A help request diagnosing a problem.

[argo159]

Hello, I think my Hard Drive may be broken and this seems like a good place to ask help.

I woke up a few days ago to find my computer was not starting. At first it was giving me messages about .sys files being missing or corrupt, but it was not the same .sys files everytime. Sometimes it was pci.sys, sometimes ndis.sys and \config\system became missing and corrupt too. There might have been more, these are just the ones I remember off hand.

I tried repairing with my OS CD, chkdsk, but it would still sometimes say random .sys files were corrupt or missing, but now it would also tell me that A disk read error had occurred control alt delete to restart and it will always give that message until I run the repair CD it seems. I even formatted my drive and started with a new install, but I still got errors.

After repairing now, the computer seems to start but it is incredibly slow, and if I restart, I will probably get a disk read error again.

When I was repairing my PC, sometimes it would not show an OS to repair, and sometimes it would be there.

I have tried everything I could think of, like I said above, repairing from the OS CD, chkdsk (which was talking about bad sectors and stuff like that), Changed the cable connecting my Hard Drive to my Motherboard. Unfortunately I do not have another HDD to try in my PC, or another PC to try my current HDD in.

What could be wrong with my computer? I think it's the hard drive anyway, but I am no expert. Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Some specs:

Samsung HD103SI Hard Drive
Asus M4A78 Pro
550W PSU

 

[GI_JONES]

Hello, I think my Hard Drive may be broken and this seems like a good place to ask help.

I woke up a few days ago to find my computer was not starting. At first it was giving me messages about .sys files being missing or corrupt, but it was not the same .sys files everytime. Sometimes it was pci.sys, sometimes ndis.sys and \config\system became missing and corrupt too. There might have been more, these are just the ones I remember off hand.

I tried repairing with my OS CD, chkdsk, but it would still sometimes say random .sys files were corrupt or missing, but now it would also tell me that A disk read error had occurred control alt delete to restart and it will always give that message until I run the repair CD it seems. I even formatted my drive and started with a new install, but I still got errors.

After repairing now, the computer seems to start but it is incredibly slow, and if I restart, I will probably get a disk read error again.

When I was repairing my PC, sometimes it would not show an OS to repair, and sometimes it would be there.

I have tried everything I could think of, like I said above, repairing from the OS CD, chkdsk (which was talking about bad sectors and stuff like that), Changed the cable connecting my Hard Drive to my Motherboard. Unfortunately I do not have another HDD to try in my PC, or another PC to try my current HDD in.

What could be wrong with my computer? I think it's the hard drive anyway, but I am no expert. Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Some specs:

Samsung HD103SI Hard Drive
Asus M4A78 Pro
550W PSU

I think your hard drive is shot. Terrible timing too, considering how high the prices are right now

 

[argo159]

If that is the case, would there be anywhere someone could recommend picking up a decent Hard Drive at a decent price? (Around £100 preferably less)

 

[fzabkar]

Try a comprehensive SMART diagnostic. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

See this article for SMART info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

 

[argo159]

Ok, the only warnings I seem to have with the HD Sentinel are:

Reallocation Event Count - 98 Value/98 Worst
Current Pending Sector Count - 72 Value/49 Worst
Off-line Uncorrectable Sector Count - 100 Value/100 Worst

With HDDScan I get the same as above but with

UltraDMA CRC Errors 100Value/100Worst. added

 

[fzabkar]

The pending sector count looks bad, but we would need to see the raw values (at the end of each line).

Pending sectors are those that have been identified as bad and are waiting to be replaced with spares.

 

[argo159]

Here is the entire report copied from HD Sentinel

1,Raw Read Error Rate,51,99,48,OK,0000000013DF,0,Enabled
3,Spin Up Time,11,83,83,OK,000000001784,0,Enabled
4,Start/Stop Count,0,99,99,OK (Always passing),00000000026D,0,Enabled
5,Reallocated Sectors Count,10,100,100,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
7,Seek Error Rate,51,100,100,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
8,Seek Time Performance,15,100,100,OK,000000003130,0,Enabled
9,Power On Time Count,0,96,96,OK (Always passing),0000000049C2,0,Enabled
10,Spin Retry Count,51,100,100,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
11,Drive Calibration Retry Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000002,0,Enabled
12,Drive Power Cycle Count,0,99,99,OK (Always passing),000000000228,0,Enabled
13,Soft Read Error Rate,0,99,48,OK (Always passing),0000000013CD,0,Enabled
183,Vendor-specific,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
184,End-to-End Error Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
187,Reported Uncorrectable Errors,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),00000000442E,0,Enabled
188,Command Timeout,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
190,Airflow Temperature,0,78,66,OK (Always passing),000016130016,0,Enabled
194,Disk Temperature,0,77,65,OK (Always passing),000017130017,0,Enabled
195,Hardware ECC Recovered,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),00000139068D,0,Enabled
196,Reallocation Event Count,0,98,98,OK (Always passing),000000000065,0,Enabled
197,Current Pending Sector Count,0,73,49,OK (Always passing),00000000047A,0,Enabled
198,Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000001,0,Enabled
199,Ultra ATA CRC Error Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000008,0,Enabled
200,Write Error Rate,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
201,Soft Read Error Rate,0,253,253,OK (Always passing),000000000018,0,Enabled

 

[fzabkar]

The report shows a lot of read errors.

The number of pending sectors is 0x47A (= 1146):
http://www.google.com/search?q=0x47A+in+decimal

I would advise that you backup your data if you can and then replace your drive.

 

[argo159]

OK, thanks for the help