Very nervous about my WD Caviar 320GB

[Wonderwill]

I have the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB, and recently I've been having some strange problems that might not even be hard drive related, but I posted it here anyway. Since January it has been used all the time. Up until 2 weeks ago, it ran perfectly. Then windows started giving me bsods saying "kernel inpage error" and randomly rebooting with no explanation.

This week has been the worst. I worked on a 30 minute video all week, so I was constantly capturing and editing up to 30 gigs of footage at once. By the end of it the thing was 40% fragmented which I have already taken care of. Every time it restarted my comp didn't recognise it and automatically booted to my Hitachi 60GB Vista boot drive. Vista automatically ran CHDISK and moved a ton of files and found a bunch of errors, but fixed all of them both times. ????!!!!

Yesterday while playing Empire at War it did it bsoded again with the "kernel inpage error" and this time I had to open up the case and unplug/plug in the sata connection to get the comp to recognise it. Now I'm really getting scared and just backed up all my important data on the 60 gig just in case and now I'm asking you guys for help. Is this drive going to die? Because that would mean reinstalling about 80 GB of programs and games which would suck. Is there anything I can do or should I just go about my business until it possibly fails? 8O 8O 8O

 

[LoneEagle]

I would get a new one ASAP and do a cloning before the worse happen. Today's HD @ 320 GB are really inexpensive. If you have a disk imaging software, I would do an image and put it on another old drive or on DVD (could take lots of DVDs).

I would add to not use that drive until you do a clone and that clone is working. May be you can borrow a drive from a friend?

It happened to me once that my main drive were no longer booting and recognize but using a special software, I could transfer my files and then it died hard. I got lucky and today I have an external backup using software (I will start my backup now!!! ).

 

[ejay]

I would be wary of the drive at this point. As with all my WDs, I go to the WD website right after purchase and buy an extended warranty for $15 extra. If it's still under warranty, RMA it. WD backs up their product line fairly well.

In the interim, you could buy a new drive and "Ghost" or make a mirror image of the existing 320 while it can still be read. By ghosting the drive you will not have to reload your OS and all the programs. The time saved and the data is worth the price you might have to pay for a new drive, plus you'll have a spare drive in case this happens again.

Also, what PSU do you have? I've heard of instances where bad PSUs were nuking other system components.

 

[Wonderwill]

Sorry guys I'm really broke right now but I get paid in about 3 weeks when I can buy another drive. The problem is, I have a lot of work to do on this comp. in the next few weeks. This really puts me in a bind. As I said, all my important videos, music, pictures and documents are backed up-so I won't lose anything but time installing. Will the 60 gig suffice for a ghost backup? I have used up ~120 GB so far. What do I use to clone the disk?

My psu is a fortron sourse 400 watt:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104952

...which according to people on this forum should have been perfectly fine... :roll:

Anyway, I was wondering if the bsod has anything to do with the drive because it could be related to a totally different part. I don't know if this drive is having problems at all because the comp not recognising it could have been an issue just because another part caused it to reboot and cut power to the hd.

 

[ejay]

Ghost is now a Symantec product. Although there are others, this is the one I have had consistently good results with, albeit with an older version.

http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10

The power supply you list is a good one and with the rather low wattage graphics card you are using, should do just fine...unless it is fautly (happens to the best of 'em, even new). The odds are however, that this is not the problem.

If you have 120 GBs of data on the 320, you will not be able to successfully "Ghost" this data onto a 60 GB hard drive - just won't fit. There are compression algorithms that in theory would allow you fit larger amounts of data onto a smaller one, but I've just not experimented with this and cannot offer any advice. You can "Ghost" from a larger drive to a smaller drive if the accumulative data size doesn't equal or exceed the capacity of the smaller drive. And also, you need to keep about 15% of any drive "unoccupied" for defragmentation purposes. So if you have 120 GB of data on the 320, I would recommend a target drive of at least 150 GB...if I understand your predicament correctly.

 

[Wonderwill]

No, I don't have $70 to buy Norton ghost, either. I have used the comp. all day and it hasn't had a problem since I opened the case and replugged all the connectors...(hopefully it was a loose cable :? ) Since I can't buy another drive at the moment, and need to use this computer still, I guess I'll just have to wing it and hope the drive is OK.

I will back my stuff up as I go along, and run tests to see if something else is the problem. Another predicament is the RMA to WD-the drive might still be fine, and if they don't see a problem with it they might just send it right back. The FSP power supply has run perfectly since I got it, so I don't know why it would act up now.

 

[HYST3R]

"hiren's boot cd" contains alot of HDD monitoring and fixing tools. some will even repair bad sectors. thats one option. WD also has a 5 year warranty on their HDD's, so if you dont want ot bother with it just RMA it.