Windows 10: Hard disk on it's way out?

I have a friend's laptop in my care at present. 'something' had happened to it, it wouldn't boot and when I tried to fix it through repair with a W10 CD, I got that the disk was locked. I found some instructions for that and followed them and was then able to reset it.

I set it to run chkdsk /r next time it restarted, did a restart and waited. It got stuck on 10% for ages so I sent out, when I came back it was at a repair screen, not the login screen. I've let it run chkdsk again, once more it's stuck on 10%.

I'm thinking the HDD is on it's way out. Correct?

:)

 

Hard disk errors ? Way to proceed needed please

Hi Hilary,

Sorry for the delayed response. We appreciate you getting back to us. You may also check this Forum Article provided by Andre Da Costa. See How to:

Perform a Clean Install or Reinstall of Windows 10 for the steps.

Furthermore, we would also suggest that you to follow the steps on this
support article in reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change.

Keep us in the loop with the result.

 

Hard disk errors ? Way to proceed needed please

Thank you I will try this

 

Hi.
You could be right. If you'd like to verify, you could run Seatools on it. You'd need to use the DOS version, and boot from it if you can't get into Windows.
SeaTools | Seagate

Hope that helps!

 

I can get into windows now, and the second time it ran a lot faster. There is nothing for it in the event log. I will look into seatools though.

 

Sounds good. Let us know how it goes. *Smile

 

Had problems booting from the Seatools disk I burnt, so I've booted it from the W10 disk and chkdsk is running in the CMD screen you can get to from the Repair option. No errors so far, it's on stage 4. I'll have another go with Seatools when that has finished.

 

Doh! Forgot to plug it in while it was doing chkdsk so I've had to start it again! I also noticed the second Seatools disk I burnt took a lot less time than the first one, so I should be able to use that. I've got memtest as well....

 

Okay. Good luck. We also have a Windows Recovery Tools Bootable disk customized by one of our members, you could try:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

It has Speccy on it, which will read the SMART of the hard drive, but Speccy is not as detailed as PassMark DiskCheckup, which will give you failure modes. Perhaps it will help. Sorry, but I don't have a list of the programs on it, and the picture is a bit small to see them all.

WIN10586PESE_x64.ISO <<----

He's also got an Image health disk posted in that thread.

 

I think we are OK, very sure if chkdsk & Seatools say it's OK. I'll look for a SMART reader. Speccy is a great little utility and the disks in my own PC all have a nice green 'good' next to all of the SMART parameter. *Smile

 

The output from chkdsk:

X:\Sources>chkdsk c: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Acer.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
307456 file records processed.
File verification completed.
9889 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
422676 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
57611 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
39565008 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
307440 files processed.
File data verification completed.

Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters ...
105091732 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

472553471 KB total disk space.
51585432 KB in 236752 files.
168580 KB in 57612 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
432523 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
420366932 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
118138367 total allocation units on disk.
105091733 allocation units available on disk.
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

 

Speedfan - Known for checking core and graphics processor temperatures, as well as hard disk temperatures, also has a S.M.A.R.T. analysis package for disks, with a weblink to some detailed advice on your disk statistics. Free to download and use. Donations welcomed by author.*Smile

SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer

 

So it found only 4KB in bad sectors, and was unable to log. I'd really like to see you get Passmark DiskCheckup run on it, or Speedfan, as Fafhrd mentioned.

 

What would I be looking for in the Passmark screens?

 

In the SMART Info tab, check the values (description). Anything in red is failing/has failed. If it has a date, that's an anticipated fail date based on what the HDD is doing at the moment. The TEC (Threshold Exceed Condition) column gives indication of a failure or anticipated failure date. This info may, and quite often does, change over time. You want to leave the program running (minimized) for an hour or two, and see if any of the data changes.











Click on Configuration and set it to record SMART and warn you with a popup.






Some failure modes can tell you quite a bit, if you research them. For instance, a Reallocated Sector Count failure can quite often be corrected with a full format+CHKDSK, and the drive will be completely healthy and able to be used again.