Which HD is dying? / Hitachi's DFT
thefadedline
Manchester, England
Hi all, think one of my hard-drives may be on its way out. The trouble is, I don't know which!
For the last week or so there has been a strange clicking/spinning sound coming from my computer, although it only happens during start-up. Once Windows has loaded and I can see my desktop, all the strange sounds stop and the computer operates as normal. I haven't noticed any sluggish behaviour or or any other recognisable symptoms.
I read the hard-drive testing guide by Thrax and decided to run Hitachi's DFT. I booted from the disc I created, but the program hangs at 'detecting secondary IDE drives' forever. I've tried several settings but it always does this, meaning I can't run tests on my drives.
I accept that it's one of my hard-drives failing and recognise that I need to back-up immediately. But like I say, I don't know which drive it is that's failing.
I have one Maxtor 6L160PO 163GB drive, partitioned into two 80GB units, and one Maxtor 6Y080PU 81GB drive that I use solely for back-up.
I am currently downloading Ultimate Boot for Windows v312 so that I can try running a hard-disk check using that. Hopefully it will work and determine which drive is on it's way out.
I've successfully diagnosed previous problems using this forum, which is my reason for coming back. If anyone has any advice on this I would appreciate it!
Cheers.
Edit: I have also used a HD-monitoring program, HD-Tune, to run error-scans on both drives. Red squares represent errors and there was not a single one on both drive scans. However, I don't know the reliability/popularity of this program so I am in 2 minds.
For the last week or so there has been a strange clicking/spinning sound coming from my computer, although it only happens during start-up. Once Windows has loaded and I can see my desktop, all the strange sounds stop and the computer operates as normal. I haven't noticed any sluggish behaviour or or any other recognisable symptoms.
I read the hard-drive testing guide by Thrax and decided to run Hitachi's DFT. I booted from the disc I created, but the program hangs at 'detecting secondary IDE drives' forever. I've tried several settings but it always does this, meaning I can't run tests on my drives.
I accept that it's one of my hard-drives failing and recognise that I need to back-up immediately. But like I say, I don't know which drive it is that's failing.
I have one Maxtor 6L160PO 163GB drive, partitioned into two 80GB units, and one Maxtor 6Y080PU 81GB drive that I use solely for back-up.
I am currently downloading Ultimate Boot for Windows v312 so that I can try running a hard-disk check using that. Hopefully it will work and determine which drive is on it's way out.
I've successfully diagnosed previous problems using this forum, which is my reason for coming back. If anyone has any advice on this I would appreciate it!
Cheers.
Edit: I have also used a HD-monitoring program, HD-Tune, to run error-scans on both drives. Red squares represent errors and there was not a single one on both drive scans. However, I don't know the reliability/popularity of this program so I am in 2 minds.
0
Comments
Cheers, I'll give that a go. Do you recommend the hard-disk check on the Ultimate Boot for Windows v312 disc before I use it, or should I just skip on to Seagate?
I ran the extensive/long scan on both drives using Seagate for Dos and both drives passed. Now I'm confused. Is this test 100% reliable?
I will run a scan with the UBD4Windows when I get home tonight.
The problem seems to be lying in a loose fan! Ashamed but relieved.