Hardware issues (possible the harddrive)
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Hi everyone, I'd like to consult the hardware gurus here. My computer started to lock/freeze completely few days ago at random intervals, and sometimes Windows XP isn't able to start. Starting in safe mode ususally helped, so I thought that I will try to disable UDMA for my HDD, and it worked. After reenabling UDMA, it worked fine for 2 days. :) Now I'm not able to start Windows XP anymore, not even in the safe mode. If it starts, it will freeze after few seconds. The drive is also producing some heavy-click sounds at random intervals (the same sound you hear when you turn it off, like if the heads were parked every now and then). It' Maxtor DiamondMax Plus. I've taken this drive to another PC where it is connected as a secondary slave. No problems yet, but I have just learned about SMART technology, and tried the trial versions of several SMART tools on it (btw. are there any free SMART utilities?). The reported number seem to be a lot worse than on my new Maxtor, especially the Temperature, Seek Error Rate and Hardware ECC Recovered, the latter two having the worst value of 1 (!). In case of the Seek Error Rate it is below the treshold, whereas the ECC Recovered has the treshold of 0, so it didn't fire the warning sign. Anyway, both variables have value of 252 on my new drive. From what I've seen on the web, SMART values range from 0 to 255, 255 being the best results. Now, this probably means that the drive is slowly, but certainly dying, and that I should immediately backup everything on it. I just want to confirm this with the experts here, before I will go ahead and buy a replacement (and loose another day or two reinstalling everything). So, the question is, do these values mean it's dying? Are the symptoms described above (freezing of the system during startup / run, head parking sounds) also a sign signalling a bad harddrive condition? Thanks in advance, Rado Thanks in advance!
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
Radoslav Bielik wrote: Are the symptoms described above (freezing of the system during startup / run, head parking sounds) also a sign signalling a bad harddrive condition? Well, yes and no. :) But, it does sound like the HDD is going bad, and yeah consider a new one soon. Once the clicking starts it's only a matter of time before the drive stops working at all. Personally, I don't use Maxtor HDDs because they generally don't last as long as other brands for me. Even their casing seems cheaper. Also, it's worth the extra $10 to get a HDD cooler to help increase the life of your drive. FYI, does your computer "lock up" out of the blue or does the power just cut out for no reason? Jeremy Falcon
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Oh no! The "click of death!" Clicks usually indicate that the reading arm is making contact with the drive plattens and gouging them repeatedly. I would immediately back up all important data (if you haven't been doing so regularly) and replace the drive. The longer you wait, the less data you will have to recover. Personally, I have not run a desktop system without two hard drives in more than 6 years. One drive contains the OS and program files, and the other contains all my important saved files. I also burn anything I want to keep off to CD regularly. Still coaxing software out of the can after all these years...
tanstaafl28 wrote: Clicks usually indicate that the reading arm is making contact with the drive plattens and gouging them repeatedly Not quite. The click he's talking about is more-than-likely the arm, literaly, hitting its limit of travel as it gets moved back and forth acrossed the disk. This can happen if the controller looses track of where the arm is, or just can't trust that the arms is positioned properly, as in a read failure. If the controller detects read errors it can assume that the arm is out of place. It then tries to "home" the arm (seek to track 0) but, since it no longer knows where the arm is, it doesn't know how many track it needs to jump get to 0. So the controller will move the arm farther than is physically possible in order to guarantee that it reached track 0 (there's the "click".) It will then try the read again. If that fails, the arm "reset" and read retry occurs again and again, until the drive reaches it's fail limit (about 5-10 attempts). Then you get the infamous "Data error reading drive C:". If the heads bounce on the platter, you'll most likely never hear it. The platters have a slick coating on them, kind of like silicon, so when the drive stops and air stops moving between the heads and the platters, the heads can settle back down on the platters without causing any damage. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
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tanstaafl28 wrote: Clicks usually indicate that the reading arm is making contact with the drive plattens and gouging them repeatedly Not quite. The click he's talking about is more-than-likely the arm, literaly, hitting its limit of travel as it gets moved back and forth acrossed the disk. This can happen if the controller looses track of where the arm is, or just can't trust that the arms is positioned properly, as in a read failure. If the controller detects read errors it can assume that the arm is out of place. It then tries to "home" the arm (seek to track 0) but, since it no longer knows where the arm is, it doesn't know how many track it needs to jump get to 0. So the controller will move the arm farther than is physically possible in order to guarantee that it reached track 0 (there's the "click".) It will then try the read again. If that fails, the arm "reset" and read retry occurs again and again, until the drive reaches it's fail limit (about 5-10 attempts). Then you get the infamous "Data error reading drive C:". If the heads bounce on the platter, you'll most likely never hear it. The platters have a slick coating on them, kind of like silicon, so when the drive stops and air stops moving between the heads and the platters, the heads can settle back down on the platters without causing any damage. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
Whoops. I knew the click was the arm smacking their stops, but I thought it could potentially gouge the plattens as it travels across. Is there any recovery from this, or do you think the drive should be replaced? My opinion would be that the drive is no longer reliable. Still coaxing software out of the can after all these years...
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Hi everyone, I'd like to consult the hardware gurus here. My computer started to lock/freeze completely few days ago at random intervals, and sometimes Windows XP isn't able to start. Starting in safe mode ususally helped, so I thought that I will try to disable UDMA for my HDD, and it worked. After reenabling UDMA, it worked fine for 2 days. :) Now I'm not able to start Windows XP anymore, not even in the safe mode. If it starts, it will freeze after few seconds. The drive is also producing some heavy-click sounds at random intervals (the same sound you hear when you turn it off, like if the heads were parked every now and then). It' Maxtor DiamondMax Plus. I've taken this drive to another PC where it is connected as a secondary slave. No problems yet, but I have just learned about SMART technology, and tried the trial versions of several SMART tools on it (btw. are there any free SMART utilities?). The reported number seem to be a lot worse than on my new Maxtor, especially the Temperature, Seek Error Rate and Hardware ECC Recovered, the latter two having the worst value of 1 (!). In case of the Seek Error Rate it is below the treshold, whereas the ECC Recovered has the treshold of 0, so it didn't fire the warning sign. Anyway, both variables have value of 252 on my new drive. From what I've seen on the web, SMART values range from 0 to 255, 255 being the best results. Now, this probably means that the drive is slowly, but certainly dying, and that I should immediately backup everything on it. I just want to confirm this with the experts here, before I will go ahead and buy a replacement (and loose another day or two reinstalling everything). So, the question is, do these values mean it's dying? Are the symptoms described above (freezing of the system during startup / run, head parking sounds) also a sign signalling a bad harddrive condition? Thanks in advance, Rado Thanks in advance!
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
I'd never trust a clicking HD to last too long :). I had two of them die on me. Even my current Maxtor drive used to click and overheat. For the record, though, I did a low-level format (it took a looooong time to complete) and placed it low in the case, near the fan. It's been running as a secondary data drive without any problems for roughly a year. Perhaps you too should keep an eye on the drive's temperature. A nice free SMART reporting utility (not monitor) that I've been using is DiskCheckup by www.passmark.com[^]. I've also written a little program of my own to use as a monitor; it only takes a couple of IOCTL calls to read the SMART data.
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Whoops. I knew the click was the arm smacking their stops, but I thought it could potentially gouge the plattens as it travels across. Is there any recovery from this, or do you think the drive should be replaced? My opinion would be that the drive is no longer reliable. Still coaxing software out of the can after all these years...
tanstaafl28 wrote: Whoops. I knew the click was the arm smacking their stops, but I thought it could potentially gouge the plattens as it travels across. Is there any recovery from this, or do you think the drive should be replaced? My opinion would be that the drive is no longer reliable. That's right. Your probably getting read errors already. That's probably why Windows hangs on startup. The faster you get the drive replaced, the better. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
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Radoslav Bielik wrote: Are the symptoms described above (freezing of the system during startup / run, head parking sounds) also a sign signalling a bad harddrive condition? Well, yes and no. :) But, it does sound like the HDD is going bad, and yeah consider a new one soon. Once the clicking starts it's only a matter of time before the drive stops working at all. Personally, I don't use Maxtor HDDs because they generally don't last as long as other brands for me. Even their casing seems cheaper. Also, it's worth the extra $10 to get a HDD cooler to help increase the life of your drive. FYI, does your computer "lock up" out of the blue or does the power just cut out for no reason? Jeremy Falcon
I hear you on the Maxtor deal. The one I had died within a year and I've never bought Maxtors again. I've had a Samsung and a Western Digital for at least 3 years now. I'm getting good life out of the two of them. When I built my latest machine last year, I bought a bigger case with room for two fans in front and two fans in back and I didn't skimp on the fans. Its a wind-tunnel in there! Of course, I live in the desert, (Las Vegas), so I have to dust it off about once a month. Still coaxing software out of the can after all these years...
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tanstaafl28 wrote: Whoops. I knew the click was the arm smacking their stops, but I thought it could potentially gouge the plattens as it travels across. Is there any recovery from this, or do you think the drive should be replaced? My opinion would be that the drive is no longer reliable. That's right. Your probably getting read errors already. That's probably why Windows hangs on startup. The faster you get the drive replaced, the better. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
My current rig is pretty sturdy (knock knock). I've been running my systems with two hard drives for many years for just the above reason. I also burn important files off regularly and back up to my other computer. I never intended to set up a home network, but I ended up with one. I have two computers and my wife has two computers. Still coaxing software out of the can after all these years...
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tanstaafl28 wrote: Clicks usually indicate that the reading arm is making contact with the drive plattens and gouging them repeatedly Not quite. The click he's talking about is more-than-likely the arm, literaly, hitting its limit of travel as it gets moved back and forth acrossed the disk. This can happen if the controller looses track of where the arm is, or just can't trust that the arms is positioned properly, as in a read failure. If the controller detects read errors it can assume that the arm is out of place. It then tries to "home" the arm (seek to track 0) but, since it no longer knows where the arm is, it doesn't know how many track it needs to jump get to 0. So the controller will move the arm farther than is physically possible in order to guarantee that it reached track 0 (there's the "click".) It will then try the read again. If that fails, the arm "reset" and read retry occurs again and again, until the drive reaches it's fail limit (about 5-10 attempts). Then you get the infamous "Data error reading drive C:". If the heads bounce on the platter, you'll most likely never hear it. The platters have a slick coating on them, kind of like silicon, so when the drive stops and air stops moving between the heads and the platters, the heads can settle back down on the platters without causing any damage. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
Thank you for a detailed explanation :) I guess it makes sense now, the seek problems you have mentioned, and the critical "Seek Error Rate" value reported by SMART. Thanks again, Rado
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
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Radoslav Bielik wrote: Are the symptoms described above (freezing of the system during startup / run, head parking sounds) also a sign signalling a bad harddrive condition? Well, yes and no. :) But, it does sound like the HDD is going bad, and yeah consider a new one soon. Once the clicking starts it's only a matter of time before the drive stops working at all. Personally, I don't use Maxtor HDDs because they generally don't last as long as other brands for me. Even their casing seems cheaper. Also, it's worth the extra $10 to get a HDD cooler to help increase the life of your drive. FYI, does your computer "lock up" out of the blue or does the power just cut out for no reason? Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote: FYI, does your computer "lock up" out of the blue or does the power just cut out for no reason? Yes, it just locks up out of the blue. I've had problems with the power cables few years ago which caused the drives to spin down and up again and the computer to lock for short periods of time, but this time it is different. I have tried different power / IDE cables, but it didn't help. According to post above from Dave Kreskowiak, it seems it's definitely the drive seek problem. I'm just trying to back up everything, hearing the ocassional scary click sounds. I didn't experience any data read errors yet, but I can't back up my emails. Inbox folder files for all my accounts report "Access denied" error. As if the files were locked somehow during the last lock up of the PC or something. All other folders could be read just fine, but the inbox not. I can't understand that. :( I booted from another drive, this drive is now connected as slave, and no process is locking these files (I've checked this with Process Explorer). I think I'll probably try to boot it one more time into the safe mode to see if I can do something with these files. :( [EDIT] Update 1: OK so now it seems that it might be a NTFS security problem, but since I'm on Windows XP Home I can't check the security setting of these files. But maybe I'm wrong. I could back up everything so far without any read problems. Update 2: I was able to boot into safe mode and back up almost all necessary files. :jig: (there were seek/ecc errors with just a few ones). [/EDIT] Another piece for my hardware museum. :sigh: Rado
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
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I'd never trust a clicking HD to last too long :). I had two of them die on me. Even my current Maxtor drive used to click and overheat. For the record, though, I did a low-level format (it took a looooong time to complete) and placed it low in the case, near the fan. It's been running as a secondary data drive without any problems for roughly a year. Perhaps you too should keep an eye on the drive's temperature. A nice free SMART reporting utility (not monitor) that I've been using is DiskCheckup by www.passmark.com[^]. I've also written a little program of my own to use as a monitor; it only takes a couple of IOCTL calls to read the SMART data.
Thanks for the link to DiskCHeckup, I'll check it out. I'm just trying to back up everything, no read problems so far, except for some strange "access denied" errors which I don't understand (I did boot from another drive). Do you have a link to your SMART reporting program / monitor? Rado
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
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Thanks for the link to DiskCHeckup, I'll check it out. I'm just trying to back up everything, no read problems so far, except for some strange "access denied" errors which I don't understand (I did boot from another drive). Do you have a link to your SMART reporting program / monitor? Rado
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll
Radoslav Bielik wrote: I'm just trying to back up everything, no read problems so far, except for some strange "access denied" errors which I don't understand (I did boot from another drive). Maybe some sectors are going bad? :~ Radoslav Bielik wrote: Do you have a link to your SMART reporting program / monitor? Here's a link: EFSmart_alpha.zip. This is of course just a preview. The monitor/log are not yet implemented, but you can view the SMART attributes of the IDE devices. If you're interested, keep an eye on my freeware page[^]; I'll put up a new section when it gets into a beta version.
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Radoslav Bielik wrote: I'm just trying to back up everything, no read problems so far, except for some strange "access denied" errors which I don't understand (I did boot from another drive). Maybe some sectors are going bad? :~ Radoslav Bielik wrote: Do you have a link to your SMART reporting program / monitor? Here's a link: EFSmart_alpha.zip. This is of course just a preview. The monitor/log are not yet implemented, but you can view the SMART attributes of the IDE devices. If you're interested, keep an eye on my freeware page[^]; I'll put up a new section when it gets into a beta version.
Elias Fotinis wrote: Maybe some sectors are going bad? Fortunately no. :) It was a bad feeling but from the nature of the error message I hoped it will be a NTFS access right problem, and indeed it was. :) I was working on Windows XP home and thus couldn't change the permissions, but I was able to boot into the safe mode using the faulty disk and backup these files. Elias Fotinis wrote: Here's a link: EFSmart_alpha.zip. This is of course just a preview. Thanks :) I'll check it out. Rado
Radoslav Bielik http://www.neomyz.com/poll [^] - Get your own web poll