Help with failing HDD

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Link7z7

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#111162 25-Oct-2012 23:24

Hi,
I'm 17 but not completely noob to the computer world but i'm a little confused and need some assistance.
About 2-3 months ago my slave drive (secondary HDD) basically failed. I can remember playing Skyrim or something and the game went buggy so I closed and restarted the PC. When it turned back on the whole PC seemed quite slow and unresponsive. The HDD is about 2 years old. My OS is Windows XP.
I ran a chkdsk test at the time and can remember seeing thousands of errors, for example: 34012 error, 34013 error, 34014 error etc.
So because it had so many errors i just cancelled it and disabled the HDD. 2-3 months later (present) i have been getting close to running out of space on both my main HDD and the portable HDD i have been using. I did a bit more research and came across terms like S.M.A.R.T so i installed a program called 'HD Tune 2.55'. I enabled my failed HDD and found it seemed to be faster the browse then previously. the health status said OK. i ran an error scan, first using the quick scan which retrieved no red blocks. The real scan is still running at the moment. It's nearly halfway completed with

Is my HDD doomed?

About an hour ago I pasted a 5gb file into the HDD and it transferred at regular speed (about 5 minutes or so). This made me think that perhaps certain sectors are broken while others are fine, as the HD Tune also showed those 14 red blocks but most being green.
Basically when i tested the HDD out about an hour earlier it seemed back to normal, but now many folders are slow to browse and take a while to load. when i click 'my computer' it takes a while to display the Drives and doesn't respond sometimes. And at one point it told me the HDD wasn't formatted which i know it is, leading to even more confusion. Which made me think that perhaps the format has been 'messed with' and needs reformatting, but i didn't want to test it because i don't want to lose files if it isn't completely necessary.

So the summarise: I'm quite confused about this problem but see it as a good learning opportunity, i need to know if my HDD is fixable or if i need to fish out some $ to buy a new one.

If you need more information to help me just ask.
Thanks for all the troubles, Link

dontpanic42

1574 posts

Uber Geek

#706592 25-Oct-2012 23:52

It sounds like the drive is generally on it's way out, and will probably eventually fail completely, relatively soon.
If you have data on it that you'd rather not lose, back it up before the drive fails completely.

If you have no luck getting the data off the drive, and you have critical data on there, you may want to give SpinRite a go.
SpinRite is probably your best bet at getting data off a drive that's on it's way out.
SpinRite does cost US$89, but it's well worth it if you have data you don't want to lose.

http://www.grc.com/sr/whatitdoes.htm - Don't be scared off by the 90's looking website. The program itself is worth every bit of the US$89.

Suffice it to say, I probably wouldn't be using the drive for any critical data from this point on.

Also, Welcome to geekzone. :)

timmmay

20499 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#706629 26-Oct-2012 07:35

Did you copy all your data off it yet? If not, do it, right now. Any time a hard drive has any problem at all replace it.

External hard drives fail more often than internal drives. IMHO they should only ever be used for backups, ideally stored offsite.

All hard drives fail, the only question is when. Having all your data on one drive is a recipie for disaster. Waiting until it starts to fail is a bad idea too, as you may be backing up corrupt data.

Link7z7

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#707051 26-Oct-2012 17:10

Awesome guys, thanks for fast replies. the data on that HDD is mainly games which i have mostly backed up anyway. but yeah i'll get a new one lol.
cheers

DravidDavid

1907 posts

Uber Geek

#707113 26-Oct-2012 18:52

If you ever get stuck in a situation where a drive does die on you and it has important stuff on it, place it in a freezer from a week to a few months!

I had a disk in a server that totally died on me, clicking and everything. It had over 500GB of sample libraries on it for making music and project files that I foolishly did not have backed up! I placed the hard drive in the freezer at the very bottom in a zip-lock bag and then in a plastic bag with tape wrapped around it.

I left it for about 4 months and installed what I had lost as I needed it. After we cleaned the fridge out, I found it again. I plugged it in and transferred everything to another drive and it has been working fine ever since!

I called the hard drive "Mr. Dodgy" so I know not to put anything important on it from now on. :) No way in hell am I trusting that Seagate again!