ID:185091
Apr 29 2006, 5:04 am
|
|
I woke this morning and turned on my monitor. To my surprise, it wasn't in Windows XP where I left it, it was at the boot screen:
 I pressed F1 to continue, and the computer halted. However, I turned the computer off, then back on again, and the computer booted normally. When I got into Windows, I immediately downloaded one of those drive-health meters, and everything seemed normal:  What should I do? I don't have the cash to replace the drive, and I'm not entirely sure that it wasn't a fluke! Any ideas or suggestions? (Aside from "Just replace the drive" :P ) ~Kujila | |
I second that. Back up anything important immediately. In the worst case scenario you'll still have all your data, and in the best case scenario your hard drive will be fine and you'll have made a backup. =)
| |
If your drive fails you and you cannot replace it, you could run a live linux distro. They are a little limiting, but a good way to get around lacking a hard-drive(Especially mixed with a jumpdrive and a portable FireFox on it).
I have a total of 3 active hard-drives in my computer, and probably 2-3 sitting around, so I have a backup plan if one fails, or if my machine blows up(Which is more of a possibility than it should be). | |
 Woopee. ~Kujila | |
Give hdd regenerator a try, No need to buy it, just ran it a few times using the offset :P. It does work as I did use it before on a failing drive.
You can use SpinRite 6.0. if you can get your hands on it too. link to hdd regenerator: http://www.tomdownload.com/utilities/file_disk_management/ hdd_regenerator.htm You best backup your data anyway, just in case. | |
I'd hate to see one of my hard disks die, but with like 9 hard disks one of them has to eventually die right?
| |
Ok, so I ran level 4 on SpinRite 6.0, and it took like 11 hours to do.
Now the TEC date is gone (Death date) on the hard-drive, and everything seems ok. I wonder if this saved the drive? Thanks for the info! I had no idea software could do such things to hardware! ~Kujila | |
Now HDD Health says my OTHER, newer hard drive is failing... what in the world is going on?!
Maybe they're getting too hot? What's a good temperature for a hard drive? Thanks :( ~Kujila | |
Kujila wrote:
What's a good temperature for a hard drive? somewhere just above freezing i suspect. :P odd that windows generates that pop up.. i have several 6-10 year old drives that are still running well, and never seen that before. | |
Ah, that's from a service/program I have running called Drive Health by Helexis (Shareware)
Anyhow, somehow my second (newer!) hard drive was saying its time of death was in three days! I ran SpinRite 6.0 and it set the time of death back into 2007 sometime. However, HDDLife says its health it at 60%! Why is that! :( I mean, that drive is newer and supposedly more reliable than the older 40GB one. Old 40 GB:  Newer 160 GB:  Pretty odd... The thing is, this all started after I opened a shady-looking Setup.exe (D'oh!) the other day. As you'd suspect, it was a virus. I opened it, my hard drive went nuts for 2 seconds, and then my virus scanner killed it. It said it was a worm; could a worm in memory be causing so much distress on the hardware? If so, it seems SpinRite 6.0 removed it somehow... is that even possible? And yes folks, SpinRite 6.0 doesn't seem to be hype - it seems to really work. In the time it has taken me to write this post, HDDLife reports that the health on the 160GB drive has fallen yet another 1%:  Meh. I wonder what the heck is going on... I never had any problems before a few days ago, and now everything seems to be dying! :( <font color="blue">[EDIT]</font> Maybe HDDLife calculates health with the fragmentation of the drive; if so, that would explain why the 40GB is healthy and the 160GB is not - I need to defragment the 160GB badly <font color="blue">[EDIT 2]</font> Wow... from the HDDLife FAQ: "I bought a new disk and HDDlife shows only 60% health. What's the matter? Should I go and change the disk? If the overall health indicator shows that everything is okay, there's nothing to worry about. Besides, even if HDDlife shows the red state of health and recommends that you immediately replace the drive, manufacturers' policy of replacing hard drives is applied only to those hard rives that are already out of order." So I wonder if that means, in layman's terms "We just BS; this program is useless" ~Kujila | |
Kujila wrote:
So I wonder if that means, in layman's terms "We just BS; this program is useless" Heh. I doubt that's what they meant to say. =) I think what they're trying to imply is that the measures are very rough and should not be treated as an exact indication of hard drive health, because such a measure is fairly arbitrary and difficult to calculate anyway. It's a rough guideline, not a perfectly reliable countdown timer. When they say that the "manufacturers' policy of replacing hard drives is applied only to those hard rives that are already out of order", they're probably referring to warranties. | |
Back up your stuff now. Maybe the drive'll fail, maybe it won't and that message was just a fluke caused by some stray radiation, but do you really want to risk it?