new harddrive problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rhonda
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Rhonda

My sony vaio is appx 2 yrs old. About 4-6 weeks ago, the
hard drive crashed. it was a maxtor 80 gig. I replaced it
with a Seagate 80 gig. Until today, its worked great.
Suddenly its acting like the other HD did before it
crashed. Programs open very slow, some dont respond at
all. I ran a virus scan w/ PC cillan with no viruses
reported. I also scanned for worms at the MS site.
AOL "check my computer" found nothing. PLEASE help fast
before this HD crashes too!!! Thanks! Rhonda I run XP.
 
Hi Rhonda,

Please do a scan disk and disk fragmentation. Also, please visit the
Seagate site at http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ and run Seatools
Online. For virus scan, please visit
http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_frame.asp or
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm
(Pandasoftware's site is sometimes down though)..the online scanners will
scan your computer with the latest virus signatures.

I have a nagging suspicious that your HDD maybe okay, but the HDD controller
on the Vaio motherboard may be shot.

Thanks,

John J
 
This may also be a good time to update your chipset drivers if there are
newer ones available. If you have never updated those drivers, they may
have fixed some of the issues you are seeing. Please do follow the
suggestions posted by John (its a great post).
 
Hi John,
Thanks for the reply. I have done every thing you
suggested with nothing indicated wrong. Please read my
post on 7-15 at 1:04pm as it has more info about my other
HD crash and let me know if this still sounds like a
motherboard problem & if so how I fix it. Thanks again!
Rhonda
 
Hi Rhonda,

Sorry, I cannot get your post to dispay here on my computer. Perhaps it is
because I am a new user and just signed up a couple of days ago. Would it
be possible for you to repost that message here? Also, if it is a
motherboard problem, as it seems to be then I think there is little you can
do at your end, but get it checked by a technician. All the same, please
try and repost. Sorry for the trouble.

John
 
Hi John,

This is what happened to original HD: for about 2-4
weeks, computer was acting very slow and through various
means, I could not diagnose the problem. Then one day,
windows refused to open so i ran the restore disks that
came w/ the system. I told it to only restore "c" and it
worked just fine until it got to 13% complete. I thought
the disk was scratched and tried to repair it but it
wouldn't go past 13%. Then slowly it wouldn't go that
far. Soon it was telling me the disks needed partitioned
but the restore disks wouldn't perform that funtion
either. I tried to install Windows XP from CD-rom...a few
times. It either told me there was no hard disk or got
stuck during install, saying it couldn't go farther and
computer would restart when i pushed "OK". Soon...the
same day, upon starting the computer i would get a
message saying SMART had detected an error and a hard
disk failure was immenent...I should back up my files
(after the horses left through the open barn door) and
purchase a new hard drive. After recieving this good
news we only tried to fix it 3 or 4 more times before
abandonning it so hopefully we might recover files
off "D" drive which I haven't tried yet. That HD was
completely removed from the computer. I installed new
HD, ran restore disks, and it worked like a champ! Until
the other day, now its slow again even though I restored
through windows restore to earlier days about 3 times. If
it is the motherboard will you please DETAIL what has to
be purchased and how to fix it. I think I could do it if
the motherboard has mounting screws i can undo. I
installed our DVD-RW and our new HD by myself, so maybe
I'm savvy enough I hope. Also, if that is my problem,
are my HDs ruined? Thanks so much for all your help.

Rhonda
 
You may be just plain unlucky.. I had to replace a drive, and did so with a
new one that failed.. drives tend to run quite hot, some more so than
others, so the addition of extra case fans might be an idea..

Before replacing the motherboard, download the Seagate diagnostic program
from their site.. run the tests on the drive (they will probably tell you
that all is well).. as you appear to be quite adept at reloading the OS,
consider doing a low level format on the drive and starting over.. I had
(have) two Maxtor drives that have become infinitely more stable since doing
this.. it may be that the program calls it 'writing 0's to the drive..
 
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