Possible hard-drive probs ??

thomson · May 7, 2006

My friends system somehow fecked up, so i had him format it and clean windows xp install.

After the install, now when he boots up he gets some warnings etc saying things like smart bad hard-drive or summit like that, but after a bit of messing around he can get it to fully boot upto desktop screen and the thing appears to run perfect, but the bootups keep giving those same problems, ive even told him to reinstall windows again which he did but its still the same.

I suspect a hard-drive problem, what do you guys think ???
And, is there any programs that will scan the disk drive for possible problems ???
Its strange how the pc seems to run fine once he manages to get it to boot up.

Appreciate any help a.s.a.p as he's choaking for some help soon.

Thanks guys.

(its a maxtor ide drive by the way).

Moriens · May 7, 2006

There is a Maxtor utililty that will do a full check up of the drive. Incredibly I used this program this morning on a DiamondMAX 160GB that was playing up. You can download it here. It makes a boot floopy to run at startup. Its pretty thorough too.

Here

thomson · May 7, 2006

Nephilim said:
There is a Maxtor utililty that will do a full check up of the drive. Incredibly I used this program this morning on a DiamondMAX 160GB that was playing up. You can download it here. It makes a boot floopy to run at startup. Its pretty thorough too.
Here

just go for the "powermax" diagnostics tool then, yea ?

p.s
and after you used the tool what did it find ?

MH · May 7, 2006

If it is smart complaining, you can normally turn that off in the BIOS

Moriens · May 7, 2006

Yeah m8, Powermax tool was the one.

It managed to do the "quick" test. Lasts about 90 seconds.
On the Full test it immediately told me that the drive was about to fail and to back my data up.

(The symptoms were: Recognised in BIOS, but not in My Computer or Disk Management. Partition Magic couldn't see it. I couldn't FDISK it in DOS either.)
(The problem was... ahem.. because it was from one of my xbox's and the drive was locked for use only in that machine... I must have been having a mental block or summat....oh the shame lmao)

thomson · May 7, 2006

Mairyhinge said:
If it is smart complaining, you can normally turn that off in the BIOS

thanks for the info nephilim.

Mairyhinge, is it ok to switch the smart thing off in the bios ???

thomson · May 7, 2006

Ok, latest on this issue >>

He switchies the system on and up comes the normal boot pages to start with, then it stops and says press F1 to continue, if he doesnt press F1 it just stays at that screen, after pressing F1 it appears as if its going to start booting up but then a white bar starts along the bottom of screen from left to right like turning up the volume on your telly, one of those kinda bars, it goes up a bit at a time, its as if its scanning or summit, but it took ages, maybe 15 minutes to complete then the system boots up to the desktop and is fine.

I had him disable s.m.a.r.t in bios and it seems to make it boot a bit faster, with smart disabled the white bar only goes to about 1/4 full then the system boots where'as before the bar would go all the way to the end and take about 15minutes, as i say, it sounds like summit is scanning or summit.

Any ideas guys ???

edit :> its windows xp pro including sp2 he has by the way.

thomson · May 7, 2006

thomson said:
Ok, latest on this issue >>

He switchies the system on and up comes the normal boot pages to start with, then it stops and says press F1 to continue, if he doesnt press F1 it just stays at that screen, after pressing F1 it appears as if its going to start booting up but then a white bar starts along the bottom of screen from left to right like turning up the volume on your telly, one of those kinda bars, it goes up a bit at a time, its as if its scanning or summit, but it took ages, maybe 15 minutes to complete then the system boots up to the desktop and is fine.

I had him disable s.m.a.r.t in bios and it seems to make it boot a bit faster, with smart disabled the white bar only goes to about 1/4 full then the system boots where'as before the bar would go all the way to the end and take about 15minutes, as i say, it sounds like summit is scanning or summit.

Any ideas guys ???

edit :> its windows xp pro including sp2 he has by the way.

Anyone ???

X-Wolf · May 7, 2006

Nothing is scanning.
The hard drive is now struggling to load up, because of errors.
Smartdisk already warned u that a problem was about to start.
Now it has.

There is no recovery from a smartdisk failure.
U can turn the message off in the bios, and cross yer fingers.
The drive may last for an hour, or even forever,
but it will never run 100% again.

... as u already said - it is failing now.

thomson · May 8, 2006

X-Wolf said:
Nothing is scanning.
The hard drive is now struggling to load up, because of errors.
Smartdisk already warned u that a problem was about to start.
Now it has.

There is no recovery from a smartdisk failure.
U can turn the message off in the bios, and cross yer fingers.
The drive may last for an hour, or even forever,
but it will never run 100% again.

... as u already said - it is failing now.

so his hard drive is fecked then, yes ? (well as far as the boot problem anyway)

X-Wolf · May 8, 2006

I cant see it ... so cant say for sure, but sounds like its finito.

If u need to get any data back off it, I recommend u stop trying to boot it up
(u will make the drive worse) (it may even pack in completely).
It can be slaved up to grab data back off

Reddevil · May 8, 2006

you need to do a full format of the hard drive, so it can check and allocate all the errored sectors as bad, then it will clear the error.

If there are more than 10% in total of disk space in errors then its on its way out.

thomson · May 8, 2006

reddevil said:
you need to do a full format of the hard drive, so it can check and allocate all the errored sectors as bad, then it will clear the error.

If there are more than 10% in total of disk space in errors then its on its way out.

when he done a format on it, it took hours to format which i found very strange, windows is installed again but he has to wait 15 minutes on windows starting up etc, i guess the drive is fecked ?

Reddevil · May 8, 2006

yep i would say so, price of them now bin it buy another get a 80gb for about 45 quid

thomson · May 8, 2006

reddevil said:
yep i would say so, price of them now bin it buy another get a 80gb for about 45 quid

ok mate, thank you, i will pass info on :Cheers:

Possible hard-drive probs ??

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