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crooked windows
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Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sat Aug 24, 2013 6:21 am

At home

I've just done a fresh install of Vista, updated windows and then started a HDD tools to check for bad sectors. It started and got to 8% and froze :roll: then on reboot it started again and froze at 7% and then the 3rd time at 6% :o . by this time I realized vista was ganging up on me, so I bailed out and defaulted the boot-up.
I've got it going but would like to check the HDD for any errors it has. Now what do I do??
 
vargis14
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sat Aug 24, 2013 7:32 am

I would go to the manufacturer of your HDD website and they probably have a downloadable tool to chk your HDD for errors.

Also it might be a good idea to start in safe mode so only the essential drivers are loaded and try your scan again and see if it locks up.

Check your system memory and blow out the sockets with compressed air and re-seat your system memory, while you are at it re-seating your graphics and any other card in your system is not a bad idea.

Do not go wiping stuff down with a cloth or use a vacuum cleaner brush since that creates a ton of static charge and you could kill something in your system.

Also why not get windows ? I Hate vista sorry I am very biased against Vista when windows 7 has never given me a problem whatsoever on the 6 systems I had/have it on and the countless ones I have used. Vista on the other hand has gave me problems.

If you can find a downloadable copy of windows 7 through a torrent or something you could try it out since you just installed vista anyways...If you like it get a licence. I think it gives you 30 days to activate. But i am not positive and if I am wrong I am sure I will be corrected by a smarter gerbil in these forums.
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just brew it!
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sat Aug 24, 2013 7:58 am

vargis14 wrote:
If you can find a downloadable copy of windows 7 through a torrent or something you could try it out since you just installed vista anyways...If you like it get a licence. I think it gives you 30 days to activate. But i am not positive and if I am wrong I am sure I will be corrected by a smarter gerbil in these forums.

You're essentially correct, except don't torrent it, you don't know where that ISO has been! :wink:

There are legitimate ISOs available from Digital River. The links aren't widely publicized by Microsoft, but are not too hard to find in various Windows support forums, e.g.: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... X64/page72

Edit: Concerns have been expressed regarding whether vargis14's post is a Rule #1 violation. My take is, since vargis14 hasn't suggested any methods for getting around the DRM (i.e. you still need to purchase a legit license to activate), and Microsoft has even allowed links to some of these Digital River ISOs to remain up in their own forums (the moderator noted that the links are not "official" but left them there), IMO there is no issue.
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Ryu Connor
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sat Aug 24, 2013 11:18 am

This has very little to do with Windows.

Does someone have the time to help this person with some SMART tests to validate the drive? (I don't have time for a longer post right now).
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just brew it!
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sun Aug 25, 2013 12:30 pm

Ryu Connor wrote:
Does someone have the time to help this person with some SMART tests to validate the drive? (I don't have time for a longer post right now).

Well, the first suggestion he got was actually to download and run the drive manufacturer's diagnostics. That seems like a reasonable place to start.
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jihadjoe
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:14 pm

I'd download a tool like Hiren's BootCD or Ultimate Boot CD. You can use them to make a bootable CD or thumbdrive, and come loaded with utilities you can use to check your disk and/or windows install.
 
keltor
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sun Aug 25, 2013 2:50 pm

Sure it COULD be an issue with Vista, but most likle you either have a bad hdd, cable, or motherboard. Do you have a 2nd drive/cable to test with? (Cables used to not matter under the EIDE days, but sadly they seem to matter a little bit under SATA)
 
crooked windows
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:23 pm

thanks for the suggestions, I will try in a few days when I get everything backed up just in case. I feel as though I'm treading on very thin ice.
The pc is actually my notebook I am using right now ,....
Just run Speccy and HDD report is below if anyone can see a problem.

Hard Drives
ST9160821AS ATA Device
Manufacturer Seagate
Form Factor 2.5"
Cache Size 8MB
Heads 16
Cylinders 16383
SATA type SATA-II 3.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-7
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 2677 times
Power On Time 949 Days 20 Hours
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM
Transfer Mode SATA I
Interface SATA
Capacity 156GB
Real size 160,041,885,696 bytes
RAID Type None
S.M.A.R.T
01 Read Error Rate 114 (099 worst) Data 000467D428
03 Spin-Up Time 099 (098) Data 0000000000
04 Start/Stop Count 096 (096) Data 000000123E
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 100 (100) Data 0000000009
07 Seek Error Rate 075 (060) Data 002D3298A6
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 074 (074) Data 000000590C
0A Spin Retry Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
0C Device Power Cycle Count 098 (098) Data 0000000A75
B8 End-to-End error / IOEDC 100 (253) Data 0000000000
BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 075 (075) Data 0000000019
BC Command Timeout 100 (090) Data 0000000013
BD High Fly Writes (WDC) 092 (092) Data 0000000008
BE Temperature Difference from 100 060 (034) Data 0029120028
C0 Power-off Retract Count 100 (100) Data 0000000178
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 001 (001) Data 000009E2D2
C2 Temperature 040 (066) Data 0000000028
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 070 (057) Data 000A9D6944
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000001
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000001
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000
C8 Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate 100 (253) Data 0000000000
CA Data Address Mark errors 100 (253) Data 0000000000
Temperature 41 °C
Temperature Range ok (less than 50 °C)
Status Good
 
Yan
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:41 pm

crooked windows wrote:
Capacity 156GB

The drive is obviously fairly old, if it only has 156 GB.

For this kind of work, I prefer System Rescue CD. Boot from the CD, and do both a SMART check with smartctl --test=long /dev/sda (you can continue working while the test is going on -- note there's two hyphens before "test") and a bad blocks test with badblocks -c 10000 -s -v /dev/sda . The badblocks command can take a while to run, especially if it does find bad blocks.

Once badblocks is finished, check the SMART results with smartctl -a /dev/sda .

Windows alternatives are Speed Fan for the SMART test and HD Tune for the bad blocks test.

I've seen disks whose bad blocks were repaired by doing badblocks -c 10000 -s -v -w /dev/sda . This destroys the data on the disk, but since you were planning to install Windows, you're obviously not concerned about the data.
 
crooked windows
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Mon Sep 02, 2013 4:17 am

Yeah its old now but it wasn't when it was new. 160 Gb is sounding more like a flash drive :lol:
Will check out the cost of a new one since you pointed That out. then when it dies (hopefully the drive survies) will transfer it to the PC I am suppose to be here for.
Will try the suggestions too, Appreciate it all guys. thanks
btw: this note book does all the donkey work on the net and transfer downloaded stuff gets transferred to X Drives, so 160 GB use to be fine.
 
Yan
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Mon Sep 02, 2013 4:10 pm

crooked windows wrote:
Yeah its old now but it wasn't when it was new.

Things are often newer when they're new than when they're old.
 
crooked windows
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Re: Hard drive error checking freezing up

Tue Sep 03, 2013 9:41 pm

I couldn't resist that comment. Anyway I have taken the plunge and a new 500GB is on its way.
Doesn't solve the actual problem but does triple my storage :D

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