Damaged Hard Disk?

[niallo32]

I have a Windows XP Pro laptop with a Toshiba MK4025GAS Hard Drive.

The Laptop blue screened on me, so I reinstalled Windows. Same thing happened a few times, so I formatted and then reinstalled.

Now, on Startup, I get a S.M.A.R.T error - 'SMART Failure predicted on Hard Disk 0: .....'

In the Event Viewer/System - the following error appears ' Event ID 7: The device, \Device\harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

I ran a Disk Check on it and here is a sample of what appeared:

Stage 1 of 5: Deleted corrupt attribute list entry with type code 128 in file 10736. File record segment 12444 is unreadable.
Stage 4 of 5: Verifying file data - Windows replaced bad cluster in file 254 of name \windows\system32\netevent.dll

The Check finally finished, saying the volume is clean.

I can use the laptop normally, though it crashes & reboots approx once a day.

Is the hard drive for the bin or can it be fixed?

Thanks

 

[teckystuff]

Yup I think its time to turf that HD. It is definately about to die.

*****************************************
Your mouse has moved - reboot for changes to take effect

 

[jurgen36]

Yes and no. I had a 40 Gig Seagate drive, it had too many bad sectors and regularely crashed the lap top. The seagate diagnostics said that the drive should be replaced. This was not possible at that time due to my geographic location. I did zerofill the drive with the Seagate utility. I then formated it and installed the os. I run the diagnostics again, no errors a clean bill of health. That was almost 3 years ago. The drive is still in the lap top and does not give any errors. So it might not always be neccessary to replace the drive. Maybe it was a freak? I dont know, but the drive still works ok. So it might be worth a try.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[niallo32]

Thanks for the replies. How can I zero the Hard drive?

 

[niallo32]

Do I have to format the disk and then use WDClear on it to Zero the hard drive?

 

[jurgen36]

Get the Seagate utilities from the web, run them and under utilities you find a section to zero fill your drive. Use the full zero fill not the fast version. See how it goes.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[Grenage]

Now, on Startup, I get a S.M.A.R.T error - 'SMART Failure predicted on Hard Disk 0: .....'

As far as I am aware SMART detects physical problems with a drive, not bad clusters or data. It monitors the motor, arm, platters and electronics of a drive and checks that response is within it's programmed tolerance.

If you are getting SMART errors then no amount of formatting is going to make the problem go away. By all means try a format and keep using it (regardless of a SMART error a drive can continue to work for years) but I'd keep a good backup!!

Due to the symptoms you have described, I would personally throw it away and buy a new one.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[outonalimb]

I would concur with Grenage on this one. If SMART errors occur, I would not risk the inevitable for the price of a hard drive these days.

The following software is free for personal use and is more informative than the information given by the system on boot up. Give it a try.

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

Regards,

 

[niallo32]

I zeroed the hard drive using WDClear, I then formatted and reinstalled XP.

It seems a lot faster, I still got the S.M.A.R.T error on bootup, but as someone sadi above, that could point to a loose drive or something else.

The error still appears in the Event Viewer - Event ID 7: The device, \Device\harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

I ran the diskchecker above and got the following results:
----

Drive 0 SMART enabled



IDE REGISTERS:

Features: 0x0 Sector Count: 0x1 Sector Number: 0x1

Cylinder Low: 0x0 Cylinder High: 0x0 Drive Head: 0xA0

Command: 0xEC



DRIVE INFORMATION:

Serial Number: 14GE0768T

FirmWare Rev: KA100A

Model Number: TOSHIBA MK4025GAS

Cylinders: 16383 Heads: 16 Sectors per track: 63

Cur Cyls: 16383 Cur Heads: 16 Cur Sectors/Track: 63

Bytes per track: NA Bytes per sector: NA

Gen Config: 64 Buffer Type: 0 Buffer Size: 0

Vendor Unique: 0 0 0 More Vendor Unique: 0x8010

ECC Size: 48 Double Word IO: 0 Capabilities: 12032

PIO Timing: 512 DMA Timing: 0 BS: 7

Current Sector Capacity: 16514064 Total Addressable Sectors: 78140160

Mult. Sector Stuff: 272 Single Word DMA: 7 Multi Word DMA: 7



SMART ATTRIBUTES:

ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 OK 100 100 50

2 Throughput Performance 0 OK 100 100 50

3 Spin Up Time 810ms OK 100 100 1

4 Start/Stop Count 1046 OK 100 100 0

5 Reallocated Sector Count 979 FAIL 22 22 50

7 Seek Error Rate 0 OK 100 100 50

8 Seek Time Performance 0 OK 100 100 50

9 Power On Time 11292 OK 72 72 0

A Spin Retry Count 0 OK 120 100 30

C Power Cycle Count 932 OK 100 100 0

C0 Power off Retract Count 122 OK 100 100 0

C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 510733 OK 49 49 0

C2 Temperature 44 C OK 100 100 0

C4 Reallocation Event Count 536 OK 100 100 0

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 17 OK 100 100 0

C6 Offline Scan Incorrect. Sector Count 0 OK 100 100 0

C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Count 6 OK 200 200 0

DC Disk shift 122 OK 100 100 0

DE Loaded hours 6366 OK 85 85 0

DF Load Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 0

E0 Load friction 0 OK 100 100 0

E2 Load in Time 220 OK 100 100 0

F0 Head flying hours 0 OK 100 100 1