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I'm not sure if my hard drive is dieing?

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Hi, since today, i been hearing a weird sound from my hard drive, i think, i never heard a dieing hard drive before, so it could be my imagination. I heard this sound twice already. I went to this website(click me) if you click on "head_damage_4.wav", i believe that's how my hard drive sounds like but it doesn't do it for that long, it only does it for like a second or two. Is there a way to better identify if the hard drive is really dieing. If it is dieing, how much time do i have ( you can tell me from your past experience of dieing hard drives)?.

Also i have a Seagate hard drive, i believe i can send it to them and they'll be able to fix it, i believe i still have a five year warranty. I only had this hard drive for about a year.

Also what causes a hard drive to die?

in advance thank you all for the replying.

More about : hard drive dieing

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Any funny noises are bad.

STOP USING THE DRIVE IMMEDIATELY!!!!!

How important is the data to you? First step would be to send the drive to data recovery labs just in case. Most data labs are authorised to open drives without voiding warranty so after thats done, forward your drive to seagate.

Of course, it could be a false alarm but no point taking risks.

From the moment you hear clicking/scraping/whirring sounds, a hdd cn last form anywhere between the next 10 seconds to maybe a month before dieing, but by that time, its already done a bit of damage.

i'm thinking of sending all my data to other computer and then just send it to seagate to replace it? do you think that's a good idea to do at the moment, or just send it to the recovery lab?

Well to be honest, IDK

You prolly have to balance out risk vs. data loss and inconvenience.

Consider:

Data lab garantees no data loss, and you can still RMA your hdd, but you may need to fork out a bi of cash, not heaps, but still maybe a few notes.

Continuing to use the drive may cause further damage

On the other hand, the drive might just work fine and you can copy all your data

It depends how serious the prob is, but as i'm not at your pc, i really cant recomemdn any advice
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^Add onto my post above^

Seom data labs offer a free assessment so if you can find one, it might be a good proposition.

The approximate costs are (its in aud so you'll hav to convert)

-basic copy to another drive <100
-software issues/corrupt partition data/lost mbr/format etc abt 250-500
-damaged disk platters/serious physical damage 400+

but at your stage, i wouldnt say its at the SERIOUS stage yet

Best way to find out if your drive is defective is to go to the manufactures web site and download a copy of their test program (eg Seagate user's seatools) make up a boot cd and test it properly. Yes a mechanical noise usually means the drive is failing but Believe it or not I have heard that mechanical noise from quantum drive (before Maxtor and the Seagate bought them out) make the same noise and they weren't faulty. Tested fine and are still running to this day. :? :) 

Quote:
Best way to find out if your drive is defective is to go to the manufactures web site and download a copy of their test program (eg Seagate user's seatools) make up a boot cd and test it properly. Yes a mechanical noise usually means the drive is failing but Believe it or not I have heard that mechanical noise from quantum drive (before Maxtor and the Seagate bought them out) make the same noise and they weren't faulty. Tested fine and are still running to this day. :? :) 


i won't disagree completely on that, but aren't the diagnostic tools for checking the smart, mbr etc, not checking for physical dmaage? powering a hdd and running say a sector scan could possibly do damage if a read.write head is broken

I think the online seatools only tests data, but I know for sure that the SeaTools Desktop version that you boot from CD or even floppy does test for physical faults and can even generate a report to help with the warranty.
In my job as a Computer Tech we use it all the time (yes it is a good idea to back up your data first). Its the same tool Seagate and suppliers use to validate their warranty's. Best of all it's a free download.
try this link
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name...

:) 

Quote:
Seom data labs offer a free assessment so if you can find one, it might be a good proposition.


I tried googling their name, i didn't seem to get good results. Do they have a website?

This is my plan for now, i'm going to back up the most important data via a network to other computers that i have, and than try the seatools (as martyjs pointed out) and see if it finds anything. I'm also worried about what you said, maybe if i do more reading it might damage the hard drive more, which might not allow me to back up other things.

thank you both for your support and help.

Quote:
Hi, since today, i been hearing a weird sound from my hard drive, i think, i never heard a dieing hard drive before, so it could be my imagination. I heard this sound twice already. I went to this website(click me) if you click on "head_damage_4.wav", i believe that's how my hard drive sounds like but it doesn't do it for that long, it only does it for like a second or two. Is there a way to better identify if the hard drive is really dieing. If it is dieing, how much time do i have ( you can tell me from your past experience of dieing hard drives)?.

Also i have a Seagate hard drive, i believe i can send it to them and they'll be able to fix it, i believe i still have a five year warranty. I only had this hard drive for about a year.

Also what causes a hard drive to die?

in advance thank you all for the replying.

Odd, I always considered Seagate the best and most reliable in the HD business. Burn a lot of DVD's of all the crap you want to save. Then, send the drive in. Play it safe and back up BEFORE it dies.

You could give SpinRite a try to salvage this drive. It's worked for me on six occasions, much to the delight of my clients. It got them stable enough to recover most of the data - and one was actully physically fixed, and is still going.

It's a little pricey, $89US, but it's a powerful utility that does things no other can.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Quote:
You could give SpinRite a try to salvage this drive. It's worked for me on six occasions, much to the delight of my clients. It got them stable enough to recover most of the data - and one was actully physically fixed, and is still going.

It's a little pricey, $89US, but it's a powerful utility that does things no other can.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1682...
OR you could buy a brand new 320gb perpendicular 16mb WD..

I been using the computer with the hard drive that i think is about to die, and now it seems fine. Although the seatools desktop, when i do a Full Diagnostic it always finds one damage sector. I'm not sure if the hard drive is alright or not?

From the SeaTools Desktop results, i think my hard drive is damage beacause it says one sector is damage. I'm not sure. Also i defraged all my partitions using O&O defrag. so what you guys think?

here is the exact quoting of the results that i get from SeaTools:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SeaTools Desktop v3.02.04
Copyright (c) 2005 Kroll Ontrack Inc.

1/11/2007 @ 10:31 AM

The following information has been generated by SeaTools Desktop. Use
this information to help you recognize and resolve potential data access
problems.


System Information:
BIOS Date 06/14/05
Conventional Memory size 638 K
Extended Memory size 58532 K
IO Channel type PCI



Drive Information:
SIZE MODEL
--------- ---------------------
160 GB BIOS Drive 0x80


Serial Number = N/A
Int13 Num = 80, PHYS CHS = 0x0x0.
ParmTable CHS, Rsvd = 19457x255x63

PARTITION CYLINDER SIZE
---------- ------------ ----
# Type Start End MB
PRIMARY
1 NTFS 0 1287 10594
EXTENDED
2 NTFS 1288 5124 31562
EXTENDED
3 NTFS 5125 6208 8916
EXTENDED
4 NTFS 6209 11320 42050
EXTENDED
5 NTFS 11321 11970 5346
EXTENDED
6 NTFS 11971 12238 2204
EXTENDED
7 NTFS 12239 13016 6399
EXTENDED
8 NTFS 13017 19455 52965


Diagnostic Results:

90-Second Test Result: Passed
Recommendation:
The "Quick Test" is adequate for most situations.
Consider running the "Full Test" which
verifies each sector on the drive if you need to run a more
comprehensive diagnostic.

SMART Status Check Result: Not Tested


S.M.A.R.T., (S)elf (M)onitoring (A)nalysis and (R)eporting (T)echnology, a built-in hard
disk drive failure prediction method reports an 'Alert' if a problem has occurred. It
reports 'Passed' if no problems are found and 'Unsupported' if a hard disk drive does not
support S.M.A.R.T.

Full Diagnostic Scan Result: Failed

The Following Sectors MAY be damaged
------------------------------------
LBA: 87704886
STATUS: Write-reallocation SKIPPED
USAGE: Not Resolved



File Structure Test Result:

Partition 1 (NTFS (10.5 GB) Windows (Game)) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in the index
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records
- Other errors were found

NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 2 (NTFS (31.5 GB) Games) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 3 (NTFS (8.9 GB) Windows (Application)) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 4 (NTFS (42 GB) Backup) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in the index
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 5 (NTFS (5.3 GB) Downloads) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 6 (NTFS (2.2 GB) School) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in the index
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 7 (NTFS (6.3 GB) Programs) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.

Partition 8 (NTFS (52.9 GB) Media) Result: Failed with critical Errors

The following errors were found while scanning the volume:
- One or more errors were found in the index
- One or more errors were found in metadata file records


NOTE: Any report of possible errors in the file system tests are for
informational purposes only. We suggest you should consider testing with
the official file system diagnostic utilities for your operating system.
Seagate is not able to assist with troubleshooting or reviewing
file system test results.



******************************************


Recommendation:
If you are not experiencing data loss and SeaTools reports File
System Structure errors, they may be caused by a lock-up or
failure to shutdown Windows correctly. Many times, these errors
may be repaired through normal system maintenance which
includes using the Windows provided "Defrag" and
"Scandisk / Chkdsk / Error Checking" utilities.

If you are experiencing a hardware error, you should isolate
the cause and replace the failing component. If you are unsure how
to proceed with repairs, contact a computer professional. After
completing any maintenance tasks, run SeaTools again to
verify that all errors have been repaired. If errors continue to
occur, the system may not be stable. Again, contact a computer
professional.

If you have experienced a data loss, cease drive operation
immediately. Professional data recovery service is the best
option to recover your data.


========================================================

Run Chkdsk on all 8 partitions.

You'll have to do them one at a time.

This utility will isolate the bad sectors and recover data, if possible. It'll probably keep you going for awhile, which looks like your intention to get every day out of this hd that you can.

Right-click each drive letter - Properties - Tools - Error Checking. Click both boxes, OK out to the desktop, and reboot.

Did I notice that you're running XP on 64mb (58.5k?) of ram? If that's true, you need to set a fixed pagefile. That little bit of memory most likely wore the hell out of your hd with XP needing to go to the virtual memory (pagefile) constantly.

If you have 2g of ram, the pagefile is hardly used.

Just for the hell of it, when you right-click My Computer and go to Properties, is the 2g showing up in the Computer section?

For some reason, your total memory isn't showing up on the Seagate report. No matter - ram is no longer an issue.

Run the chkdsk as described.

it says 3.4ghz CPU,and 2gb of ram. so i believe it is recognizing 2gb of ram. I

Quote:
Right-click each drive letter - Properties - Tools - Error Checking. Click both boxes, OK out to the desktop, and reboot.


i did that, but it does the checking and everything in windows, don't really have to reboot, that should be alright, right?

Quote:
it says 3.4ghz CPU,and 2gb of ram. so i believe it is recognizing 2gb of ram. I

Right-click each drive letter - Properties - Tools - Error Checking. Click both boxes, OK out to the desktop, and reboot.


i did that, but it does the checking and everything in windows, don't really have to reboot, that should be alright, right?
No, go to My Computer > Right click on C: > go to Tools tab > Check Now > restart and let it run

Quote:
go to My Computer > Right click on C: > go to Tools tab > Check Now > restart and let it run


i did this, but after checking both boxes, there is two buttons, start and cancel. so i pressed start and it starts checking ect..., i also tried checking the box and i just restarted without pressing cancel or start.

I'm i doing something wrong here. I think you suppost to do it in windows, or are you trying to let it run from DOS? because it doesn't seem to give that option.

Quote:
Euuurgh! Chkdsk??? I would never go near that, weather my hard drive was dead or brand new


But you *will* recommend that someone go out and spend at least $1200 to recover data from a hard drive that isn't dead yet and before you even know if he has a backup.

Quote:
First step would be to send the drive to data recovery labs just in case. Most data labs are authorised to open drives without voiding warranty so after thats done, forward your drive to seagate.


Send me some money. You obviously like to throw it around.

he didn't mean it that way, he just gave me a good suggestion, in that if i had really really important data that i should do that. Which is a good idea, since if this HD was really dieing in a serious condition i guess his idea would of been the best if i wanted to recover my data.

Ok, lets get some things clear!

I don't have much faith in chkdsk, as most of the time, for me, it does nothing, if not make the situation worse. For a moment, assuming the hard drive was indeed dead, runnign chkdsk with a surface scan WOULD aggravate the situation.

As I don't know for sure the state of his hdd, iw oudl recommedn he be on the cautious side.

----------------------

I also don't go recommending people blow 1.2K on hdd data recover. I gave him the options, IF HIS DATA WAS CRITICAL. It doens't mean that he has to, his decision.

Ansd anyway, it starts at 400AUD here in oz, dno how much in other parts of the world.

I did the chkdsk, and i ran the seatools full diagnostic and i still see that one bad sector. so i'm not sure if i should worry about it or not. i'll try to run chkdsk from outside windows, i don't know if thats going to change anything.

Of course Seatools is going to see the bad sector - it's there - it didn't go away.

Chkdsk has "marked it" (isolated it) so it won't be written to.

You're done. Short of running SpinRite on the partition with the problem, there's nothing more for you to do

I think my drive now is alright, i haven't heard any noises or anything like that. Also the Seatools program is only showing errors with file structure, which i don't think means that the harddrive is defective. Before it used to show bad sector but i fixed that already. so i think its fine. Unless i use it in the future and i find more diffculties then i might do what you suggest.

thank you.

Your data... I get seagates for the warranty. I rma them for any hiccup. But then I tend to use them in a production type environment. And I like to sleep at night...

this is really crazy, i though i was done with the problem, now it comes back. The computer before it made that weird sound(which i think is coming from the hard drive) was frozen for a bit, and then i heard that sound that i described in the beginning of this post. I think this hard drive is dieing or something. I'm not sure if this is a hardware, or a software issue.

Yes your drive is alright other than the damaged sector, if the drive was dieing Seatools would tell you "your drive is failing please back up your data and replace your Drive" Not the exact words but fairly close, I've seen that message quite a few times. :( 

I guess its a software issue. I'll try formation windows and installing it again, and see what happens. I think diskeeper is the cause of all of this. Before i used that program, everything was running fine. So i'll try to reinstall windows and use it for a while and see if the problem comes back. If it does, than its a hard drive problem, if not, then its a software problem.

lol, every time i think my hard drive is okay, i get another surprise. Today while loading up windows, the hard drive starts making that weird sound again(i believe its the hard drive, it has to be it), of course when the weird noise is happening the loading of windows was slower than usual. Seatools doesn't seem to show any hard drive damage. I'll run it again, and see what happens.
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