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Is my hdd failing?

3K views 24 replies 5 participants last post by  Networks 
#1 · (Edited)
Over the past few months, I have had to reinstall my OS every 2 weeks or so. This is due to a cycle of events, in which my pc will run fine for about 2 weeks, and then inexplicably start to experience issues when booting and running. It may start to take as long as 30 mins to boot and then take several minutes to perform a simple task such as opening the start menu. I don't think that this can be attributed to outdated hardware as I have 4gb of ram and a 3.2gb quad core cpu and hardly any programs set to open on start up.

At one point on rebooting a number of sys32 files were lost or became corrupt, and this required another clean install of XP as upon attempting to repair the installation it entered a loop where the pc would restart after the "validating installation" stage, and attempt to reinstall XP again and reboot when it reached the same stage in the installation.

With my admittedly relatively limited knowledge of computers, I cannot think of any other explanation for the problem than my hard drive failing.
Is this likely to be the cause of the problem?
If so, is there any possible remedy other than purchasing a replacement?
 
#3 ·
I do have another hdd, but it unfortunately uses IDE ports and I don't have any free (all of my optical drives are IDE and the one I have connected to my mobo uses the only port, so I wouldn't have anywhere to put the install disk). Also, as I said, these problems take about 2 weeks to manifest themselves. Everything runs fine in the interim. My hardware intensive games run fine.

Another issue I forgot to mention is that check disk runs on startup all the time now to check my d: partition but never finds anything corrupt on it. Whilst this may seem to direct the blame away from hdd failure as nothing on the partition is corruptheal the system critical files are on my c: partition instead, and I don't really access any files on the d: partition often enough to notice anything being corrupt.
 
#5 ·
Hi and welcome to TSF :wave:

What size is the hard drive and how much free space do you have?
Need to keep at a minium of 15% free or you get into really slow boot up.

BG
 
#12 ·
I dont think you've fully understood my problem.
The issues only arise about 2 weeks or so after a fresh installation of XP, but when the problems DO arise they are crippling: corrupt system32 files, start-ups that take around 30 minutes or longer, constant hang-ups when I can eventually log on, at one point I even had reboot loop that could only be broken by booting from the XP installation CD.

I just ran the tests you described on my desktop (I'm typing this from an iPad currently) but it says that nothing is wrong, but I know there IS something wrong due to the fact that my system hangs up for 5-10 seconds or more frequently when running something as simple as firefox with 2 or 3 tabs open, hardly a grueling task for 4GB of RAM, 3.2 GHz quad core processor machine such as mine, wouldn't you agree?

I can have task manager open on the "performance" tab and it shows no strain on the CPU or page file usage. The graphs are relatively low and flat, cpu usage % remains in single figures and PF usage is never above 2-300 MB.

What I'm basically saying is I dont think any tests I can run show a problem with the HDD, as the problems can only really be identified when the PC isn't in a fit state to run the tests.
 
#21 ·
I dont think you've fully understood my problem.
Sir I think I know your Hard Drive is going bad based on the information you have provided. I can only rely on what you post to provide feedback. I think I fully understand what the problem is but I can't control the person on the other end of the keyboard nor their level of skill attempting to diagnose the issue. I wish you the best with your hard drive get a good backup if you don't have one.
 
#13 · (Edited)
s.m.a.r.t will certainly show if there are issues. what you posted is not the smart readout. anyway the problems you describe could be any number of hardware issues not just the hard drive! my first thought with anything like this is RAM. run memtest 86 for a few passes.

edit: meant to say first thought if the drive is fine would be ram ;)
 
#14 ·
If there was a problem with the RAM then surely it would be present all the time and the hangups would occur constantly, rather than at the end of the two week cycles I'm describing?

I'm running the extended test from the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software now, but obviously this is going to take a while.
I will take screenshots and post them as required.

I also plan to try and find my old hard drive (which is close to mechanical failure itself if the noises it makes are any indication) and see if the problems occur with that. Though if it requires a clean install of XP to work with my new mobo, CPU and RAM then I flat out refuse to try that as I simply cannot afford to reformat that at the moment.
 
#22 ·
I apologize if I came across rude with that statement, but my patience (with my computer, not with the help provided) is wearing thin, and due to the fact that I am going to university in a few weeks and will need my desktop in full working order by then means that my sense of urgency is somewhat increased.

On the issue of potentially faulty RAM, I ran memtest86 as suggested.
Over 8 passes, 5 errors were found, but only 2 were listed with the following information given:

Test: 4 & 5
Pass: 0 & 0
Failing address: 0001ab1bc70 (427.3MB) & 0001a91e470 (425.8MB)
Good: ffffffff & bfbfbfbf
Bad: fffffffb & bfbfbfbb
Err bits: 00000004 & 000000004
Count: 1 & 2
CPU: 0 & 0

Any help interpreting this would be much appreciated. I don't know if these errors I should really worry about and may be causing my problem or if they are relatively benign.
 
#25 ·
Sir, All drives come from the factory with some bad sectors which are mapped in a "list" the drive keeps. The other list is the "G-List" which grows as more bad sectors are found or develop over time. Once this list gets to a pre-set point it "trips" the SMART to indicate the drive is failing. Like the check engine light on a car. Bad sectors is a sign there is a breakdown in the platters that hold the magnetic material and/or a sign one or more of the heads on the drive are getting weak. The age of the drive is also a factor. The production date is normally on the Hard Drive Label which gives you some idea the overall age of the drive. The SMART stats also show the power on hours etc. Just another sign the drive is failing which I have said from the beginning. You can't "fix" hard drives they work or they fail then if your lucky you can recover your data then replace them. I really don't know what else to tell you than has already been said. I wish you the best with your attempts to use the drive if you so choose. I don't have anything else to offer from a support standpoint so I will stand down now and consider the case closed.
 
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