500GB HDD suddenly reports that its only 99MB?

[Nesh]

It's basically a MSDOS command that could prove very useful for you. I told the story in another subforum, and it happened a couple of months ago.

Ok. That sounds like it might work. The process looks easy too. At the point of reading this though I have already ordered EaseUS Partition to check partition on the F drive. Suddenly the F drive became visible and files appear accessible. I havent explored the hard drive yet as the program still does some processing

It will be interesting to see the end result. Curious if Windows will boot up now once I place it in my laptop

 

[Nesh]

Yes! The EaseUS did the trick. It transformed the HDD back into NTFS and recognized the boot up utilities it seems. I placed it in my laptop and its as if it never had the problem
Mind you there is no need to let the program check the whole surface of the HDD. I stopped it midway because it was taking too long

Now the question is what the hell made it behave like that in the first place?
\

I have noticed that many people have this issue over the internet struggling to recover their files or are forced to format the HDD, but the solution is very simple. If the HDD is ok there is no need to format to make it back into NTFS

Regardless the fact that it behaved like that may be a sign of a HDD that doesnt function properly and might die

 

[BRiT]

Run a short SMART test first. Then post the results. There are certain attributes that can be an early indicator of dieing drives. Namely, watch out for uncorrectable sectors, pending reallocated sectors, and reallocatted sectors. There's a few other ones that I can't remember now.

 

[Nesh]

Run a short SMART test first. Then post the results. There are certain attributes that can be an early indicator of dieing drives. Namely, watch out for uncorrectable sectors, pending reallocated sectors, and reallocatted sectors. There's a few other ones that I can't remember now.

I ran CrystalDiskInfo and I got this

Doesnt look good.
I dont know how reliable this program is for a S.M.A.R.T
Is there one you would recommend? Or do you think this would suffice?
What is the best way to try and repair? I dont trust the tool in Windows 7 much because I have run it in the past to check for errors and repair and it didnt report any issue.
Also another program I run recently which checked for bad sectors found almost nothing

 

[Rurouni]

I think it's reliable enough to at least indicate that the drive do have problem. It's best to just copy important data and replace the hdd.

 

[orangpelupa]

If smart says bad, it's better to be safe and believe it's bad

 

[BRiT]

So the SMART tests are performed by the drive as are the reports after it's complete. There isn't much for the various programs to do but to send the command to the drive itself to start the test, and then when the test is over, to read the results.

Looking at your drive, here is what concerns me:
Attribute 1 - Read Error Rate; Normalized value of 1 with threshold of 51.
Attribute 197 [C5] - Current Pending Sector Count; raw value of 278 [116 Hex]

Attribute 1 means the drive's threshold for read error conditions is 51 and it is currently at 1. Typically drives start off with normalized values of 100 or 99. The setting starts out high and decreases. This is currently in a failure state and is 50 normalized values beyond the failure threshold.

Attribute 197 [C5] means there are currently 278 sectors that encountered an issue with being read or written to, but then was able to be read, but are on a list of sectors that are to be relocated to another spot. These are sectors that you can not trust the data that is on them. This is a very bad thing if you're looking for reliability. It is extremely bad if this number increases.

Typically when the sector is reallocated, the raw value for 196 [C4] is increased by one.

The drive has been on for 10,409 hours or 433 days, which is just a little over 1.18 years, so this is minimal.

If this drive was in my file server, I would extract all the data off of it, and run the files against checksums that were calculated earlier when the drive was good. After this is done, the drive would be RMA'd if its under warranty, otherwise it would be discarded. I am extra careful when it comes to sectors starting to go bad. I haven't had any positive experiences with drives once they start having fuzzy/bad sectors.

 

[BRiT]

Also, SMART isn't always going to indicate a drive is bad if it passes the tests. The trick is knowing what Attributes to look at and which ones you need to look at the Current and Threshold values. There are some Attributes that you need to look at the Raw Values. Also, you need to see if the values are getting worse -- increasing counts in RAW values for those attributes, or decreasing values in Current location for other attributes.

Attributes 5, 195 - 199 [C3 - C7 hex] you need to look at RAW values.
Most other attributes look at the Current and Thresholds.

 

[Nesh]

Thanks for the info. I think I ll go for a replacement ASAP

 

[Nesh]

Btw how can I check if my Samsung HDD is still under RMA? Are HDD under warranty depending on hours of usage?
I am trying to find anything related at Samsung's page but I cant find anything

 

[Lightman]

Btw how can I check if my Samsung HDD is still under RMA? Are HDD under warranty depending on hours of usage?
I am trying to find anything related at Samsung's page but I cant find anything

It depends which country you're in, but Samsung HDD RMA for UK can be initiated via 3rd party support website.
And after checking my old links it turns out Samsung is now Seagate

http://samsunghdd.seagate.com/gb/en/

Good luck!

 

[Nesh]

It depends which country you're in, but Samsung HDD RMA for UK can be initiated via 3rd party support website.
And after checking my old links it turns out Samsung is now Seagate

http://samsunghdd.seagate.com/gb/en/

Good luck!

Since my HDD was sold with the laptop I get this message:

Component
The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service. Seagate sells many drives to direct OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) customers. These products are usually configured for the OEMs only, as components for their systems. You must contact your place of purchase for any warranty support on these drives.
If you purchased this unit directly from Seagate, please return to the previous page and verify your Seagate customer number, because the customer number you entered ( ) does not match our records.



In other words I cant check for warranty. I ll have to contact the store from which I bought it from and it is subject of my laptop's warranty