hard drive errors

[ellon01]

I installed a new Samsung 160G hard drive in a system as a system drive
but I am constantly getting errors on it. The hard drive is partitioned
in three parts:
1. boot
2. 50G of files
3. empty 20G
Strangely I get errors even on the empty partition.
The machine is now running WIN2000 win SP4. Usually I can run chkdsk
and fix it. However, sooner or later the errors get enough so that I
cannont even do a chkdsk (I just got my STOP error an hour after
reinstalling).

The machine used to hang up for a couple of weeks before it got a new
hard drive, no disk errors however.
It was rock stable for over a year being turned off once a week on
average.

Any advices will be appreciated. Shall I assume that I got a defective
hard drive, or maybe something has gone wrong with the controller...?
Thank you.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

The usual method is to download and run the diagnostic
tool disk that Samsung make available on their home site.

 

[ellon01]

I did that. The test hung up on the first attempt and passed
successfully on the second one. I have tested the memory before and
did it again - everything is fine. All temperatures are within limits,
no overclocking, and still no clue.
Please help.

 

[Colon Terminus]

Have you enabled 48-bit LBA?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Seeing that you get errors reported for the empty partition,
I would now seek a "second opinion" by doing this:
- Turn the empty partition into a FAT32 partition.
- Format it.
- Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com).
- Run ScanDisk on the FAT32 partition.
- On completion, run a surface check.

The results should give you an idea about what's wrong.
Don't forget that you might have a controller problem.
To isolate them, you would need to test your disk in some
other Win2000 PC.

 

[ellon01]

Now I did (EnableBigLba = 0x1). I really had no idea that I need to do
this manually. It is difficult to believe that Microsoft did not
include it in SP4. I had to learn it the hard way, loosing a few gigs
of information in the process.

Thank you.