Hard Drive error on bootup

[goonermarv]

Hi all, I wasn't sure what forum to post this in so I thought here would be good. I am having serious problems with my PC at the moment.

It started a couple of days ago when an error appears on one of my hard drives (second drive) during bootup, but after the first encounter I logged into windows fine and thought nothing of it. A while after my desktop froze and I was unable to do anything so I restarted. The error was still there but I logged into windows fine again, but the desktop froze instantly after I clicked anything and this continued. Now I can only just reach the login screen and it will freeze there.

I have been into safe mode and tried various scans. I have ran CCleaner which did not solve the problem, Norton360 fails to do any scan at all and I also used MalwareBytes to scan for malware. During the malware scan it found around 8 infections, but when it started scanning a certain area on my main drive inside the windows folder the desktop froze. The exact same thing has happened on two occasions.

Safe mode now seems to freeze after a short while, including on the login screen and it seems I am running out of options. I want to make formatting my hard drives a last resort as I have important files that I do not want to lose.

I have also physically opened my desktop, cleaned for dust and reconnected both hard drives to try and solve the error but to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I have attached a picture of the error that comes up on bootup.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Best guess: The hard drive is in the process of failing. If I am correct, and read your picture correctly, the drive is part of a RAID 0 pair, so a failing drive will lead to the loss of your data.

The trick is to either fix the drive (unlikely) or to get all your data and operating system backed up as quickly and thoroughly as possible to minimize your loss when the drive dies. To state something you probably know, with RAID 1 or 10 or 5 or 6 you could replace the drive and rebuild; with RAID 0 that doesn't work.

The most frequently used tool here to try to duplicate a failint drive sector-by-sector is Clonezilla. Someone with more experience than me will have to weigh in on whether you can just clone the one failing drive and swap in the copy, or if that will kill the RAID system's digestion and you have to copy what you can from the failing RAID volume.

Truly sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, and I hope that you have backups. If this is actually a failing drive, there isn't much that can be done with a reasonable amount of time and money. A professional lab could have a go at it, and probably get everything, but it could cost from $1,000 up to easily $15,000. On the other hand, they could find a loose connection on the card and fix it cheaply.

 

[goonermarv]

I don't think it is the hard drive failing as i recall having an error like this 4 or 5 years ago, but I had a restore point set up and after everything went back to normal including that error on bootup. Stupidly I don't have a restore point so I couldn't backdate the PC to last week which sucks. It looks like my options are running out and i'm going to have to format but I want to make sure i have tried everything before I do as I do not want to lose my files.

Anyone have any ideas on what to try?

thanks

 

[Jim_L9]

You could try a bootable diagnostic CD.

 

[Jim_L9]

Does Ctl-L on the screen above give you any additional options/info?

 

[goonermarv]

You could try a bootable diagnostic CD.

Yeah I found my diagnostic CD and it come back with errors on my second hard drive. Googled these errors and looks like the second harddrive is dying.

Managed to fix the problem though by creating a new RAID1 volume with just the first harddrive on its own and by turning off the second HD in the BIOS screen and that seems to have done the job. Only problem was I lost all files and only got half as much space as I had before but at least its working now

Marv