Re: Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (DFT) does not detect HDD

[Rod Speed]

AndyHancock wrote

I have a Toshiba Satellite A660 PSAW3C-047017 with a Toshiba
MK6465GSX HDD. After experience some consecutive boot failures,

Whoops, this is the original hard drive.

Are the boot failures consistent or intermittent ?

I was advised on Toshiba forums to use Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT).
I burned the ISO file to a CD and booted from it (I need to press F12 for
boot options and select the optical drive), which successfully causes to
run. However, it doesn't detect my HDD -- the list is empty.

Most likely that is the reason it wont boot, the drive isnt visible to the system anymore.

Is there something I need to do to make it visit to DFT?

Nope.

What are you posting from ? Didnt you say you only have the one system ?

If you have removed the drive in the process of testing to see if the clone will
replace its successfully, it might just be that you havent connected it properly now.

Its also possible that you have killed it too.

In theory you might have managed to clone backwards, from the new drive
to the original drive and thats whats made it unbootable now. But if that was
the problem it should show up in DFT.

What happens if you use the internal diagnostics in the Satellite ?

Can you boot either of the recovery partitions ? Presumably not if DFT cant see the drive.

 

[Rod Speed]

AndyHancock wrote

The problem isn't presently exhibiting itself.
It was just several consecutive boot failures.

What exactly happened when the boots failed ?

However, it was quite scary when Toshiba
tech support said I had to reformat the drive.

Do you really mean reformat or do you mean use the diskless recovery ?

I asked if there was another diagnostic I could do,
and they said it wasn't as good as the information
from a format. There has been disagreement with this
advice (to put it politely) when I posted on various forums

Yeah, if they do mean a real format from the OS,
thats a pretty silly thing to do in the circumstances.

(maybe even this one).
Nope.

When I'm talking to tech support, I want to be able to offer to them
a diagnostic alternative to chkdsk (which doesn't reveal anything),
and I don't want that alternative to be formatting my drive.

True. An Everest SMART report would be handy given that it does mostly boot fine.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

If the boot failures are just the system saying that there is no
hard drive to boot from it likely wont give you any useful info
on why thats happening, but if the boot failures are something
else, particularly if Win is saying it cant boot, it may well tell
you what the problem actually is.

Post just the SMART report here, it needs a bit of interpretation,
just ignore the OKs.

Even if the cause of the problem was not the disk, it is reassuring
to confirm that with whatever diagnostic alternative I find.

Sure, but doesnt that Toshiba have diagnostics available at boot time ?

In fact, that episode is what launched me into the new and
wonderful world of cloning, which I seem to be hobbling along in.

OK, didnt realise it happened before you got into cloning.

Sorry, I should have clarified that the boot problem is gone,
but i still want get smart about advanced diagnostic options.
OK.

The drive is visible in so far as it boots (and I use
it, like right this moment). It's just not visible to DFT.

Quite a few of the laptops play silly buggers on the visibility
of the drives, presumably thats what the problem is with DFT.

I dont use DFT anymore anyway, it isnt particularly
useful for the diagnosis of a hard drive problem like yours.

The SMART report is normally much more useful unless the
problem is that the laptop just cant see any drive at all at boot time.

In that case no diagnostic is any use either, it cant
diagnose any drive that isnt visible to the system.

The only real way to diagnose that sort of problem is by substitution,
see if the problem still happens with a different physical drive, in
which case the problem isnt the drive itself, its the drive subsystem
or the cable or even something as basic as the power supply etc.

You do sometimes see that particular symptom with a drive that
sometimes doesnt spin up. That will be visible in the SMART report.

Yeah, sorry, I hope I clarified the situation above.

BTW, I also got the clone working, including Toshiba's extra
partitions for making recovery discs and for disc-less recovery.
So if this original drive really gave up the ghost, I'd have a fallback.

Yeah, thats important to do in that situation.

Tho an image of the Win partition would be another approach,
tho you would have to wait till Toshiba replaces the drive to use
it. With a clone, you could use the clone until the replacement
drive shows up if Toshiba is happy to ship you a replacement
drive. They mostly prefer to have the whole laptop tho because
that allows them to change other stuff if replacing the drive
doesnt fix the problem. They may see a number of failures
like that with that particular laptop and know that it usually
isnt the drive thats the problem. It would be unusual for those
symptoms to be due to the drive, with the drive sometimes
failing to spin up if the system complains that it has no drive
to boot off.

The other real possibility if its actually Win complaining that
it cant boot is that some of the sectors are very marginal
and sometimes can be read and sometimes cant. If thats
the problem, the SMART report will show thats the problem.

Errr...would you know how to access it?

I'll see if I can find something after posting this post.

Thats one of the reasons I dont normally buy Toshibas
myself, their maintenance manuals can be hard to find.

No use to you in the current situation tho given that its booting fine currently.

You would be able to try it if it the failure to boot shows up again, if
the failure is that the laptop says it hasnt got a hard drive to boot off.

If that happens, try booting the diskless recovery and just dont
actually do the recovery if it can boot the recovery partition.

Hope I cleared up any misconception that I *currently* can't boot.
Yes.

But the Toshiba advice to format the drive was so...er...striking
that I want to learn the advanced diagnostics so I counter-propose
with an alternative. Of course, it's also just handy to have, in case
something causes some concern.

The SMART report is that. It isnt useful in all circumstances, but usually is.

Main problem with any SMART report is that you do
need to know what you are doing to interpret them.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

AndyHancock wrote

What exactly happened when the boots failed ?

Do you really mean reformat or do you mean use the diskless recovery ?

Yeah, if they do mean a real format from the OS,
thats a pretty silly thing to do in the circumstances.

True. An Everest SMART report would be handy given that it does
mostly boot fine. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

If the boot failures are just the system saying that there is no
hard drive to boot from it likely wont give you any useful info
on why thats happening, but if the boot failures are something
else, particularly if Win is saying it cant boot, it may well tell
you what the problem actually is.

Post just the SMART report here, it needs a bit of interpretation,
just ignore the OKs.

Sure, but doesnt that Toshiba have diagnostics available at boot time ?

OK, didnt realise it happened before you got into cloning.

Quite a few of the laptops play silly buggers on the visibility
of the drives, presumably thats what the problem is with DFT.

I dont use DFT anymore anyway, it isnt particularly
useful for the diagnosis of a hard drive problem like yours.

The SMART report is normally much more useful unless the problem is that the laptop just cant see any drive at all at
boot time.

In that case no diagnostic is any use either, it cant
diagnose any drive that isnt visible to the system.

The only real way to diagnose that sort of problem is by substitution,
see if the problem still happens with a different physical drive, in
which case the problem isnt the drive itself, its the drive subsystem
or the cable or even something as basic as the power supply etc.

You do sometimes see that particular symptom with a drive that
sometimes doesnt spin up. That will be visible in the SMART report.

Yeah, thats important to do in that situation.

Tho an image of the Win partition would be another approach,
tho you would have to wait till Toshiba replaces the drive to use
it. With a clone, you could use the clone until the replacement
drive shows up if Toshiba is happy to ship you a replacement
drive. They mostly prefer to have the whole laptop tho because
that allows them to change other stuff if replacing the drive
doesnt fix the problem. They may see a number of failures
like that with that particular laptop and know that it usually
isnt the drive thats the problem. It would be unusual for those
symptoms to be due to the drive, with the drive sometimes
failing to spin up if the system complains that it has no drive
to boot off.

The other real possibility if its actually Win complaining that
it cant boot is that some of the sectors are very marginal
and sometimes can be read and sometimes cant. If thats
the problem, the SMART report will show thats the problem.

I'll see if I can find something after posting this post.

Bugger, should have checked before posting, it was the first hit, trivial to find.
http://tim.id.au/laptops/toshiba/satellite a660 pro a660.pdf

No use to you tho, their diagnostics come on a USB stick and floppy and CD.

Wota packa dinosaurs.

Thats one of the reasons I dont normally buy Toshibas
myself, their maintenance manuals can be hard to find.

No use to you in the current situation tho given that its booting fine currently.

You would be able to try it if it the failure to boot shows up again, if the failure is that the laptop says it hasnt
got a hard drive to boot off.

If that happens, try booting the diskless recovery and just dont
actually do the recovery if it can boot the recovery partition.

 

[Rod Speed]

AH wrote: Rod Speed wrote:

OK here it is. It's going to be wrap-around hell, but I can't think
of a clean solution.

Yeah. only an attachment would have helped much and
most usenet servers including mine dont allow those.

I thought of adding a string (e.g. "<EOL") at
the end of each physical line so that a techy dude like yourself could
simply erase all carriage returns that wasn't preceded by <EOL>, but
that would have made the grouples/usenet display even uglier.

Yeah, the wraps are no big deal for me.

I have to post it in 2 pieces, since Grouples only allows 190K characters.

By the way, when you asked whether Toshiba had diagnostics
at boot time, did you mean diagnostics of the same sort here?

Few laptops do have anything like this at boot time.

I only have F2 and F12 shown as buttons to evoke setup and boot options.

******** SMART REPORT, PART 1 OF 2.

This part alone is fine, and I only wanted the SMART report, not the full report.

I've left just the SMART report and interleaved comments on the important
bits which do show that the problem is with the physical drive.

[ SMART
]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
574
575 [ TOSHIBA MK6465GSX (50N1B4QWB) ]
576
577 01 Raw Read Error Rate 50 100
100 0 OK: Value is normal
578 02 Throughput Performance 50 100
100 0 OK: Value is normal
579 03 Spin Up Time 1 100 100
1921 OK: Value is normal
580 04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100
1531 OK: Always passing
581 05 Reallocated Sector Count 50 100
100 696 OK: Value is normal

Thats the problem, thats an immense number of reallocated sectors, the drive is dying.

Its the last number that matters, thats the number of reallocated sectors.

582 07 Seek Error Rate 50 100
100 0 OK: Value is normal
583 08 Seek Time Performance 50 100
100 0 OK: Value is normal
584 09 Power-On Time Count 0 96 96
1700 OK: Always passing
585 0A Spin Retry Count 30 130
100 0 OK: Value is normal
586 0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100
1529 OK: Always passing
587 BF G-Sense Error Rate 0 100
100 4 OK: Always passing
588 C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100
13697035 OK: Always passing
589 C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 96 96
45160 OK: Always passing
590 C2 Temperature 0 100 100
14, 32 OK: Always passing

Thats fine, it hasnt been cooked, those are Celcius min/max values.

591 C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100
100 105 OK: Always passing

Thats related to the problem with reallocated sectors.

592 C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100
100 0 OK: Always passing

Thats sectors due to be reallocated if they turn out to stay bad, none currently.

593 C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100
100 0 OK: Always passing
594 C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200
200 0 OK: Always passing
595 DC Disk Shift 0 100 100
8252 OK: Always passing
596 DE Loaded Hours 0 97 97
1217 OK: Always passing
597 DF Load Retry Count 0 100
100 0 OK: Always passing
598 E0 Load Friction 0 100
100 0 OK: Always passing
599 E2 Load-In Time 0 100
100 340 OK: Always passing
600 F0 Head Flying Hours 1 100
100 0 OK: Value is normal

The drive is on its last legs. Toshiba will replace it under warranty.

You might as well let them format or recover it if they are that stupid, you're
going to have to restore your backups to the replacement drive anyway.

 

[Rod Speed]

An Everest SMART report would be handy given that it does mostly
boot fine. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181
If the boot failures are just the system saying that there is no
hard drive to boot from it likely wont give you any useful info
on why thats happening, but if the boot failures are something
else, particularly if Win is saying it cant boot, it may well tell
you what the problem actually is.
Post just the SMART report here, it needs a bit of interpretation,
just ignore the OKs.

I've left just the SMART report and interleaved comments on the
important
bits which do show that the problem is with the physical drive.

[ TOSHIBA MK6465GSX (50N1B4QWB) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 50 100 100 0 OK:Value is normal
02 Throughput Performance 50 100 100 0 OK:Value is normal
03 Spin Up Time 1 100 100 1921 OK:Value is normal
04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 1531 OK:Always passing
05 Reallocated Sector Count 50 100 100 696 OK:Value is normal

Thats the problem, thats an immense number of reallocated sectors,
the drive is dying.

Its the last number that matters, thats the number of reallocated
sectors.

07 Seek Error Rate 50 100 100 0 OK:Value is normal
08 Seek Time Performance 50 100 100 0 OK:Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 96 96 1700 OK:Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 30 130 100 0 OK:Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 1529 OK:Always passing
BF G-Sense Error Rate 0 100 100 4 OK:Always passing
C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 13697035 OK:Always passing
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 96 96 45160 OK:Always passing
C2 Temperature 0 100 100 14, 32 OK:Always passing

Thats fine, it hasnt been cooked, those are Celcius min/max values.

C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 105 OK:Always passing

Thats related to the problem with reallocated sectors.

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK:Always passing

Thats sectors due to be reallocated if they turn out to stay bad,
none currently.

C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK:Always
passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK:Always
passing
DC Disk Shift 0 100 100 8252 OK:Always
passing
DE Loaded Hours 0 97 97 1217 OK:Always
passing
DF Load Retry Count 0 100 100 0 OK:Always
passing
E0 Load Friction 0 100 100 0 OK:Always
passing
E2 Load-In Time 0 100 100 340 OK:Always
passing
F0 Head Flying Hours 1 100 100 0 OK:Value is
normal

The drive is on its last legs. Toshiba will replace it under
warranty.

You might as well let them format or recover it if they are that
stupid, you're going to have to restore your backups to the
replacement drive anyway.

That is absolutely horrible. The whole laptop was just over a year
old when they advised recovery (I checked, it was recovery to factory
virgin state rather than reformatting). And for about 3 of those
months, the laptop was not used. However, they clarified that the
recovery process yields diagnostic messages about the hardware, so I
can always restore from the clone afterward. However, I'm not sure if
the recovery diagnostics would catch dubious HDD stats.

Yeah, I dont know how the Toshiba recovery goes on
that, havent had to try it on a dying hard drive myself.

I surfed just a bit on SMART...it's kind of confusing, so I have to surf a bit more.

Yeah, it can be quite complex. The wikipedia article is a good place to start.

There's reference to the fact that higher is better,

No its not with that particular raw value.

and also that non-changing numbers are better.

Thats only true of some values too. It isnt true of say
the power on hours or Start/Stop Count for example.

If it doesn't take you more than a sentence or two, what are the numerical columns?

The first 3 are too complicated to explain in a couple of sentences. The
last one is just the number or reallocated sectors with that particular item.

 

[Rod Speed]

AndyHancock wrote

Rod, is there a webpage that indicates what raw numbers
represent a high count for reallocated sectors?

If there is, I'm not aware of it.

The short sort is that more than a couple with modern hard drives indicates
that the drive is dying, particularly when the number keeps increasing.

You can get an ocassional one or two when the drive isnt designed
to handle power failure when writing well, but thats about it.

You can get significant numbers of reallocated sectors when
the drive is grossly over temperatured that arent due to the
drive failing, but yours hasnt seen much too high temps.

I'm not sure what kind of substantiation will be expected of me.

I expect they will just tell you to do the restore and that
will decide that the drive has a significant problem.

If they dont, the drive is definitely dying and you have notified
them that its got a problem in the warranty period so when it
does die, you can just rub their nose in the fact you reported
that its got a problem with the repeated boot failures in the
warranty period.

Currently recovering to factory state. Using 1st generation iPod Touch to post...

And no doubt noticeably crippling along.

 

[Rod Speed]

AndyHancock wrote

Actually, after a few dropped calles and re-queueing, I spoke to
support, and they agree that 696 is high for a Reallocated Sector
Count. I have to arrange to lose the machine for 2 weeks while they
replace the HDD. I wonder if they do that on purpose to dissuade
RMAs.

Nar, its just a basic approach that usually is the best approach.

With most other symptoms, it can be due to the drive itself or due
to something else in the drive subsystem like the cable or connector
and even with motherboard etc so they want to be able to change
those if swapping the hard drive doesnt fix the problem.

With reallocated sectors, that wont be the case when the drive hasnt
been over temperatured, but their proceedures arent that fine grained.

They apparently can't order it ahead of time cuz they need to test it themselves.

Yeah, they dont allow for users who can test stuff themselves.

I'm going to confirm the high count now that I've recovered
to factory default settings. I don't believe the count should
be affected, but what the hey.

Yeah, it might have increased, because the restore to factory config
uses the drive much more than you normally would in normal use.

Just installing the updates so that it's somewhat
safe to surf is taking the evening and into the night.

Yeah, it can do if the net service isnt that fast.

I can probably pull Everest Home Edition off the clone, but that means mounting it,
which could change the clone and its bootability in ways that I'm not aware of

Yeah, its safer to download that again.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181
in case you didnt write it down.

 

[Arno]

Actually, after a few dropped calles and re-queueing, I spoke to
support, and they agree that 696 is high for a Reallocated Sector
Count. I have to arrange to lose the machine for 2 weeks while they
replace the HDD. I wonder if they do that on purpose to dissuade
RMAs. They apparently can't order it ahead of time cuz they need to
test it themselves.

696 is pretty high. Unless caused by an environmental factor
(vibration, bad power, heat), the drive is dying.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

AndyHancock wrote

Well, the number hasn't changed. I'll just print out the
report and hand it to the technical people there.

Yeah, thats what I'd do, tho they will likely just ignore it.

Thanks a bundle for your help.

No problem, thats what these technical groups are for.

I dodged a bullet.

You did indeed.

I mean, I cloned simply to make it convenient to restore after the factory
recovery, and I was *intending* to clone regularly (likely with the new high
performance HDD as the main one in the laptop, and the older Toshiba
original HDD as the external target). Now it looks like it won't make
a good target either. The worst scenario would have been if I kept it
as the internal HDD, didn't manage to clone weekly, and it died.

True.

 

[rusovich]

--------[ SMART ]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Hitachi HDS721010KLA330 (GTF002PAKWK1VF) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 16 96 96 65543 OK (el valor es normal)
02 Throughput Performance 54 100 100 0 OK (el valor es normal)
03 Spin Up Time 24 142 142 43123015 OK (el valor es normal)
04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 24 OK (siempre funcionará)
05 Reallocated Sector Count 5 100 100 0 OK (el valor es normal)
07 Seek Error Rate 67 100 100 0 OK (el valor es normal)
08 Seek Time Performance 20 123 123 37 OK (el valor es normal)
09 Power-On Time Count 0 97 97 22325 OK (siempre funcionará)
0A Spin Retry Count 60 100 100 0 OK (el valor es normal)
0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 21 OK (siempre funcionará)
C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 141 OK (siempre funcionará)
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 100 100 141 OK (siempre funcionará)
C2 Temperature 0 139 139 12, 43 OK (siempre funcionará)
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK (siempre funcionará)

[ WDC WD1600AAJS-55B4A0 (WD-WCAT19883687) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 51 199 194 42403 OK (el valor es normal)
03 Spin Up Time 21 165 153 2716 OK (el valor es normal)
04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 785 OK (siempre funcionará)
05 Reallocated Sector Count 140 200 200 0 OK (el valor es normal)
07 Seek Error Rate 0 100 253 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
09 Power-On Time Count 0 94 94 4962 OK (siempre funcionará)
0A Spin Retry Count 0 100 100 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
0B Calibration Retry Count 0 100 100 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 759 OK (siempre funcionará)
C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 199 199 751 OK (siempre funcionará)
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 200 200 785 OK (siempre funcionará)
C2 Temperature 0 117 98 26 OK (siempre funcionará)
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 200 200 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 200 145 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 200 143 0 OK (siempre funcionará)
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 1 OK (siempre funcionará)
C8 Write Error Rate 0 200 161 0 OK (siempre funcionará)

 

[rusovich]

I test the hitachi whit the hiren bot v14 dft tool and give me error
failure code 0x73 excessive shock
tecnical code 730078bc

 

[rusovich]

??????????????????????????????????? help