Is my Hard Drive broken?

M

Merak

New member
OO9i8uW
Hi,

lately I've been having some issues with my PC. It seemed slightly slow sometimes and two days ago I coulnd't log into my user account in windows and I got an error that some data for the profile was missing. I logged into a temporary windows account and later wiped the hard drive and completely reinstalled everything. Today, i had a bluescreen with the message "MEMORY_MANAGAMENT".
I later ran "gsmart" and it showed some errors, but I'm not sure what they mean.
I've added a screenshot to this post.
OO9i8uW


Could you give me an opinion on what this means and wether I should replace my hard drive? Apart from the issues I mentioned, everything is still working fine

Thanks in advance!


Screenshot: http://imgur.com/OO9i8uW
 
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You think you have a faulty 2TB Seagate Barracuda, can you show us the S.M.A.R.T data for the drive? And what does the bluescreen mini dump file say (it should be on the root of drive C)?
 
Yeah that bad boy is looking toward silicon heaven sadly. Too many bad sectors, I'd start backing stuff up and replace the drive.

EDIT: Only 13,191 Hours?! Seems very low for that drive before failures.. could you get it RMA'd.
 
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@Wraith
It came in the second hand PC I bought about 4 years ago on ebay, so that unfortunately isn't an option. Just out of curiosity, how long should it have ideally lasted though? Also, what could have caused it to fail this early?

@Reloaded2
I did a format when I reinstalled windows, but I assume that isn't as good as diskpart. I've never used that before, does it even work when trying to format the hard drive where windows is installed?
 
Right, if you have a pagefile on your windows machine, turn it off completely, you don't want to stress that drive any longer, then if you want a backup I would suggest to clone the whole drive using clonezilla. It will do bit by bit clone which also stresses the drive less than copy/paste of files
 
I would strongly recommend you buying a new disk. This one is on it's last breath. Formatting, and disk repair tools can prolong life a bit, but I wouldn't risk reusing it. It will die soon. Since you have fromatted it already i would assume you've backed your data so nothing important is lost. Here is your opportunity to go for SSD system drive. ;)
 
I've seen worse..

There is a way to basically mark off the bad sectors and continue to use the drive. It will then know not to use those areas.

I would get any data off, then just use it for game installs or something which you can replace easily.
 
Method:

Type cmd (Admin) into start. A CMD window will open.

Type "diskpart"and press Enter.

Type list disk and press Enter.

A list of all the storage devices connected to your computer will be displayed.

Type select disk "disk number" and press Enter. (Example: select disk 1).
e.g "select disk 1"

Type "clean" and press Enter. Do that two times

Type "create partition primary" and hit Enter.

Type "active".

Type "select partition 1".

Type format fs=ntfs and press Enter. The format process will finish in a few minutes. You can write fat32 instead of ntfs if you want to carry files larger than 4 gigabytes - usually for USB sticks etc.

This "fs=ntfs" command will take many hours so leave it over night and maybe the next day too - just until it completes. This is because its rewriting everything to 0.
Then once it reaches 100% type "exit" in cmd and open disk manager and select the drive and format as NTFS and click "quick format" and that's it.


Do that in DiskPart and see what happens.

Also the speed is inversely proportional to drive capacity so as the drive capacity increases, the speed of which it takes to format will decrease. So leave it overnight.

Then rerun HD tune and if you still have the bad sectors then do AlienALX method of marking off the disk errors.

Also is Windows installed on the bad drive itself? If so you will have to use another boot drive into windows to do this or use another PC but if its a secondary drive and lets say windows is installed on a SSD then do it
 
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I've always used my hard drives right up until they flat out died. You can usually tell, because they start making whining noises or clicking. If you back up regularly you shouldn't lose anything..

Somebody asked somewhere today (I can't find it, been working all day and now it's gone) why a hard drive would die. Every time I have ever lost a hard drive it's been down to one thing - heat. They were always poorly ventilated. It took me a while to figure it out, but the only three I have ever lost have been in tiny cases with no airflow. The hotter you allow the drive to get the more wear will go on the bearings etc. If you keep them cool they should last until they are worthless (too small).

Actually no, I did lose one by dropping it on my foot once. Two joys for the price of none. It wasn't even my drive either so I had to bloody replace it *fumes*.
 
Tbh I would say a drive can be trusted for a few years. You say you bought it four years ago second hand. I would retreive what you can, secure erase, and recycle it at your local tip. SSD prices are falling. Time to make the change mate :)
 
Thank you all very much for your advice!

I found a bargain on amazon so I've decided to replace it with an SSD and a new regular hard drive. I guess I can still use my current one for things that aren't so important, until it actually does fail
 
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