Is My Hard Drive Dying?

Doctor Detroit

Background: Windows 7, built the computer last summer, no prior issues. I'm running a Samsung 1 GB as C:, and a Seagate 1 GB partitioned for other stuff.

If I'm running a program (like WoW) from the Seagate, it may freeze up and stop responding. After forcing a quit, Windows can't find WoW anymore, and in fact, Windows can't find anything past the C: drive.


And earlier today, the computer saw all the hard drives; I came back later, and the other drives were gone again. No error message or any indication that something changed.

I don't think chkdsk saw any errors. All the cables appear to be firmly attached. If this is a hard drive issue, it's different from what I've experienced in the past.

So is it the hard drive? The motherboard?

electricitylikesme

Most likely.

You should check the SMART data if you can, but it sounds like there's a bad sector on the Seagate that can't be remapped. Consumer hard disks prioritize trying to access your data above all else, so if they hit an unrecoverable bad sector they'll keep trying at it for a very long time (at which point the OS/controller may just give up on the drive).

There's also a chance you've got a controller problem on the motherboard, although I'd expect BSODs from that. You should move all the data off the drive ASAP and replace it.

Doctor Detroit

Yeah, thanks.

Apparently chkdsk won't find anything, but booting into Seagate's DOS-based program...well, let's just say it looks like every sector needs a repair.

Gonna try and get WoW and ToR moved off of there, and then I'll just mothball it for a couple of weeks.

Lucky for me I was looking for something for the missus to get me for X-mas.

Crap! Why did hard drives go up in price? (I got a 1 TB Spinpoint for $80 last year...now its $150???)

jaziek

Doctor Detroit wrote:

Crap! Why did hard drives go up in price? (I got a 1 TB Spinpoint for $80 last year...now its $150???)

floods in thailand destroyed a lot of the world's hard drive production facilities.