Is my HDD Dying?

[Fluid Mantis]

I have a Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB HDD. Seems as if my computer is on its last legs! It's very frustrating as I've spent the past week organising so many files and making it a perfect setup. (I reformatted a week ago.)

I have Win 7 x64 installed, but it appears this problem may not be Windows-related. Sometimes when I turn it on, it says there is no device to boot from when I choose Win 7 x64 from the boot menu. I also have a 500GB drive with an OS on that, and I can boot from it. That HD seems to be okay. But my primary OS is on the 1.5TB one.

More often than not, it wasn't letting me boot. I decided to open up my case and take a look. I made sure the cables were secure but the HDD (the problem one in question. 1.5TB) was making some louder noises than the other HDD. I was wondering if this is normal, or if it's a sign of imminent failure. Initially yielded no results from opening it up as everything was okay inside. Soon after this though, I've been able to boot into Windows since. I'm worried this will only be temporary though.

I've been looking for a diagnostic tool. I was looking for one that would in particular scan the disk, but I've found one that gives me the S.M.A.R.T. information. I have put this information on Pastebin, here. You'll notice the report says I have a few extra partitions. I've made these to categorise my data. (Videos, Music, Software, etc.) I'm not sure what kind of numbers I'm looking for in that report, so please tell me what you make of it.

It's very important that I know for sure if this hard drive is FUBAR or not. That's because its one-year warranty runs out in just over a week. While we're discussing this, I thought I'd ask if you guys know how I could move the Win 7 partition on that drive to my (presumably healthy) 500GB drive. I don't want to lose everything I've installed on the OS drive, and the OS itself. But with the data on the other partitions... I could back those files up to DVD.
Sorry if this is essay-length. I'd REALLY appreciate your help though. Thanks!

[caperjack]

samsung disk utility here .as for if its getting bad your guess is as good as mine ,try the utility tool ,get the one for cd rom drive
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html

[Fluid Mantis]

Burned the ISO to disc, afraid it didn't work. =( I got some kind of error before it would even scan. It was worth a try though. Anyone got any ideas?

[caperjack]

I got some kind of error ,
Anyone got any ideas
======
i'll try to help you but it
helps to know what the error actually said

[Fluid Mantis]

It said it could not load the CD-ROM drivers. You should keep in mind that utility is not for my hard drive. It is only for Samsung SpinPoint HDDs. I thought I'd give it a try anyway but I just got a driver error which puzzled me.

Edit: Just for clarification, the CD did load. It displayed this error through the software.

[caperjack]

OK.SORRY
here's the one for the internal drive .
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

[Fluid Mantis]

Similar error.

"Cannot open CD driver MYDVD. SHCDX33E cannot load!", and an out of memory error. I can guess this much from it. I can't burn it to a DVD. But since I only buy DVDs I just burn anything to DVD and any boot discs I've burned to DVD in the past have worked fine. So I guess I'll need to search for an old dusty rewritable CD then. :P

Will post again when I've tested it on a CD.

[Fluid Mantis]

Same error, looks like my guess about the DVD was incorrect. Three discs later it seems clear to me that I won't be able to use that Samsung utility. Which is a shame, but I'm open to any other suggestions. If I don't end up finding a solution here I'll just send the drive back anyway on the basis it seems to be failing. The annoying thing about this will be backing up hundreds of gigabytes of data. As I only otherwise have a 500GB drive, this will potentially mean a lot of DVD backups too... As I mentioned in the first thread, if anyone knows the best (and preferably free) way to transfer a partition to another drive, let me know.

Thanks guys.

[James82]

Maybe the disk you have put has some problems.I met some similar issues before,but it will be working again when I replace the disk or restart the pc.

[caperjack]

if anyone knows the best (and preferably free) way to transfer a partition to another drive, let me know.

sad part is the Samsung utility should do that for you

edit ,check it after it i posted and it doesn't,but win7 will create a disk image .in control panel go to backup and restore
alo sending it back on the premise its going to fail will not result in you getting a new drive they will want a error code # from the utility ,and also will just check the drive when they receive it and if it test ok ,will just send it back to you

[Fluid Mantis]

Okay, I figured out a way to run ESTool. (Samsung diagnostic utility.) I had to make a bootable flash drive. It's because of my SATA setup that it wouldn't work via a disc. I put it on a USB drive and it worked. There are lots of bad sectors. It gave me a code: AJ36. I assume this is what I will give to Samsung to confirm the faults.

However, it recommends I erase everything and do another scan before this. So I'll try to create an image of Win 7 like you suggested and back up everything in the most efficient manner I can think of. I don't want to lose any important data. Thanks for your help so far caperjack.

[Xlphos]

Hello,

Alternatively if you open the disk manager (i type "disk man" in search when pressing start button) you can create a mirror and mirror a partition from the 1.5TB drive to the 500GB drive but it would have to fit on the other drive. Both disks would then become dynamic disks, this can be a problem when trying to alter partitions later on.

You should be able to then remove the mirror and keep it on the 500GB drive but that will remain a dynamic drive.

- Let us know how it goes.

[Fluid Mantis]

Thanks Xlphos, though in the end I decided to go with the image creation provided in the Win 7 control panel. Your method sounded somewhat risky but cheers for the suggestion. It gave me a recovery disc to burn so I can just use that to load the old image onto the other hard drive.

I've been spending the past couple of days backing up heaps of data, hundreds of gigabytes, mostly to DVD as well! It's taken forever but now it's done, and I'm running a low level format on the 1.5TB drive. If you read my earlier posts you would have seen that there were lots of bad sectors (I was given an error code) and it recommended erasing the data and rescanning before sending back to the manufacturer. So now I've backed everything up, that's what I'm doing.

I'm actually hoping it gives me an error code/lots of bad sectors even after the erase, because with the amount of bad sectors before, to be honest, I worry about the hard drive's future stability. Anyhow, since the big job's nearly complete, I thought I'd give you an update but I'll let you know what the end result is soon enough.

Thanks again for the help guys.

[Fluid Mantis]

Sometimes, just sometimes (perhaps an understatement I guess), I really hate Windows. Having to use a different computer right now. I created the system image but now whenever I try to restore it, I get "element not found". I have no idea of how to get around this. And I'll be devastated if I have to start over. Good job I backed up so much data to DVD though! So frustrated...

I guess I should have listened to Xlphos and used a proper method instead of relying on Windows' built-in utilities. I've Googled and I can't find anything about the error. Anyone who can solve this--you're my hero! lol

[Xlphos]

Hello,

Do you still have the orignal hard drive?
Aparently you must restore the system image to a disk which is the same or greater than the backed up system, how big was you windows partition?

How are you trying to restore your system?

[Fluid Mantis]

Really? I thought it would disregard the partition's unused data. Shucks. I still have the original hard drive, and as I may have mentioned, when I scanned it after the full erase, it was error-free. Thus, I won't be returning it, but I feel reluctant to install to the same drive again. As for how I tried to restore it, first I tried using the recovery disc that Windows asked me to make when I backed up the image. It didn't work: element not found". I thought I'd try installing Win x64 again from the same disc with the same product key, and try to restore it from Windows itself. It could not find the image despite my external hard drive being recognised and available.

Next I heard if I pressed F8 on boot I could access a repair option which would allow me to restore from an image. However, like when I made the image, it asked me to make a recovery disc first. Figured I'd give it a shot, but I got the dreaded "element not found" error that I got with the first recovery disc.

I believe my old partition I created the image from was about 550GB whereas this is a 500GB drive I am trying to restore to. I guess I should have taken this into account and resized the partiiton before I made the image. From what you're saying, I believe this might be the solution:

a) Reconnect the 1.5TB drive
b) Restore the image to this drive
c) Resize the system partition, maybe to 300GB or less
d) Create a new image of the system, and place it on the external hard drive again
e) Try to restore this image to the 500GB drive

I do fear that this might not work though. I'm open to any alternative solutions.

[Xlphos]

Hello,

You could do this, you may want to consider mirroring as well once you have restored the image. I would reduce the partition size for windows and mirror it to the other drive as well as create a system backup.

Once you setup the mirror if either disk fails the other should take over as the mirror partitions contain the same data.

My hard drive has died recently and once I get a replacement back from seagate I will be setting up a RAID solution I think, good job I backed up; I would strongly recommend taking regular backups, as i said mirroring is a good idea.

You maybe able to restore your 1.5TB drive even though you formatted it, if you can't restore your system you may want to try this.

- Let us know how it goes.

[Fluid Mantis]

Thanks, I Googled it and it seems that Windows 7 can do this for me in the disk management. So I guess it doesn't matter if I continue using the 1.5TB for my system partition. I just need to back up any other data to DVD as I download it I guess.

I'll let you know how it goes anyway. Thanks a lot!