Bad Sectors

[Gary]

What does it usually mean when I run a disk scan for bad sectors on c
drive and the result is "Windows was unable to complete the disk scan"

The symptom is a blue screen saying that there is most likely a bad
piece of hardware.


Gary

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Gary" <[email protected]>

| What does it usually mean when I run a disk scan for bad sectors on c
| drive and the result is "Windows was unable to complete the disk scan"

| The symptom is a blue screen saying that there is most likely a bad
| piece of hardware.


| Gary

It means replace the hard disk drive ASAP!

 

[Carmel]

From: "Gary" <[email protected]>

| What does it usually mean when I run a disk scan for bad sectors on
c | drive and the result is "Windows was unable to complete the disk
scan"

| The symptom is a blue screen saying that there is most likely a bad
| piece of hardware.


| Gary

It means replace the hard disk drive ASAP!

Then again, you could just get a copy of SpinRite
<http://www.grc.com/intro.htm> and run it on the drive. Set it to its
highest level of detection and repair before running it on the drive.
It has saved me hundreds of dollars over the years. I just recently
used it on a laptop that two repair shops had declared unsalvageable.
If SpinRite declares the drive is broken, then purchase another one.

--
Carmel |::::=======
|::::=======
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|

 

[Gerry]

David

Encore.

Gary

Another suggestion.Run a full surface scan with HD Tune to check for bad
sectors on the hard drive.

HD Tune only gives information and does not fix any problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Then again, you could just get a copy of SpinRite
<http://www.grc.com/intro.htm> and run it on the drive. Set it to its
highest level of detection and repair before running it on the drive.
It has saved me hundreds of dollars over the years. I just recently
used it on a laptop that two repair shops had declared unsalvageable.
If SpinRite declares the drive is broken, then purchase another one.

Spinrite is fairly well all hype now, and no bark. The techniques that
the author of Spinrite talks about were effective back in the days of
MFM & RLL hard drives. Though the author says they have been updated for
modern drives, the claims are dubious at best.

I have never gotten Spinrite to recover one red bit of data.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Gary]

Thanks--I'll try all 3 Options

Gary

 

[Yousuf Khan]

What does it usually mean when I run a disk scan for bad sectors on c
drive and the result is "Windows was unable to complete the disk scan"

The symptom is a blue screen saying that there is most likely a bad
piece of hardware.

Download the free Everest utilities, from the following website:

http://www.lavalys.com/

Run the Storage -> SMART report on the appropriate hard drive, and post
the results to your reply.

Yousuf Khan

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Carmel" <[email protected]>

| On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:01:11 -0500


| Then again, you could just get a copy of SpinRite

Definitely NOT !

No Gibson Research crap.

If software is to be used it should be the manufacturer's diagnostic.

Examples:
Western Digitial - WD Diagnostics
Seagate - SeaTols
IBM/Hitachi - Drive Fitness Test

 

[Carmel]

On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:21:48 -0500

No Gibson Research crap.

Did you actually ever use it, or are you just suffering from verbal
diarrhea? If you did employ it, kindly post your results. (SpinRite will
create a log if instructed to. Only an amateur would use it sans a log
file.)

--

Carmel |::::=======
|::::=======
|===========
|===========
|

 

[Cronos]

A smart report is useless, more often than not when I find a bad hard
drive. smart believes there is no problem with the drive, it's
unreliable at best.

HDtune is good at finding bad sectors if you use the slow scan mode. I
was getting BSOD on Vista once and suspected the HDD after finding no
issue with ram or anything else but even the HDD manufacturer's
diagnostics software didn't see the bad block causing it. Ran HDTune in
slow scan mode and it found it, replaced the HDD and no more BSOD.

http://www.hdtune.com/

 

[Rod Speed]

A smart report is useless, more often than not when I find a bad hard drive. smart believes there is no problem with
the drive, it's unreliable at best.

Wrong. You do need to be able to interpret the raw data and not
just mindlessly look at the OKs, and when you do that, you can often
see a failing hard drive from the number of reallocated sectors etc.

 

[Arno]

A smart report is useless, more often than not when I find a bad hard drive.
smart believes there is no problem with the drive, it's unreliable at best.

Nobody said to look at the "smart status", which is pretty useless.
Hovever the concrete values of the individual SMART attributes are
not. Seems you are not using 99% of what SMART offers.

Arno

 

[db]

in order to be sure you
should boot up with a xp
cd and execute the repair/
recovery console.

once logged in and your
at the disk prompt run
the following command>:

chkdsk /r

then "exit" and try booting
into normal mode.

--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @Hotmail.com
- nntp Postologist
~ "share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Yousuf Khan]

A smart report is useless, more often than not when I find a bad hard
drive. smart believes there is no problem with the drive, it's
unreliable at best.

Trust me, you're wrong on this. I used to feel the same way as you, when
I used to just take a cursory look at the overall SMART status and
everything would always be "just fine". But the SMART raw data fields
require human intelligence to interpret. And often you can spot a
failing drive months before it actually fails. Lots of data points get
recorded in the SMART logs that you wouldn't even be aware of during the
normal operation of the drive, as the drive will handle them internally.

Such things as stiction which is a failure of the drive to startup from
standstill after power has been turned on. If the drive doesn't start
right away, then the BIOS will just try a few more times, and usually
it'll work on a subsequent attempt. However, this reattempt will get
recorded in a running count on the SMART logs. If the running count
keeps going up, then you may have a problem. In the old days, the only
time you found out about stiction is if you started hearing a grinding
noise from the drive when you started your computer.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Trust me, you're wrong on this. I used to feel the same way as you, when
I used to just take a cursory look at the overall SMART status and
everything would always be "just fine". But the SMART raw data fields
require human intelligence to interpret. And often you can spot a
failing drive months before it actually fails. Lots of data points get
recorded in the SMART logs that you wouldn't even be aware of during the
normal operation of the drive, as the drive will handle them internally.

Such things as stiction which is a failure of the drive to startup from
standstill after power has been turned on. If the drive doesn't start
right away, then the BIOS will just try a few more times, and usually
it'll work on a subsequent attempt. However, this reattempt will get
recorded in a running count on the SMART logs. If the running count
keeps going up, then you may have a problem. In the old days, the only
time you found out about stiction is if you started hearing a grinding
noise from the drive when you started your computer.

Yousuf Khan

I'd have to "second" this assessment.

Having seen the same error, I can only tell the OP: "Back up your
data daily until you replace that drive."

On those machines I on which I've seen those S.M.A.R.T. warnings,
catastrophic hard drive failures invariably followed. Some hard
drives lasted for a few days after the warnings first appeared, one
lasted months, but some lasted only minutes. I suppose the one that
lasted months could be considered a false alarm, as "months" hardly
translate to "imminent," but, on the whole, I'd suggest you take the
warnings seriously.

For the background on S.M.A.R.T., start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Yousuf Khan]

I'd have to "second" this assessment.

Having seen the same error, I can only tell the OP: "Back up your
data daily until you replace that drive."

On those machines I on which I've seen those S.M.A.R.T. warnings,
catastrophic hard drive failures invariably followed. Some hard
drives lasted for a few days after the warnings first appeared, one
lasted months, but some lasted only minutes. I suppose the one that
lasted months could be considered a false alarm, as "months" hardly
translate to "imminent," but, on the whole, I'd suggest you take the
warnings seriously.

Well, to tell you the truth, one of my drives has had a SMART warning on
its stiction for years now. I've had other drives with zero SMART errors
die before this drive. But they usually died due to an electronic
failure, rather than mechanical, and SMART can't do anything about that.
But I have seen other drives with lots of reallocated sectors, pending
sectors, etc. which SMART was warning about, and those actually did die
as predicted.

So I'll say that the one that's lasted for years is a false positive.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Arno]

Don't really need it, by the time a PC hits my bench the drive is usually to
the point where even the geek squad could tell it's bad.

Well, there is "bad" and "bad". Not all storege failures
are due to a bad drive. It can also be interface errors, bad
mounting, a marginal PSU. And the drive can have bad secotrs,
seek problems, can have died from heat, etc.

Arno

 

[Arno]

you don't say

What is the point of your postings so far?

Arno

 

[Cronos]

Wrong. You do need to be able to interpret the raw data and not
just mindlessly look at the OKs, and when you do that, you can often
see a failing hard drive from the number of reallocated sectors etc.

Yes well, us idiots that can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag
like to be shown the error with pretty pictures, and HDTune does just
that. But I see HDTune is no longer free, has trial version or pay for
version. Good thing I downloaded it when it was free.

 

[Cronos]

require human intelligence to interpret.

Intelligent people don't sit around yapping about HDDs all day. They
spend it reading Kafka, Hesse, Sarte, etc. I think you mean, requires
knowledge and not "intelligence". Anyway, no way am I going to credit
Rod Speed as an intelligent being.