HDD is dying, I think. Help me know for sure?

C

Color me Dan

Regular
A common topic on this board is about shit dying, half a year ago I posted about a hard drive dying, chkdsk never said a peep and it died quietly after weeks of random behaviour and got returned. This time around the hard drive is still alive, showing the same symptoms but starting chdsk when I start it. Question is, should I wait until it's stone dead or is this chdsk message the final evidence I need to change it? I just don't know how one that shows a broken hard drive should look. Does this look like evidence of a dying hard drive?

--------------------------------------------
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
The index entry length 0xe6 is incorrect. The maximum value is 0xa10.
The first free byte, 0x858, in index header of index $I30
in file 0x34420 is not equal to 0x580.
Correcting error in index $I30 for file 214048.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
CHKDSK is recovering lost files.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE~1 (214050) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE_MAP_ (214050) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE~2 (214052) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE~3 (214054) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE_002_ (214054) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE~4 (214056) into directory file 214048.
Recovering orphaned file _CACHE_003_ (214056) into directory file 214048.
Cleaning up 1112 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1112 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 1112 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

156280288 KB total disk space.
38702724 KB in 204860 files.
119464 KB in 13491 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
296804 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
117161296 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
39070072 total allocation units on disk.
29290324 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
90 56 03 00 fa 54 03 00 17 46 05 00 00 00 00 00 .V...T...F......
a8 29 03 00 02 00 00 00 44 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 .)......D.......
2a 29 da 04 00 00 00 00 bc 73 61 31 01 00 00 00 *).......sa1....
5a 51 1f 0d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ZQ..............
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d8 72 78 4a 01 00 00 00 .........rxJ....
00 5e d0 b2 00 00 00 00 a0 39 07 00 3c 20 03 00 .^.......9..< ..
00 00 00 00 00 10 3a 3a 09 00 00 00 b3 34 00 00 ......::.....4..

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
------------------------

If it's not evidence enough I'll have to wait until it won't boot, But I'd rather return it and get a new one as soon as possible. Having a broken hard drive waiting to die on you makes me paranoid.
 
I have no idea what the best way to do this these days, but way back when I constantly built my own PCs, the first sign of a harddrive to go was a steady increase in sectors marked bad in certain areas (corresponding to failing drive heads usually) or in general (but it's usually in certain areas). The kind of faults you get surprise me and I usually would like them more likely to some form of bus, controller, memory, driver or virus related issue. That really narrows it down, doesn't it? :p

Is there a pattern in the recovered file names? From these names I would almost assume it was related to a certain game not behaving properly.
 
Do a full check of your HDD to find bad sectors. If there are non and your HDD SMART system and its noise signature is normal then your MFT is dirty. Seeing your chekdisk log it seems its the first time it ran it?
 
Bear in mind that chkdisk shows filesystem errors. These can be cause by a failing drive, but they can also be cause by other things that are screwing up NTFS, such as improper shutdown or crashes.

You should get the manufacturers hard drive utility (they all have them) and run a full check such as a SMART long self test and see what comes up. If you get any errors, or you're getting weird noises such as the infamous "clacking" or grinding. then send it back.

Which drive is it? Currently Seagate seems to be having massive problems with their new 7200.11 Barracudas, Samsung are having fewer (though still notable) problems with their F1 Spinpoint, and it seems that only Hitachi are solid at the moment. I myself had a six week old Barracuda die with no warning at all. First time in about 15 years I've had a hard drive die in a domestic machine, and I've been waiting more than a week for the RMA to come back from Holland (not cheap to send it back there either).
 
Get another hdd and move your important data there as soon as possible. At worst you'll have another hdd.
 
I'll get the Samsung utility and check the drive with it, but this is really annoying the hell out of me. The computer crashes, no blue screen, at random intervals and my registry is constantly in need of fixing. I use RegCure for that one, and I have well over a hundred different issues every day for it to fix. Shit crashes, run RegCure and sometimes it'll start working again. Certain texture for games won't load one day and will the next. It's the same as last time, and it's the exact same type of hard drive. Maybe a bad batch, who knows. I have a second hard drive by Samsung in the same family but larger that's worked fine for as long as I've used it now. Bought it at the same time as I built the comp, one year later the smaller drive dies, now the replacement... Hopefully the larger one will be fine for years to come.

Sometimes when XP starts it can't load the XP theme so it defaults for some windows with the Win2000 one :p

My main trouble is that the store I bough it from is being extremely uncooperative, to the point where they lie about my rights as a consumer, which I've checked; and they're breaking them.
 
Weird. It still sounds to me like there's something wrong elsewhere. Maybe something on your mobo is bunk, or a memory bank/chip. Still not 100% convinced it's the harddrive. Let us know what the hdd utility says.
 
I'm convinced this is not the hdd - you have 0 bad sectors

It could be bad sata cable and cable being a bit loose
Or a virus, faulting memory/mb/sata controller...

What chipset is the motherboard using? Nvidia? O-o
Do you have AV program updated and running?
Do you get BSOD? Then there should be minidumps with "Stop 0xYY) which may show the possible problem (software, hardware)

Had you tried fresh install the OS?
 
Try a *real* disk diagnostic.

I recommend MHDD, which can be found within Hiren's Boot CD (google for image to download and burn to CD). Any sectors with > 150 ms latency indicates an unhealthy drive.
 
I will try a "real" disk utility to see if it has anything to say about the issue. I think it's dying though, based on previous experience. I think I'll simply let it die though, then I'll be sure.

Edit: Would TuneUp Utilities diagnostic tool be sufficient?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Color me Dan said:
I'll get the Samsung utility and check the drive with it, but this is really annoying the hell out of me. The computer crashes, no blue screen, at random intervals and my registry is constantly in need of fixing.
Click to expand...
Okay, so that alone can cause the problems you're seeing in chkdsk. Run a full chkdsk and/or the Samsung diagnostic utilities to be sure, but most likely you have a problem elsewhere.

Unfortunately, random crashes can be caused by a whole host of problems. If you previously had a stable system, and it's only recently been crashing randomly, then you probably have some hardware that's going bad. This could be memory, a power supply, the motherboard, video card, or CPU. Grab memtest to test your memory. See if your motherboard manufacturer has a voltage monitor program to ensure you're getting adequate power at all times. Run benchmarks like SiSoft Sandra to test the CPU. Run 3D graphics benchmarks to test the GPU. If your computer crashes frequently when running a certain sort of test, then the fault is probably in the hardware that's being stressed there. Make sure to monitor your voltages at all times while benchmarking to ensure that you aren't getting power fluctuations right as it crashes (else you might erroneously think it's your GPU, for instance, when it's really the power supply).
 
lol the smart of one of my hdd's has been on 0 (zero) for months and it still works fine. No corrupt files that I notice. I suppose if its not doing weird shit you should be alright (though just to be sure anything important I would backup, but that is something you should do anyway even if it would be working right. But than again, how many of us will have that done?).

Anybody knows if there are windows based check utility's btw? HTPC doesnt have a disk drive.
 
Get a copy of seatools and do a low level diagnostic. If the drive isn't making any higher pitched squeaking noises or excessively chugging away to access sectors then it's probably not the drive itself. You may have an issue with your MB and bad cache writes. Personally I'd back up important stuff and do a 24hour burn in, if it's going to die it will but you'll know for sure.
 
Thanks for al the input, I will try getting said disk utility and check my drive. these last few days I've been so tired of shit not working I've kinda decided to just let the fucker die when it feels like it. The Samsung utility needs either a CD or a diskette, who buys a computer with diskette drives any more? feels like overkill to burn a 700mb CD for a few kb's of utility, not that it matters as I'll try the aforementioned utility. If it's a mobo fault, how do I check that? I could find out on my own, but I'm writing this post anyway so I might as well ask hehe.
 
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