Is hard drive failure iminent?

[bevills1]

Recently I upgraded my motherboard after the old one died, and I began getting freeze ups accompanied by a coo sound every 3 to 4 seconds similar to the sound of a dove cooing. I first thought this to be sata cable problem because I had issues with that before the upgrade, or at least I thought I did. I tried connecting to a different sata port which helped, but the problem still arises occasionally. I also tried different sata cables to be sure a bad cable wasn't the cause.

Finally I ran Seatools, and the suspect drive failed the long self test. Is hard drive failure imminent as I suspect, or is there another possibility I overlooked?

[transporterfan]

Difficult to say. It could be your power management settings. It takes a few seconds sometimes for the disc to spin up/down.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/next-generation-data-center/storage/false-disk-drive-f...-pro/240151735

Are there signs of any errors?

A warning: don't test a drive without backing it up first. The test might push it over the edge!

[bevills1]

The only signs I've detected are the freeze ups accompanied by the coo sounds and loading times for all desktop and systray programs that load has increased noticeably. Also IE7 has stopped working and gives the "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" message which I don't know if that may be related to a failing drive, but Seamonkey still works fine. The drive is refurbished though, had a 6 month warranty and is about 8 months old. I had another refurbished drive that was a couple of months older, and it died completely about a month ago resulting in failure of the system to post. I've learned a lesson about refurbished drives and will have no more of them.

I had the drive backed up before problems started and have been habitually backing up important data for years. This backup practice has saved me many times.

[jagabo]

Run CHKDSK with a full surface scan.

[nic2k4]

The only signs I've detected are the freeze ups accompanied by the coo sounds...

Yeah, I get that on my PC with the Seagate drive; this was bad for me. I've only heard that sound with Seagate drives. I had a 500 GB die with less than 500 hours on it and it was making that sound pretty often. Then I got a 1 TB and it started doing it too after a while. I got worried and looked more closely at the issue and found that the noise went away when I'd push in the SATA connector on the drive. I use locking connectors on all drives and of the 3 drives in the case the Seagate is the only one with an issue. You have all your cables neatly tied together, looks good but it might be causing some strain on the connector and with vibrations that would be enough to dislodge it, even with a locking connector. Run CrystalDiscInfo and keep an eye on the sector reallocation data. The count is going up on my drive, but only a couple sectors have been affected so far. Whenever I hear the sound I quickly go push the connector and that seems to help. I think my next step is going to hot glue the thing.

[bevills1]

Both drives on the PC are Seagate, but the problem seems to be only with the older 500GB which has failed to be seen by bios a few times whereupon unplugging and replugging sata cables fixes the problem. The other PC that had a drive that died was also a 500GB Seagate, but it never made the coo sound and just stopped working at all. I've also tried different cables including ones with metal clips and ones with right angle connectors, but the problem persists with this particular drive causing me to believe the problem might be the drive itself. I guess there's no way to know for sure if a failed test of the drive could be meaningless, but I suspect it more likely to be the drive itself because I'd think there'd be problems with both drives if the cable connection were the issue. Next time I spot a really good buy on a drive I'll get one and see if that fixes the problem.

[Noahtuck]

Did you run seatools from a CD on bootup before windows loaded ?

If so it won't be a power management issue as windows has not even booted yet so it has no control.

If it is failing the long test I would not trust any brand hard drive.

I test a minimum of 16 hard drives a month, 400gb - 500gb, and if they fail the long test, or even the short test, they are returned and/or junked.
All Seagate & Western Digital, which is all I will ever use as other brands seem to be worse, with Hitachi at the top of the list, worst damn HDD's I have ever seen with an insane failure rate!!

[bevills1]

Seatools was initially run while booted to Windows. I've been out of town a few days and just now got the chance to retest from boot CD. The drive fails the long test from seatools boot CD as well, and I'm definitely not trusting this drive. I plan to replace the drive very soon.

[AlanHK]

Get GSmartControl -- freeware ( http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Home )
It runs the built-in diagnostics on the hard disk.
A quick test tells you if it's in imminent danger of failure -- 2 minutes, the more thorough test takes an hour or so.

Otherwise, check the power supply and cables.
Flaky power can cause a multitude of errors.

[TBoneit]

Hi, Personal Opinion as inexpensive as drives are is it worth worrying about? I Saw 3Tb gard drives for $100 listed in todays Newegg sale. I have seen 1Tb SSD drives, Samsung 840EVO, at B&H photo for $550 I do use WD Red drives in my NAS drives. Other than that I use Seagate, WD, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung, and Intel drives. They are all good as far as I can tell. (Knock Wood) Once a drive fails a diagnostic, rarely in my case, I Clone it and put it on the shelf and think of it as a form of backup. Don't forget to mark what it is and the pull date for later reference. That way I do not have any worries about is it good or bad. I have also switched over to External USB3 for the majority of my storage and use 1 or 2 Terabyte portables to save space.

[Noahtuck]

Agree with TBoneit,
Windows I do not trust for telling me a hard drive is failing as I have had it say they were going to fail and 5 years later they still worked great and
show as perfectly fine with WD or Seagate diagnostic tools.

But when a specific manufacturers tools say their drive is going kaplooy out they go.

[jagabo]

According to a large scale study by Google, SMART only predicts about 1/3 of drive failures. Of course, if SMART indicates problems you should replace the drive right away -- if it's used for anything important. I'll sometimes use an old drive with SMART errors for temporary stuff.

[Noahtuck]

According to a large scale study by Google, SMART only predicts about 1/3 of drive failures.

Only 1/3 of drive failures ?

My point is it has reported imminent drive failures that 5+ years later never came.
So not only does it NOT report drives that are going to fail, it also reports that drives are going to fail that NEVER DO!!

Of course, if SMART indicates problems you should replace the drive right away

From what you say google says and from what I have experienced over the last 10 years, S.M.A.R.T. is the last thing to trust.
Which if something only predicts 1 out of every 3 drives that fail is going to fail, it obviously is unreliable.

[jagabo]

S.M.A.R.T. is the last thing to trust.

Which was my point.

[fritzi93]

Along the same line, I've twice gotten a balloon popup warning about imminent hard drive failure. Once under XP, and once under Win7, and both times Seagate drives.

So each time I immediately backed up the drive and did a full format (which does a chkdsk at the same time, if I'm not mistaken). That fixed the problem, although when analyzing the drive with SpeedFan, it said something about the drive crossing critical threshold values at one time, though all values were currently okay. Maybe a S.M.A.R.T. reporting firmware thing specific to Seagate, I dunno.

I'm still using both drives, years later.

The few times I've had a hard drive die on me, I wasn't able to get all the data off it, much less run any diagnostics. Like TBoneit says, drives are cheap, so it's wise to not have all your eggs in one basket.

I wouldn't say one should ignore S.M.A.R.T. entirely. If you get a warning, take precautions. But it's not very reliable.

[EDIT] Those two drives are not the fastest any more, obviously, and are in our office computer. One as the OS drive, the other as files storage. I image the OS drive every few weeks and data is duplicated on another physical drive. Still waiting for those drives to fail...

[AlanHK]

Nevertheless, it's worth looking at GSmartControl. It tells you lots of stats about the drive.

For instance with errors you suspect may be the drive, the cable, the motherboard .... if SMART tells you the drive is going bad, it probably is that. When I salvage a drive from an old PC I give it a check and if it fails I bin it.

I used to recommend the Parted Magic bootable ISO which has several useful disk tools on it, it was free but now it's $5. Though you can still find free versions if you look around.

[fritzi93]

Huh, so they're charging for Parted Magic now? I've got a free version, several years old now, I guess. I first used it under XP to shift a hard drive's partition alignment to 1024k (that was my first Advanced Format Drive).

GSmartControl sounds interesting, I'll have a look. Thanks for that.

[bevills1]

The drive worked for a couple of restarts after seatools retest and is now not recognized by bios which is what I suspected would happen sooner or later. This morning I found a great buy on a Seagate 1TB drive at www.slickdeals.net for $40 after $30 rebate, and the offer is good through 12-28-13 if anybody else may be interested. I'm not fond of rebates, but I think it's worth it for this price. The direct link to this deal is http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?sdtid=6584590&Edp...BQ.eeEqO777kyA.

[bevills1]

Well the replacement drive turned out to be defective, and I decided to try the old drive which still boots sometimes and sometimes not. It's working now, but I plan to replace and discard it when the new drive replacement arrives.

I plan to connect the drive I'm discarding, boot to Windows CD and delete all partitions before discarding. Is that sufficient security, or is there something else that should be done to be sure no data might be retrieved from it?

[TBoneit]

I would use Dariks Boot and Nuke (DBAN)
http://www.dban.org/

DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. This method can help prevent identity theft before recycling a computer. It is also a solution commonly used to remove viruses and spyware from Microsoft Windows installations. DBAN prevents all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. It does not provide users with a proof of erasure, such as an audit-ready erasure report.

Alternative would be to drill holes through the drives platter area, Hammer it with a Sledge hammer. Open it and scratch up the surfaces of the platters.

Good Luck
Roger

[p_l]

drill holes through the drives platter area

Been there, done that. Use a cobalt drill bit, not a cobalt bomb, which would be overkill.

[bevills1]

Does dban recognize more than 1 drive, or should I have just that 1 drive connected when I run dban? I'd certainly hate to nuke the other good drive by mistake.

[TBoneit]

I always play safe. I would unhook any storage device You would hate to see wiped.

Since I always ran it with just the one hard drive to be wiped...................

From their own Home page "DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect."

Good Luck
TBoneit