Hard Drive problems..bad sectors???

[STEVETAT]

I have just about had all I can take...I have spent a verrrryyyy longggg timeeeeee trying to get to the bottom of why my XP has been freezing up on me randomly for the past 6 months!

Well I think it just might be a bad hard drive thats to blame??

I am no comput expert but I have just had to reload XP twice now in the last 2 weeks. The first time because it would'nt boot and Xp set up could not detect the installed XP so it wanted to reformat and install a fresh XP....wiping out 30 gigs of un backed up valuable data!!!!

I persevered and eventual restored XP using chkdsk /p command in the Recovery Console...Yippeee I thought

But today bad news XP would load no way ....it was missing its whole System32 folder!! Don't ask me why cause I have'nt a clue??

Anyway if that is not serious enough the whole C Drive was not being detected on startup .....IBM Deskstar 60GB 6months old.
I could not repair the installed XP even after finally getting the computer to see the drive again ....it just kept coming and going on startup but finally stayed long enough for me to install a second copy of XP back on it.

I have just had a couple of freezes already after only a couple of hours and I ran a diagnostic on the drive and it reported that it has one or more bad sectors on it??

So what I would like (besides going to bed and waking up in the morning to discover it was just a very bad dream) is some advice please fairly quickly if possible....are bad sectors on a drive fixable or is it time to give up on it and send it back to the black hole it came from ??

This post was longer than I was intending ....but what the hell just glad to share

[DoG]

The odd bad sector on a drive can happen from "dirty" shutdowns or power outages and are fairly easy to sort out- providing you have enough space to completely empty your hard drive. A lot of bad sectors could mean hardware failure- ie drive is dying.

I would, and have done, perform a low level format on the drive. On a 60gig drive low level format will take around 2 hours. If your mobo has smart monitering of hard drives............. turn it off. Its useless. I have an 80gig paperweight here that smart monitor says is fine.

If you want to follow my advice i can supply you details on how to perform the procedure.

EDIT: You may also want to disable 32bit drive access and block transfer mode in bios, NTFS doesnt like these options too much



Last edited by DoG at Today at 4:16 am

[STEVETAT]

Will a low level format wipe out all existing data on the drive?
Can bad sectors cause a drive to fail to be detected at startup? mine does and only reappears if I give it a gentle tap with my finger???

[STEVETAT]

Can you please explain..."disable 32bit drive access and block transfer mode in bios, NTFS doesnt like these options too much" and how to do it?

[Stringent]

A Low level format wipes your drive totally, you would have to reformat. I know on IBM drives their tools try to repair the bad sector by only doing those sectors.

Bad sectors can be caused by a number of things. As stated incorrect shutdowns/powerpups also turning the computer off when the hard drive is spinning. Moving the drive physically, jolts n bangs etc ...

[STEVETAT]

Since the computer has been suffering random freezes since I got the drive it inevitablly has had many of those!

There are many other conditions that would cause your system to freeze, you would have to follow a process of elimination B4 you put the blame on bad sectors. I would bet that your problem IS NOT bad sectors.

There are three things that tend to cause freezing up like that: temperature, device drivers, or bad memory

If your temp is fine, I would guess it is either a device driver, or some bad memory, or a bad motherboard.

Ive seen many instances where mixing of RAMs of different brands and modules that cause many instablity problems. The best way to go esp if youre on a DDR platform (DDR are more sensitive) is to use only the best quality RAMs that you can get with CAS2 ratings.

These are the most common causes, but are certainly not the complete list. First, strip your box of everything that is not needed (leave only system drive and vidcard) and leave only the minumum ram (if it still freezes, try a different stick of ram making sure to set the first one aside). Let us know.

Also boot into safe mode and see if you can duplicate the freeze. Follow the logical process of elimination here?


Zo



Last edited by zonko at Today at 11:10 am

[just_do_IT]

You mentioned that a "gentle tap" remedies the situation. Your drive is no good. Something mechanical inside is having issues. If its under warranty, send it back asap.

Oh never mind...i read what you said the wrong way.





Last edited by trminatr at Today at 8:20 am

[DoG]

Quote:

Originally posted by zonko@Today at 3:52 pm
There are many other conditions that would cause your system to freeze, you would have to follow a process of elimination B4 you put the blame on bad sectors. I would bet that your problem IS NOT bad sectors.
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Zo

He's already stated that the drive has bad sectors- if the page file is attempting to write to the bad sectors it will cause lock-ups/freezes/crashes.

If the drive only reappears when you give it a gentle tap with your finger then it is shot.

To disable block transfer mode and 32bit disk access mode you need 2 enter bios. Most newer boards have the option of disabling block transfer mode- you just need to search through the bios settings screens to find it. Disabling 32bit disk access usually only appears on server boards afaik- i have a tyan tiger 2460 that will lose windows XP if i even attempt to run it with these options enabled

Check your power connection to the drive and make sure that all leads are firmly seated into the plug and then into the drive... Then run chkdsk /r....NOT /p this will map all bad sectors and repair what it can...tapping lightly on the drive (I did not see this) tells me that you may have a loose connection which will in turn cause bad sectors.

Zo