Member Panel

Hello,

I'm looking for some help to identify wether or not my harddisk is defected (2.5 inch HD in my 3 year old Asus laptop).

I'll list my actions thus far and why I think they harddisk is defect:
1) After booting my laptop and trying to start a video game (WoW) it kept crashing with a error stating it was unable to read certain files from disk.
2) After that boot, my laptop was reacting very slowly (starting apps, installing apps etc.)
3) I decided to backup important files on a external HDD, while doing that alot of files returned windows error about not being able to copy/read files from the disk to the external HDD.
4) Decided to format my 2 partitions, the default Asus recovery CD was unable to format the partitions. After writing a new bootsector I was able to format the HDD. However, the recovery CD kept failing to copy over Windows files from the CD to the new partition. (Failing on different files each time). Also tried 3-4 different windows install CD's.
5) I got advised to do a `disk wipe` (Used DBAN. Which should be fool-proof, however that App also stalled the wiping process at around 90% claiming `It failed with non-fatal errors`
6) After this disk wipe, I finally was able to copy over all Windows Files and start the windows installer.
7) After installation, it fully booted, but the OS was responding very odd, stalling for long periods when trying to open/install applications (Such as MS Visual studio 2008 Express / DirectX SDK / MS XP Service Pack 3)

The laptop also makes noisy sounds sometimes, which sounds like processing, but very noise and with random clicks in it.

Anyhoo, that's it, my suspicion is that the hard disk is defect and I need to replace the hard disk. Can get a new 120gig one for 'bout 50 euro, but I'd rather gather some advise first

Thanks in advance!

Kwaak

It sounds possible.

Could you try running DBAN again, this time saving the log file? I know how to read the logs, and it might just tell me what is going on.

It might have been easier to run scandisk first to see if your problem was hard disk failure or just a few bad sectors on the drive. A drive will often get a bit noisy when the R/W heads try to read a bad sector. A few bad sectors doesn't mean a bad drive but if the bad sectors continue to reapear then you can bet on a new drive.

LC

Small update, I tried installing xp service pack 3, but it stalled trying to install the files (dowloading was succesfull, but took ages). After I forcefully rebooted the laptop, windows reverted back to a state before the xp service pack 3 installation.

That revert also had problemswith setting files etc. and alot of errors. I left my laptop unattended for a moment and it rebooted, however during initalising of hard disks during the boot it errored:
"Pri Master Hard Disk:S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, Back and Replace"
"Press F2 to Resume"

F2 takes me to Bios, so now I am not able to boot windows (or the hard disk anymore)

I will reply tomorrow again with a log of the DBAN, too late now

Thanks for all the help so far! Really appreciate it

SMART is a BIOS utility which lets you know when the HDD is defective. I am sorry to inform you that your drive is either dying or dead.