Member Avatar for Nickair

Hi i am running Windows Vista Home Premium on my HP Media Center PC, and my computer just went through my scheduled Hardware Diagnostic tests and everything passed except the Random Seek Test for my C drive. Is this a bad thing? what do i do about it? Do i have to worry?

  • 3 Contributors
  • 7 Replies
  • 1K Views
  • 1 Year Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Nickair

Dani AI

Generated

The symptoms described in this thread—Random Seek Test failure, a diagnostic note about an unreadable sector, and audible clicking—are a serious early warning that the drive is at risk. was correct to push for a vendor tool, and was correct that an unreadable sector usually means a bad sector. ’s factory restore may have removed the symptom and bought time, but it does not fix physical media problems.

Priority actions: back up any irreplaceable data immediately and stop using the drive for critical tasks. Check the drive’s SMART attributes with a dedicated utility to see values such as Reallocated_Sector_Ct, Current_Pending_Sector, Offline_Uncorrectable, and Seek_Error_Rate; rising or nonzero counts point to progressive failure. Avoid long, write-heavy surface scans that can worsen a marginal mechanical drive. If recovery of damaged files is required, use a recovery-aware imaging tool (one that retries and logs bad sectors) or seek a professional service rather than repeatedly forcing the disk.

Follow-up steps and cautions: run the manufacturer’s extended self-test and save the logs, and check warranty/RMA options if the drive is still covered. Treat the drive as unreliable until replaced — even if sounds stop, underlying damage can reappear. Maintain frequent backups and migrate the OS/data to a known-good drive when convenient.

Recommended Answers

All 7 Replies

Member Avatar for hughv

This is not good.
Download the diagnostic software from the HD manufacturer and run it for a more definitive result.

Member Avatar for Nickair

ok, to be a tad bit more specific, the report from the one i ran said that it was unable to read a certain sector of the hard drive, and it gave a multi digit number indicating the exact sector. does this help at all or do i need to tell you the sector number?

Member Avatar for hughv

Download the diagnostic software from the HD manufacturer and run it for a more definitive result.

Member Avatar for Nickair

Ok i google searched Samsung HD320kj diagnostic software and found a diagnostic test from softpedia, Shidiag or something. it is run through the command prompt.

Member Avatar for hughv

Download it and run it. It's probably the best diagnostic for Your HD as it's made by the manufacturer, and they know your drive the best.

Member Avatar for jbennet

That means it found a bad sector. Go to run in vista and type chkdsk /f /p /r

Reboot and leave it to scan.

It will try and repair the bad sector. Once done try running the random seeek test again.

Member Avatar for Nickair

I believe I restored my computer to factory settings and it fixed the problem. This was almost 2 years ago and i have not noticed the clicking anymore.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.