hard drive help PLEASE!!!

[alucard2050]

i noticed the problem when capturing. when i finish recording i hit the stop button but the program locks up and the hard drive keeps running. the only way to close it out is by control,alt,delete. then i check the file and instead of a 50 meg file its like 200 meg. and it won't play. this happens with any of my capturing software. i have never run into this problem since i started capturing about 6 months ago. so i first tried to reinstall the drivers. no luck. i ended up reformatting my drive. after i formatted, before the windows logo appears i get the error, "SMART failure has detected an error on Maxtor drive 0" then it says," Backup all your files and replace your hard drive, a complete failure of your hard drive is immenant." i tried scandisk from DOS and i noticed 3 bad sectors. i tried scandisk in windows but it found no errors. i am running WindowsMe. i have never had this problem. anyone out there know of a way to fix this or isolate the bad sectors so they won't even be used. or anyone think its a virus? i have tried PC-Cillin to see if it were a virus but it came up clean. please someone help.

[tinmancp]

Dude, your hard drive is about to die. SMART was implemented in most hard drives to allow user to back-up the data and replace the hard drive with a new one.

No scandisk, fdisk, or format will help.

[alucard2050]

what about a virus? can this cause it? pc-pillin hasn't found it but i might get Norton Utilities if that might help. its a 45 gig drive with 3 bad sectors. there has got to be some way to isolate them....

[TIbrO]

Dude, that happened to me with my old 5400RPM Western Digital 18GB drive I used to have as my C:\... and I ignored it.
One day my PC just wouldn't boot.
So I got three new 20GB hardrives to use with my new RAID mobo. But yeah, my WD drive just died... stopped spinning up I guess. I paid good money for that drive, too, but I just sucked it up and got new ones. If that ever happens to me again, I will email the manufacturer of my drive, in this case it is IBM now, to bitch at them and see if I can get a free replacement.

[tinmancp]

Western digital has a 3 year warrenty. If for any reason your hard drive fail, just go to their web page and request a RMA number, no question asked.

I had a old 2.3 gig hard drive which crap out on me. Send it in requesting for a upgrade, and got it.

[TIbrO]

Nice. Too bad I didn't do that. Now I don't need another drive, but I might try it just so I can have another one to sell or give out or something.

[alucard2050]

hay, hay, hay, i went to Maxtors web site and downloaded their little program for checking the drive and did a low level format. after that my problems are gone. i don't get the smart message anymore and the bad sectors are good now. thanks everyone.....