My Hard drive has just failed

I guess that the main reason that most of us use an imaging program is to back up and protect our hard drives. As hard drives usually work for years and years a failure is a pretty rare event so I thought I would put forward my recent experience to help others when the roof falls in ! In this particular case it was the backup drive that failed but the same principles apply to a source drive.
The first indication was an E00070020 error that the Archive was corrupt. This popped up when a backup drive was going through the image verification process. So no problem I thought and set Chkdsk running and went for a coffee. It should have struck me as odd that there was no Chkdsk report on my return but there was not so I tried the verification again and got the same error message.
I now had grave doubts as to the drive's integrity as it had never given any errors of this sort before. The next step was to run the Hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic software. Now this usually runs on this particular drive to completion of quick mode in about 2 to 3 minutes. After letting it run for 10 minutes or so I aborted the process and was then offered the option to repair the bad sectors that had been found. Choosing repair and hitting OK the process ran for awhile and then reported that there were too many bad sectors for repairs to be made.
So what I have learned from this can be summed up thus:-
Whenever Chkdsk is run seek out and make a note of the results or better still a screen shot so that they can be compared with previous runs, any deterioration can then be easily seen. Download the Hard drive mfgr's diagnostic and repair software in both Windows and DOS forms so that diagnostic/repair can be done whatever the circumstances. My third advice is to have a spare Hard drive to hand because you can put money on the fact that a hard drve will only fail after the shops are shut!

Xpilot

 

How old was that drive and what brand was it?

 

Western Digital Caviar SE. It was made 21 Oct 2004 so it is still under the 3 year warranty. Whether or not I can be bothered to find the original invoice and make a claim is another matter entirely.
I hope you are not going to draw any inferences as to this particular mfgr's reliability because I certainly do not and I will continue to buy that brand.

Xpilot.

 

No, not at all ... I use WDs too. But I never had one fail. <knock wood> On the warranty issue, I believe WDs have their mfg date stamped on the drive itself, which is usually pretty close to the sale date. You probably do not need the invoice if that date is on the drive and it shows that it is still in warranty.

 

I’ve used WD drives for years and still continue to use them.
Did you register the drive? I had problems with a USB drive and WD replaced it with no hassle at all. I’m sure I did not have the receipt, but I had registered it on-line.

 

Like the man at my favorite computer store said when I asked which brand was best: "They all fail sooner or later!".

 

He is 100 % right. Mechanical failures as well as excessive heat contribute to their short life. I have added a dedicated fan/cooler years ago to lower hard drive temperature. Maybe I am doing something good as my two 4-year old drives (one Maxtor and one Western Digital ) are still working good.

 

xpilot,k
if your drive HAD a 3 year warranty, you may be able to go to their website, submit the serial number, and if it is valid, it may issue you an RMA

BUT, I've seen in the last couple years, WD drives having only a 1 year warranty (you could go on-line and pay extra to EXTEND the waranty to 3 years)

I've had a couple drives fail; ibm, seagate;
but still use those brands, and wd also -
overall I've had good success with drives.

thanks for your feedback

 

I had a seagate drive that died on me after only a week of use, and it happened so quickly that the salesman thought I'd done something to mess it up since it failed so soon after it was put in the machine. Boy was it scary!! I hadn't even had a chance to go looking for a backup program yet.. To make matters worse, I had deleted all the old stuff from the old 6 gig drive and then I put it on the new 80 gig one, which was the one that started failing. Fortunately I was able to copy all the stuff back to the smaller one, it just took a really long time to do, and the drive was protesting loudly, once I had finished, I took the machine back and argued with the salesman and eventually I was able to get through to him that there was a fault somewhere and that the disk needed replacing. I guess he was used to dealing with so many computer illiterates and he'd never ever had a customer who was at or very near to his eyelevel, the moral of the story, go with your instincts, if you think your computer is acting strangely, it probably is.

 

Well that has got me a bit worried. My USB drive housing gets very hot if I use it for extended periods of time.

Fortunately, for me, I have not ever had a disk failure and one of the disks is over five years old.

 

Typical environmental operating temperatures for HDs range from 5 C. to 55 C. Some drives have built in temperature sensors which can be read in the detailed SMART status report part of the Mfgr's diagnostics. So provided your drive is in that range I would not worry too much.

Xpilot

 

To those who are interested in monitoring their internal hard drives, I would recommend The free Everest Home Edition and the free HDD Health. Sometimes it pays to know the temperature of your pc motherboard and hard drives, fan speed, voltages and other posssible abnormalities.

If temperature is up, it is time to do spring cleaning. There could be a lot of dust inside your computer which hinders cooling and heat dissapation.

 

Wow, all three of my Maxtors quit long before 3 years!

 

Some external USB drives provide little cooling for the drive and seem to rely on intermittent use to maintain safe temps. Some cases are better than others.

Internal drives are easy to keep cool by adding fans or using higher speed fans. Unfortunately, higher speed means more noise. If you can fit a fan on the PC case so that it blows directly over the HDDs, that's never a bad idea.

 

Alas, it's not free anymore unless you can track down a copy of one of the old versions from a secondary website like this:

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/...s_Utilities/Lavalys_EVEREST_Home_Edition.html

The free "Home" edition has been discontinued. The pay-your-way version $20 for the network version and $30 for the benchmark/overclockers version:

http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

Nice program, though.

 

Suggest to check majorgeeks.com. It has got the last free Everest Home Edition.
HDD health can be found at the freeware page at snapfiles.com