key points: The drive won't work under Windows and a thump can be felt from it when trying. The drive seems to work fine when accessed (scanned) from DOS, with no thumps or any strange noises being heard.
I know the exact starting LBA of the bad sector area and an approximate ending point. The drive is divided into, from start to finish "Files (about 1.3TB) > Page file (~2GB) > More files (~50-100GB) > Empty space (~500-600GB)"
Questions, possible solutions:
-Why does the drive not work in Windows when it does in DOS?
-Why haven't I experienced any "Cyclic redundany errors", nor any clicking sounds from the drive like I have with bad sectors in the past on other drives?
-Seatools for DOS has an option to shrink the size of a drive by using a specific sector (LBA) number to indicate the desired new end of the drive. Would I be able to use that to shrink the drive to before the bad sector area without loosing the data stored before that point? (the Seagate faq/manual doesn't seem to give a definite answer to this, but obviously the data past the shrinking point will be lost). Would that make it possible to access the, as far as it seems, 'healthy' part of the drive from Windows?
My hope here is that I will be able to access and move as many of my files as possible to a new drive before throwing this one away.
Recent changes to hardware/software
None, apart from moving the page file from another drive to this one. I can't recall when this was done - perhaps 1 year ago or so. Could be less.
System specs
Windows XP Professional
Intel Core i5-3350P CPU @ 3.1GHz
Nvidia Geforce GTX 650
4GB Corsair DDR3 1600
2x500GB Samsung Harddrives
2TB Seagate Harddrives
Antec 500W Power Supply
specs on the fault hdd as provided by seatools:
Model Number: ST2000DM001-1CH164
Serial Number: S240TCJP
Firmware Revision: CC24
Details of problem:
A few days ago during the extreme heat in Europe I suffered a computer freeze and subsequent blue screen while loading a game. I just restarted the computer and didn't think too much of it. During the following days I suffered random computer freezes when doing things like closing twitch.tv tabs in chrome. Eventually I realized it wouldn't go away so I began looking for a cause.
As the computer was running I opened the case and felt the harddrives. Two of the three were fine but from the last one an intermittent "thump" could be felt and I realized something had gone wrong with it. Removing this drive made the computer function normally.
The drive in question is a Seagate 2TB drive used only for storage, with no "non-manual" writing being done to it apart from hosting a ~2GB page file. I began to suspect that this page file was the problem maker.
Solutions and measures conducted:
I have run the harddrive through Seatools in Windows. It failed to finish the "Short Diagnostics Test", the test seemingly freezing at 90%. The drive did pass the S.M.A.R.T. test though.
Around this point I began having problems using Windows when the drive was connected to the computer. I would be able to get into Windows but then the mouse cursor would start freezing for a number of seconds even if I just moved it for a bit. The computer would freeze or otherwise be very slow if I tried to open even a Windows Explorer window.
I managed to get into Seatools for Windows again but the problem drive would not be detected anymore (the others were).
However, I have no problems getting the drive to work if I boot into DOS. I have run the drive through both Seatools for DOS and HDD Regenerator (a program I've used in the past to "fix" smaller numbers of bad sectors).
In Seatools for DOS, if I run the short test it again freezes at 90%. With the long test it scanned to about 70% of the drive before finding bad sectors, and it quickly corrected about 70 of them, then stopped running the long test and ran the short one again which frooze at 90%. I aborted the test and it stated that the long one "Passed after Repair". Trying to boot into Windows after the drive was no better and it still had the "thumps" when running.
Running HDD Regenerator yielded similar results. The disc scanned just fine up until the problematic area about 70% into the drive. Upon running into the bad sectors the scan slowed down significantly. Since this program allows you to start the scan at a specific sector I did so in order to locate the "problem area" and was able to do so. The area is about 4 million sectors, or 2GB of hdd space, which once again reafirms the page file as the culprit, as it was around that size, unfragmented and placed at around 70% into the disc.
I have also attempted to boot Windows with this harddrive using a new, unused power supply with no difference in results.
I have since run "CrystalDiskInfo" to check the S.M.A.R.T. and temps of my two other drives and there are no issues at all there.
Key points: The drive won't work under Windows and a thump can be felt from it when trying. The drive seems to work fine when accessed (scanned) from DOS, with no thumps or any strange noises being heard.
I know the exact starting LBA of the bad sector area and an approximate ending point. The drive is divided into, from start to finish "Files (about 1.3TB) > Page file (~2GB) > More files (~50-100GB) > Empty space (~500-600GB)"
Questions, possible solutions:
-Why does the drive not work in Windows when it does in DOS?
-Why haven't I experienced any "Cyclic redundany errors", nor any clicking sounds from the drive like I have with bad sectors in the past on other drives?
-Seatools for DOS has an option to shrink the size of a drive by using a specific sector (LBA) number to indicate the desired new end of the drive. Would I be able to use that to shrink the drive to before the bad sector area without loosing the data stored before that point? (the Seagate faq/manual doesn't seem to give a definite answer to this, but obviously the data past the shrinking point will be lost). Would that make it possible to access the, as far as it seems, 'healthy' part of the drive from Windows?
My hope here is that I will be able to access and move as many of my files as possible to a new drive before throwing this one away.
Recent changes to hardware/software
None, apart from moving the page file from another drive to this one. I can't recall when this was done - perhaps 1 year ago or so. Could be less.
System specs
Windows XP Professional
Intel Core i5-3350P CPU @ 3.1GHz
Nvidia Geforce GTX 650
4GB Corsair DDR3 1600
2x500GB Samsung Harddrives
2TB Seagate Harddrives
Antec 500W Power Supply
specs on the fault hdd as provided by seatools:
Model Number: ST2000DM001-1CH164
Serial Number: S240TCJP
Firmware Revision: CC24
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