Is my HDD failing?

lieb39

Apple lover, PC User
Joined
27 Nov 2002
Messages
526
Hello everyone,

Recently my desktop would just crash.. out of no where. I would just leave it alone for a while, and it just freezes. It can't be anything except for the Hard drive (which is about 37c). When this happends I hit the reset button on my computer and my BIOS just sits there, looking for the HDD. I turn the computer OFF for a second or two, turn it back on and everything runs again. Is my HDD starting to fail? :(

Thanks,


-lieb39
 
If your cpu is overclocked back it off. Have you ran a good scan disk program?
 
CPU is not overclocked one bit, proably underclocked with the way I set it up. running CHKDSK on it right now.. taking forever... no errors found yet. Is it worth it also that when i played the sims earlier today it would freeze for about a minute, than just act normal? Seems it was reading of the HDD during this time...
S.M.A.R.T. is enabled on the HDD in BIOS..


-lieb39
 
I agree with Vector, this doesn't sound hdd related at all.
 
Re: Re: Is my HDD failing?

Originally posted by Vector
Are you sure? How do you know that?

Because my other hard drive is fine, runs windows on it fine (I have to installations of windows, one on each HDD...) but this is super weird. Now files are starting to be f*cked on my other HDD too.. CHKDSK doesn't read any problems with either drives. Is there a better application out there? I'm going to run CHKDSK on both drives in recovery console, than defrag with Diskeeper and than chkdsk again.

Any suggestions? My windows on my first HDD won't even load!

Edit: What else could it be? [Specs in signature, referring to powerhouse desktop]

-lieb39
 
Software issue maybe? Drivers or general fubar? It could be hdd of course, just doesn't sound like it at this point.
 
Without actually seeing what error messages or blue screens you're getting, my first inclination would be to say it's a RAM problem. You can try running a program called AIDA32 to run some memory diagnostic tests. It's freeware.
 
In *both* versions of windows?

I'll see how things are after this defrag and chkdsk*2

-lieb39
 
Originally posted by Vector
Without actually seeing what error messages or blue screens you're getting, my first inclination would be to say it's a RAM problem. You can try running a program called AIDA32 to run some memory diagnostic tests. It's freeware.

Well the thing is that I just leave, and when I'm back the computer is sitting there, on windows, frozen. The BIOS issue is basically how I explained.. it just sits there, trying to detect it.. [no frozen] and than I just have to turn it off for a minute or two, turn it on and it used to be all good until now windows on the first [40GB] HDD won't load...


-lieb39
 
Originally posted by Vector
either one.

I mean that both HDDs are starting with the f*cked files.. I run CHKDSK during boot time, says nothing is wrong. I load windows, than it reports as a file f*cked up with a nice balloon tip.

Doing CHKDSK in recovery console right now.. taking FOREVER but nothing be reported. Than I'm going to boot into my second install of XP and turn off all sleep settings.. start defragging and im off to bed..

-lieb39
 
I just checked AIDA32, and it doesn't give as detailed a memory diagnostic as I thought. There are others out there, though. Here's a good one:

http://www.memtest86.com/

But like Zedric said, you may be right. It could be HD related. But most of the time, issues like this are memory related.
 
Why niot remove the HDd you think is defective and use the other one for now and see if it does the same thing?
 
It's not a hard drive related problem. You may have a memory leak/bug in one of your running applications and when you have to power off to reboot you are losing file info that has not yet been written to disk. Run your task manager and see what is hogging resources (i.e., handles, User Objects, GDI Objects, CPU, and Memory Usage). All except CPU , VM size and Memory Usage should be below 2000. Also, check out your event viewer.
 
First off it could be literally anything in the system. Windows and PC Bios do not handle problems well.

It is not a corrupted driver. The drivers aren't loaded until after the HD/CDs are detected and POST is finished. It is not a memory leak either because the RAM is cleared at reboot. It could be corruption or damage to the HD track 0 or boot sector or a hardware problem. Run an updated virus scan first. Then run a HD diagnostic off the manufacturers boot floppy, if any (WD has one).

Next change out one thing at a time. The list in order of probability is:

Replace the HD cables with others (preferably known good ones).

If you have windows on 2 hd try running with just one at a time. See if problem goes away.

Pull any extra cards and drives (sound, vid capture, firewire etc.) run and see if stable, if stable put cards back in 1 at a time.

If you have 2 ram sticks pull one out and run just one. No improvement, swap the sticks and try again.

I had a stupid ass sound card that drove me nuts until I replaced it with an upgrade. Magically all the stability problems went away...
 
Originally posted by SnookBooger
It's not a hard drive related problem. You may have a memory leak/bug in one of your running applications and when you have to power off to reboot you are losing file info that has not yet been written to disk. Run your task manager and see what is hogging resources (i.e., handles, User Objects, GDI Objects, CPU, and Memory Usage). All except CPU , VM size and Memory Usage should be below 2000. Also, check out your event viewer.

Then why would i hang when the BIOS is detecting the Hard Drives?
 
It doessn't hang when it detects the drivers at BIOS, it just can't find them. It searches for a minute or two, than goes onto the next drive, a minute or 2 later the computer starts to nothing, since it didn't detect the drivers.

-lieb39
 

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