what the hell wrong with my hard drive??

[rickyjazz]

Ok as of 7am my hard drive nah work properly it a freeze and my back up drive keep saying format so I just restart my system boot it up again can't find slave drive so I remove the hard drive and plug it in back and it boot up.yesterday we had some low voltage in portmore so could that cause it even tho my ups is plug in? Wat could be the problem?

[khat17]

Drives could be going or damaged.

Cables could be intermittent.

Power supply could be going or damaged.

Board could be going or damaged.

Those are probably the main things that would contribute to your drives acting up. If you are experienced enough, I would say open up your PSU to check for any obvious damage inside. If you have a PSU tester, I'd recommend using that first. If your PSU is fine, then download the different drive diagnostic tools from the drive manufacturer website and test using that. Change/swap/check your drive cables. From that fact you said IDE, I'd say change them - IDE cables cheap these days. Post back your results.

NOTE: If you going pull your PSU, ensure it's plugged out before you do. Do not attempt to work on your PSU unless you're confident you can do it, or if you've done so previously, or if you're experienced with electronics.

For assistance you can check www.badcaps.net

[rickyjazz]

@khat17 OK IS NOT THE POWER SUPPLY I GOING TO BUY A IDE CABLE LATER, WELL IM IN THE PROCESS OF UPGRADING MY SYSTEM SO LOOK LIKE I HAVE TO BUY 1 IF THAT THE CASE. SO IM GOING TO BUY 1 AND SEE AND WHAT SOFTWARE CAN I USE? WHAT THE BEST RECOMMENDATION?

[g2cris]

@khat17 OK IS NOT THE POWER SUPPLY I GOING TO BUY A IDE CABLE LATER, WELL IM IN THE PROCESS OF UPGRADING MY SYSTEM SO LOOK LIKE I HAVE TO BUY 1 IF THAT THE CASE. SO IM GOING TO BUY 1 AND SEE AND WHAT SOFTWARE CAN I USE? WHAT THE BEST RECOMMENDATION?

If you can get your hands on a copy of Hiren's boot CD, Its loaded with diagnostic tools.

[Yung_Jah]

I'd like to know which particular software on Hiren's Boot CD to use for testing a HDD.

[g2cris]

There are quite a few, but depending on the brand of HDD you can use the manufacturers on tool or a range of 3rd party tool available under the HDD tools menu.

These are only availble when you boot from the CD and not from Windows nor the MiniXP option.


According to the site

Hard Disk Tools
Hard Disk Diagnostic Utilities
Seagate Seatools Graphical v2.13b
SeaTools for Dos 1.10
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2
Western Digital Diagnostics (DLGDIAG) 5.04f
Maxtor PowerMax 4.23
Maxtor amset utility 4.0
Maxtor(or any Hdd) Low Level Formatter 1.1
Fujitsu HDD Diagnostic Tool 7.00
Fujitsu IDE Low Level Format 1.0
Samsung HDD Utility(HUTIL) 2.10
Samsung Disk Diagnose (SHDIAG) 1.28
Samsung The Drive Diagnostic Utility (ESTOOL) 3.00g
IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test 4.16
IBM/Hitachi Feature Tool 2.15
Gateway GwScan 5.12
ExcelStor's ESTest 4.50
MHDD 4.6
WDClear 1.30
Toshiba Hard Disk Diagnostic 2.00b

HDD Regenerator 1.71
to recover a bad hard drive

HDAT2 4.53
main function is testing and repair (regenerates) bad sectors for detected devices

Ontrack Disk Manager 9.57
Disk Test/Format/Maintenance tool.

Norton Disk Doctor 2002
a tool to repair a damaged disk, or to diagnose your hard drive.

Norton Disk Editor 2002
a powerful disk editing, manual data recovery tool.

Hard Disk Sentinel 0.04
Hard Disk health, performance and temperature monitoring tool.

Active Kill Disk 4.1
Securely overwrites and destroys all data on physical drive.

SmartUDM 2.00
Hard Disk Drive S.M.A.R.T. Viewer.

Victoria 3.33e and 3.52rus
a freeware program for low-level HDD diagnostics

HDD Erase 4.0
Secure erase using a special feature built into most newer hard drives

HDD Scan 3.2
HDDScan is a Low-level HDD diagnostic tool, it scans surface find bad sectors etc.

HDTune 2.55
Hard disk benchmarking and information tool.

Data Shredder 1.0
A tool to Erase disk and files (also wipe free space) securely

[rickyjazz]

@ g2cris thanks for the list im going to try it out but i download a software name hdd life pro but it said my hard drive is overheated and the temp is 46 degrees so what can i do to cool it down? have no more space to put in a next fan. help me out again rasta!!!

[khat17]

Good cabling practices - using tie-straps (cable ties) and having your fans positioned so that you have air flowing through the machine in one direction would help.

Strap your cables to ensure that you have maximum air-flow. Try and keep them out of the path of the fans blowing the air through the machine - or sucking the air out.

Then decide if you want any fans blowing into the machine, and how you want to arrange them for maximum efficiency.

[g2cris]

That's gonna be a problem we have to face in Jamaica. YAAD HOT BAD. Just keep inside the case lean and try optimize the airflow, that means no messy cables. If that range is not acceptable for your drive then maybe it needs changing.

[rickyjazz]

Change the ide cable and did the hard drive test which took like 2hrs to do but nuttin wrong with the drives... But it still a take long to boot up so i narrow it down to motherboard or power supply.. What you think?

For my next system all i need now is a case,memory and a big fan lol