Hardware Failing hard drive??

[Screamer]

My Seagate hard drive behave strangely the last few days.
On Monday when I boot my pc (Windows 7 SP 1), it wants to check the hard drive for consistency. I proceed with the prompt. It took a very long time for the check to run. Then it reported that it could not send a run once command and the PC hang. On resetting the PC the bios could not detect the hard drive any more. I tried several times in vain.
This morning when I boot my PC, all the sudden the hard drive is back. It ask again for a consistency check. I proceed, and it finished the check. It reported 4 kb of bad sectors, but everything running smooth since then.
Wat is up with this drive?:idk:

 

[garyw]

It does sound a lot like the hard drive is failing. If you don't have a back up I'd advise you to make one. If possible RAID the disk so you've got a copy of all the data on another Hard drive - still no substitute for a full backup though.

 

[Lucy]

Get everything irreplaceable off that drive while you still can. It will probably not live out the month.

 

[N_Molson]

I highly recommend the upper advice. Your symptoms you describe here hapenned to me a couple of time, at this point your drive can completely fail at the next boot, it's a matter of luck.

USB keys, CD-R, DVD-R, LAN, Host sites, use the method you want but save your important data ASAP. Really, do it now, you won't regret. And order a new HDD

 

[N_Molson]

I remember something, i think there's a computer that can have two hard drives, one for the main and one for a backup just incase the 1st one fails. IMO i think you should get it.

That's a RAID MODE (don't remember which) setting. The two hard-drives are "twins", everything that is written or deleted on one is written or deleted on the other. If one fails, you are still go and can quietly replace the other. Very interesting for professionnals application, where you can't afford to lose files that worth time & money. Cons : that second hard-drive could be used to store more data...

 

[Screamer]

You should replace your hard drive, might affect your other computer's systems as well.

Thanks for the advice. It looks like I was incredibly lucky to get it online again. What other systems of my PC could be affected by this, Babelonia?
I also noted when the PC is booting, the memory test is hanging for a second or two.
Test.................ting memory.

 

[garyw]

I remember something, i think there's a computer that can have two hard drives, one for the main and one for a backup just incase the 1st one fails. IMO i think you should get it. :compbash2::compbash2:

no, no. NO.

Never, ever call this backup. It's a MIRROR. RAID1.

Why is it not a backup? Because the hard drives can be still be stolen (losing your data). You can do something daft and DELETE files (losing your data). Something random can happen such as a power surge and corrupt your files (losing your data).

RAID1 is not a backup. It's a protection against a drive failing. Backups are things you keep offsite (e.g. at Amazon S3) in case something happens and the data is destroyed.

Any machine that has two hard drives can do this. The second hard drive needs to be the same size or larger than the first.
In windows you can convert them to dynamic then add a mirror.

Alternatively, you use in the RAID card many newer machines ship with.

 

[Cairan]

It could also be a drive controller failure, either on the motherboard or on an expansion card... I've had these crop on me a few times in my life... Hard-drives were just fine, it was the controller that was failling. In that case, you're more screwed with RAID than without in some instances... ie if you use RAID-5 or RAID-6.

In the case of controller failures, both master and slave fail to be detected and both behave weirdly.

 

[Adelanthal]

4k bad sectors is a REALLY bad sign; back your data to another storage device ASAP. If read / write operations start failing, an odd but actually effective solution is to remove the Hard Drive (HDD) from the computer and pop it in the freezer for an hour or so. For some reason, this allows for a potential read operation to succeed somewhat more often. Of course, if you start getting rhythmic clicks from the HDD, it's toast.

To re-iterate, back up your data NOW. It's a bit too late to be contemplating a RAID configuration at this point. Heck, you're probably beyond a chkdsk /f by now. Good luck and may the be with you.

 

[TSPenguin]

4k bad sectors is a REALLY bad sign

He wrote he had 4kb of bad sector, not 4000 bad sectors.


Given that the drive didn't even make itself known at least once, it might be prudent to check if your drive suffers from some manufacturing error that might be corrected by a firmware update. This happens more and more lately.

Nonetheless, backup of course.

 

[garyw]

an odd but actually effective solution is to remove the Hard Drive (HDD) from the computer and pop it in the freezer for an hour or so. For some reason, this allows for a potential read operation to succeed somewhat more often. Of course, if you start getting rhythmic clicks from the HDD, it's toast.

All true - however, don't put the bare drive in the freezer - cover it in a bag first. You want to reduce the temperature of the inside and not cause the metal connections to freeze.

What happens when a disk crashes is that one of the heads actually impacts the disk surface. Popping it in a freezer for a few hours causes the head to shrink and lift off the surface of the disk. Useful read time is around 20 minutes until the spinning disk heats up - at that point data loss is normally fatal to the disk so you don't want to boot from it but to slave it on another machine and get the data off ASAP.

Of course, that should not be necessary because it's already backed up - right?

Any data you don't backup is data you don't want.

 

[Artlav]

Wat is up with this drive?:idk:

Noticed any unusual sounds coming from it?
If it's something like that:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/hdd_death.mp3
Then get the data off it ASAP, and get a new drive.