Help.. I am posting this on a dying hard disk

[Spiritofliberty]

Hi to all frens... gurus.. seniors.. etc..

I desperately need help this time. I think my OS hard disk is dying. I took it out of the pc cuz i was having problems with random freeze up using XP. Sometimes i can boot the pc nicely but sometimes the master hdd is not detected. When that happens, i do not feel the rotational motion of the drive in my hands... Its as though the drive has stop spinning (eg. cut off fr its power). It will only boot nicely when it rotates continuously.. when it fails to boot, it rotates for a while and stop thus giving the error messages in bios. I hav two partitions. One ubuntu n one XP... Using ubuntu i dun hav the freeze ups yet but Xp gives me freeze ups very frequently. Can anyone suggest any help? I ran a Short DST for that drive and it passed earlier this morning... I am not sure wat to do now? Get a new hard drive? Or run more tests like the longer ones which can fix bad sectors..

Help me... Thanks people.. I appreciate.. I am staking a lot in that drive

[EzyStvy]

Buy another drive and clone the dieing one to the new drive. BOOM all done. Case Closed.

And or backup the important files while you can.

[glc]

Reseat the cables.

[Spiritofliberty]

hi glc...

wat does it mean? reseat the cables?

[Spiritofliberty]

i am using ubuntu now n it is still working fine.. but not sure how long will it last if i were to change to xp..

oh ya i have to hard disks..

now i am just plugging in the OS hard disk.. I find it harder to boot with both hard disk plugged in. I have a higher probability of success with only one hard disk.. but the other hard disk is working fine.. that i am sure.

[glc]

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsr/g/reseat.htm

One or both drives might be going bad - run manufacturer's diagnostics on both of them.

You also may have a weak power supply - please post full system specs, including brand and model of the power supply.

[Spiritofliberty]

should i run the diagnostics from windows? short or long? or from DOS?

i notice the short test for my WD hard disk (OS) is slower compared to my Seagate hard disk(which i presume to be ok).. sometimes it doesn't complete but it finishes when i use seatools though.

Q6600
Asus P5KPL
Corsair 2gb
Enlight 650W
WD 320gb
Seagate 500GB
Nvidia 8600
D-Link.. can rem the model

Thanks again

[Spiritofliberty]

well, it just crashed again on XP.

Wat happens is that the whole display will freeze but my mouse cursor is still movable. I can't click.. keyboard shortcuts doesn't work etc.

i notice that the WD drive is really hot compared to the seagate... any idea? I am going back to ubuntu for now

[glc]

Use WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics on the WD and SeaTools on the Seagate - and use the DOS versions, boot with CD. Run short, then long. If the drive is real hot, that's not good.

[Spiritofliberty]

the drive temp according to the software is 37C but i dun think its that cool.. it feels hotter to me.. seagate is 35C so it can't be 37C since its much hotter then seagate.

I ran seatools for the seagate drive.. it passed the short test so i didn't do the long

as for the WD diagnostics.. It gave me this error message when i ran the short test

Test Aborted
It ran too far beyond the expected time
Error/Status code: 0210


Just my theory though.. could be a mechanical failure? The portion of the hard disk where ubuntu is installed on is ok.. but the XP portion has some problems? So it hangs when the read/write head reacheda certain sector? etc.. i am confused really..

[glc]

The WD needs replacement. That code is sufficient to get a warranty replacement, if yours is still on warranty.

37c is fine - anything under 50 is safe.

[Khalil]

Sounds like the drive is going south, I would stop messing with it, not much you can do, back up your data and RMA the drive back to WD if you still have warranty.
You can check here

[Spiritofliberty]

I am copying out my data..

Hey guys, any suggestions to make life easier? I always need to install everything fr scratch whenever my OS hard disk has problems.. sigh..

[Spiritofliberty]

have i wrongly used the hd?

it always happen to me.. hd failure.. Why????

[glc]

It happens. Some drives are more reliable than others, but ANY hard drive can fail at ANY time.

[edfair]

I have intermittent lockups as you describe on two systems with XP,SP2, one Compaq, one HP.
When mine lock I pull taskmanager up, it will allow mouse close, and then there is another taskmanager screen behind, dimmed but will mouse close, then windows is back active.

You could be suffering the same.

[glc]

Yes, but his hard drive has failed diagnostics.