If CHKDSK finds errors, but HD Tune Pro 5.50 does not, what does that mean?

[RayLopez99]

I constantly get errors from a HDD (Seagate 1Tb, see the other two threads)..

System is Windows 8.1, modern quad core PC, Bios from last year (updated), two drives, SATA III, HDD mechanical, one being a Western Digital 500 GB drive that's five years old (the PC is only about three years, but I got thisdrive from another machine) and one being a "brand new" (this year) 1 TB Seagate drive, but I think it's got defects.

I have various theories. My questions are:

1) if I do "Error Check" on the Seagate Drive "C", using right-click on Properties of drive in File Explorer, then Tools, etc, and (nearly) each and every time it finds errors, including missing file pointers etc, and fixes them, only to find them again (sometimes though a few days will go by 'errorfree' which allows me to do a disk image backup using Clonezilla), that means likely there's a problem with this drive?

2) If I do "error check" on the Western Digital "D" drive, as in #1, but I never get any problems, that means likely there's no problem with this drive?

3) If I am using the HD Tune Pro 5.50 (paid version, on trial) and under the "error tab" I get no red blocks (no errors) for drive C:, but in fact there are errors as per 1) above, that means HD Tune Pro is no good, right? Iam running HD Tune now, and though it's not done, it is suspicious that itis all green, no reds, even though I know there's a problem as in #1) above.

4) Is it possible to corrupt your HD (in terms of dangling lost file pointers) if your RAM is bad? Sounds crazy I know...but I throw it out there. RAM being bad as not seated properly (once the Ram is seated, it's fine, buton occasion it comes out of the mobo and needs to be reseated, and in the meantime you get BSODs. BTW right now my RAM is seated fine, I checked).

5) is it possible that if two SATA drives talk to each other (C:, D and there's a bad mobo connection, that you might get contamination of the data in one or both drives?

6) I am probably going to replace the Seagate 1TB drive with a SSD. I probably will go with Samsung, which as "EDO?" brand (NAND ? logic) and popularin southeast Asia. Anything to look out for?

7) I understand all HDDs have bad blocks marked as such, so, is an OS goingto automatically avoid writing to these bad blocks? I assume so...

8) HD Tune has many screens. What is the difference between the "Health" screen, which has all kinds of data including "Raw Read Error Rate" (what isthat?) and the "Error Check" tab, which shows either green or red blocks depending on whether your HD blocks are ok or corrupted?

9) I don't think this is a virus problem because just now did a clean reformat and reinstall of Windows 8.1 (legal copy), and I restored (using Clonezilla, which amazingly worked fine) an earlier HD Image file that had nothing but legal programs from a legal Win 8.1 OS on it, and I still get the error of #1) above. If it was a virus from a pirated program, it would not bepresent in this image file. So it must be a hardware problem most likely?Unless it's a mobo connection problem as per #5).

10) So many questions, sorry! Any answers appreciated... I will update this thread if HD Tune finds any errors, but frankly this program sucks because it's more than half way through the 1TB HD and it's all green, meaning noerrors, yet I know there's CHKDSK errors. Unless--and this would be interesting--if HD Tune "Error Check" is checking for hardware problems on each sector, while the CHKDSK that Windows 8.1 has checks for software errors like dangling, missing or truncated file pointers. is that the case?

11) I am going to buy an SSD but here in southeast Asia there's lots of fraud and refurbished hardware sold as "new". Any utility I can use to check the SSD to make sure it has no errors? Probably the manufacturer, like Samsung, has a freeware utility packaged with the disk? Maybe I'll get the tech guy to check the SSD for errors before I buy it (they don't take refundseither; you American readers are so spoiled and don't know how lucky you are).

12) when installing an SSD Sata III drive, the BIOS need not be played with, it's set to ACHD? whatever that parameter is for Sata, so that's it? Or do Bios es have an extra switch for SSD? THis BIOS is by AMD's former subsidiary American Megatrends? and is flashed from 2013, so it' s fairly brandnew.

13) Baker's Dozen: a good utility for SSDs is: (1) just use what the manufacturer gives you in the box, (2) HD Tune (which says it is also for SSDs but somehow I don't believe it), (3) something else, (4) don't bother with utilities--the wear leveling or whatever is built into the controller for the SSD and it will take care of itself.

14) Sneak one in: for mechanical HDs, a good utility is? HD Tune seems nice, except for the possible bug I mention above (or maybe it's a feature) Abit pricy at $35 a copy but it might be worth it?

Thanks

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

On Sunday, December 14, 2014 7:23:07 AM UTC-8, RayLopez99 wrote:


Wow! Just now something really weird happened. HD Tune stopped at a certain block, testing, and would not move. I heard the Seagate HD distinctly make the infamous "clicking sounds" or "clicking sounds of death" that failing HDs make when they cannot write to a sector! However, after about five or six such sounds, the HD finally wrote, and HD Tune moved on, marking the block as "green" for good. It may be that this Seagate drive is on the 'verge' of failing but it still passes all the tests. BTW, S.M.A.R.T. is turned on in the BIOS and needless to say SMART is not showing any obvious problems with either drive.

RL

 

[Paul]

I constantly get errors from a HDD (Seagate 1Tb, see the other two threads).

System is Windows 8.1, modern quad core PC, Bios from last year (updated), two drives, SATA III, HDD mechanical, one being a Western Digital 500 GB drive that's five years old (the PC is only about three years, but I got this drive from another machine) and one being a "brand new" (this year) 1 TB Seagate drive, but I think it's got defects.

I have various theories. My questions are:

1) if I do "Error Check" on the Seagate Drive "C", using right-click on Properties of drive in File Explorer, then Tools, etc, and (nearly) each and every time it finds errors, including missing file pointers etc, and fixes them, only to find them again (sometimes though a few days will go by 'error free' which allows me to do a disk image backup using Clonezilla), that means likely there's a problem with this drive?

2) If I do "error check" on the Western Digital "D" drive, as in #1, but I never get any problems, that means likely there's no problem with this drive?

3) If I am using the HD Tune Pro 5.50 (paid version, on trial) and under the "error tab" I get no red blocks (no errors) for drive C:, but in fact there are errors as per 1) above, that means HD Tune Pro is no good, right? I am running HD Tune now, and though it's not done, it is suspicious that it is all green, no reds, even though I know there's a problem as in #1) above.

4) Is it possible to corrupt your HD (in terms of dangling lost file pointers) if your RAM is bad? Sounds crazy I know...but I throw it out there. RAM being bad as not seated properly (once the Ram is seated, it's fine, but on occasion it comes out of the mobo and needs to be reseated, and in the meantime you get BSODs. BTW right now my RAM is seated fine, I checked).

5) is it possible that if two SATA drives talk to each other (C:, D and there's a bad mobo connection, that you might get contamination of the data in one or both drives?

6) I am probably going to replace the Seagate 1TB drive with a SSD. I probably will go with Samsung, which as "EDO?" brand (NAND ? logic) and popular in southeast Asia. Anything to look out for?

7) I understand all HDDs have bad blocks marked as such, so, is an OS going to automatically avoid writing to these bad blocks? I assume so...

8) HD Tune has many screens. What is the difference between the "Health" screen, which has all kinds of data including "Raw Read Error Rate" (what is that?) and the "Error Check" tab, which shows either green or red blocks depending on whether your HD blocks are ok or corrupted?

9) I don't think this is a virus problem because just now did a clean reformat and reinstall of Windows 8.1 (legal copy), and I restored (using Clonezilla, which amazingly worked fine) an earlier HD Image file that had nothing but legal programs from a legal Win 8.1 OS on it, and I still get the error of #1) above. If it was a virus from a pirated program, it would not be present in this image file. So it must be a hardware problem most likely? Unless it's a mobo connection problem as per #5).

10) So many questions, sorry! Any answers appreciated... I will update this thread if HD Tune finds any errors, but frankly this program sucks because it's more than half way through the 1TB HD and it's all green, meaning no errors, yet I know there's CHKDSK errors. Unless--and this would be interesting--if HD Tune "Error Check" is checking for hardware problems on each sector, while the CHKDSK that Windows 8.1 has checks for software errors like dangling, missing or truncated file pointers. is that the case?

11) I am going to buy an SSD but here in southeast Asia there's lots of fraud and refurbished hardware sold as "new". Any utility I can use to check the SSD to make sure it has no errors? Probably the manufacturer, like Samsung, has a freeware utility packaged with the disk? Maybe I'll get the tech guy to check the SSD for errors before I buy it (they don't take refunds either; you American readers are so spoiled and don't know how lucky you are).

12) when installing an SSD Sata III drive, the BIOS need not be played with, it's set to ACHD? whatever that parameter is for Sata, so that's it? Or do Bios es have an extra switch for SSD? THis BIOS is by AMD's former subsidiary American Megatrends? and is flashed from 2013, so it' s fairly brand new.

13) Baker's Dozen: a good utility for SSDs is: (1) just use what the manufacturer gives you in the box, (2) HD Tune (which says it is also for SSDs but somehow I don't believe it), (3) something else, (4) don't bother with utilities--the wear leveling or whatever is built into the controller for the SSD and it will take care of itself.

14) Sneak one in: for mechanical HDs, a good utility is? HD Tune seems nice, except for the possible bug I mention above (or maybe it's a feature) A bit pricy at $35 a copy but it might be worth it?

Thanks

RL

If you can't take care of a hard drive,
how will you be able to care for an SSD ?

Do you have backups ? Is that Seagate 1TB drive
backed up ? Did the last backup run to completion,
or did it error out, leaving the archive incomplete ?

*******

Testing of storage systems occurs at more than one level.
At the lowest level, is the reading and writing of blocks.
At the next level up, you're writing clusters (groups of
blocks), updating the FAT or $MFT, and so on.

Some of those things, need to be tested.

1) Seagate or Western Digital stand alone hard drive diagnostic.
This checks low level operation. For example, it may test the
cache RAM on the hard drive, to ensure it's still OK. The
diagnostics also communicate with SMART on the hard drive,
and request the running of "the short test" or "the long test".
The hard drive processor actually has SMART test code it can run.

2) HDTune can run a bad block scan. Blocks with red color in them,
would be sectors where 15 seconds worth of attempts to read the
sector, have failed. The drive sends a CRC error, if it cannot
read and correct the data in the block.

3) CHKDSK overlaps a bit. CHKDSK can also do a bad block scan,
as part of its analysis. Clusters with a bad block in them,
can be added to $BADCLUS, and the cluster (group of sectors)
is then no longer used. That metadata is part of the file system,
and gets reset if you reformat. Modern drives hardly ever report
a CRC error, because once they get to the point of failing that
way, the drive is so unhealthy it may not boot or show up. While I
see lots of reallocations on the modern drives here, I've never seen
an actual CRC error (red block) here in years. The drive likely
dies before I even have a chance to test it.

Using (1) above, is for warranty claim purposes. They make you
run the diagnostic, before making a warranty claim.

Using (3) is generally done, for "transient" errors. Say you have
a desktop computer, no UPS, and you love to flip the power
switch off in the middle of a session. Then CHKDSK repairing
file system structures, is going to be your friend.

Using (2), is generally for reading the SMART table,
and spotting signs of ill health. The computer I'm
posting this one, *always* has clean disks with no
reallocations showing. Retired disks, ones that have
a few hundred allocations, are still used here, but just
as scratch disks.

Now, some people like to run them "until they start to click".
If you're one of those people, I sure hope you know what a backup
is. And that the backup is on good media.

An SSD changes none of this. You have a week of web reading
to do, to become familiar with the care and feeding of an SSD.
I recommend an enhanced backup program (higher rate of backups).
If you keep *only* the OS on the SSD, and no user documents,
then perhaps having the SSD just disappear some day, isn't a big deal.
But if you keep everything on there, C source, movies, income
tax reports, expensive program installations, the OS, then you'd better
be doing frequent backups. At least with modern hard drives, we
get some advanced warning they're about to fail. With SSDs, some
models are more failure prone than others.

It could be, that power cycling some SSD models, is more
harmful than writing to them. You never know.

You can certainly use an SSD and be totally ignorant of the
details. But then again, you might come back a month from
now and say "My SSD died and I didn't have a backup", and
be expecting someone here to perform a miracle. That
miracle ain't gonna happen. Be prepared.

Paul

 

[Dustin]

RayLopez99 <[email protected]>
Sun, 14
Dec 2014 15:23:04 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote the
following message:

I constantly get errors from a HDD (Seagate 1Tb, see the other two
threads).

I thought you resolved this already... heh

I have various theories. My questions are:

LOL!!! I enjoyed reading them.

9) I don't think this is a virus problem because just now did a
clean reformat and reinstall of Windows 8.1 (legal copy), and I
restored (using Clonezilla, which amazingly worked fine) an earlier
HD Image file that had nothing but legal programs from a legal Win
8.1 OS on it, and I still get the error of #1) above. If it was a
virus from a pirated program, it would not be present in this image
file. So it must be a hardware problem most likely? Unless it's a
mobo connection problem as per #5).

So, as I suspected and wrote, you didn't fix it. Didn't think you
would have.

10) So many questions, sorry! Any answers appreciated... I will
update this thread if HD Tune finds any errors, but frankly this
program sucks because it's more than half way through the 1TB HD
and it's all green, meaning no errors, yet I know there's CHKDSK
errors. Unless--and this would be interesting--if HD Tune "Error
Check" is checking for hardware problems on each sector, while the
CHKDSK that Windows 8.1 has checks for software errors like
dangling, missing or truncated file pointers. is that the case?

Closer.. ;p But you're obviously still guessing madly. I dun wanna
help you.

****in troll.

I will monitor the thread and see how many suckers you reel in though.

 

[RayLopez99]

If you can't take care of a hard drive,
how will you be able to care for an SSD ?

Well I wouldn't go that far my friend...I've not lost any data in over 20 years of 'puting...backups indeed.

Do you have backups ? Is that Seagate 1TB drive
backed up ? Did the last backup run to completion,
or did it error out, leaving the archive incomplete ?

It worked fine. As I say, Clonzilla works fine if CHKDSK and/or Windows Error Checking gives you a 'clean' HD--said clean HD in my case lasting only a few days or so. And just today I did a restore using Clonezilla, and it is fine, in fact I'm posting from such a restore now.

*******

Testing of storage systems occurs at more than one level.
At the lowest level, is the reading and writing of blocks.
At the next level up, you're writing clusters (groups of
blocks), updating the FAT or $MFT, and so on.

Ahh...I see.

Some of those things, need to be tested.

1) Seagate or Western Digital stand alone hard drive diagnostic.
This checks low level operation. For example, it may test the
cache RAM on the hard drive, to ensure it's still OK. The
diagnostics also communicate with SMART on the hard drive,
and request the running of "the short test" or "the long test".
The hard drive processor actually has SMART test code it can run.

OK...I will look on both Seagate and WD websites for these diagnostic programs...thanks...but later you imply these tests are for warranty purposes only, which implies to me they are not that sensitive...so maybe I will pass.

2) HDTune can run a bad block scan. Blocks with red color in them,
would be sectors where 15 seconds worth of attempts to read the
sector, have failed. The drive sends a CRC error, if it cannot
read and correct the data in the block.

3) CHKDSK overlaps a bit. CHKDSK can also do a bad block scan,
as part of its analysis. Clusters with a bad block in them,
can be added to $BADCLUS, and the cluster (group of sectors)
is then no longer used. That metadata is part of the file system,
and gets reset if you reformat. Modern drives hardly ever report
a CRC error, because once they get to the point of failing that
way, the drive is so unhealthy it may not boot or show up. While I
see lots of reallocations on the modern drives here, I've never seen
an actual CRC error (red block) here in years. The drive likely
dies before I even have a chance to test it.

OK, it explains why HD Tune is not showing any red blocks despite the C: (Seagate) drive being suspect.

Using (1) above, is for warranty claim purposes. They make you
run the diagnostic, before making a warranty claim.

Using (3) is generally done, for "transient" errors. Say you have
a desktop computer, no UPS, and you love to flip the power
switch off in the middle of a session. Then CHKDSK repairing
file system structures, is going to be your friend.

But that's not me. I never do a hard power cycle, I have UPS. So why so many chkdsk errors? That's the mystery.

Using (2), is generally for reading the SMART table,
and spotting signs of ill health. The computer I'm
posting this one, *always* has clean disks with no
reallocations showing. Retired disks, ones that have
a few hundred allocations, are still used here, but just
as scratch disks.

I see. So HD TUne is somewhat not that sensitive to catch potential errors....it's more for catching obvious errors.

Now, some people like to run them "until they start to click".
If you're one of those people, I sure hope you know what a backup
is. And that the backup is on good media.

Strange but I hear clicking sounds on both drives now...the older D drive and the new C drive. But it's not all the time...I wonder if both drives are bad? Stranger things have happened in the tropics, where mean temperatures are usually in the 90s, though this particular room usually is air-conditioned.

An SSD changes none of this. You have a week of web reading
to do, to become familiar with the care and feeding of an SSD.
I recommend an enhanced backup program (higher rate of backups).

Any suggestions for enhanced backups?--Acronis?--welcome.

If you keep *only* the OS on the SSD, and no user documents,
then perhaps having the SSD just disappear some day, isn't a big deal.
But if you keep everything on there, C source, movies, income
tax reports, expensive program installations, the OS, then you'd better
be doing frequent backups. At least with modern hard drives, we
get some advanced warning they're about to fail. With SSDs, some
models are more failure prone than others.

Yes. Frequent backups are you friend. I was pleasantly surprised by turning on "File History" automatic backup in Windows 8.1, it seems to work to make shadow copies of User docs.

When you say put OS on the SSD, does that also mean (and I think it does) putting the default installation of programs there too? That is, C:\ProgramFiles c:\ProgramData? I assume so since otherwise it's a real pain when installing to change the default directory requested by the program.

It could be, that power cycling some SSD models, is more
harmful than writing to them. You never know.

You can certainly use an SSD and be totally ignorant of the
details. But then again, you might come back a month from
now and say "My SSD died and I didn't have a backup", and
be expecting someone here to perform a miracle. That
miracle ain't gonna happen. Be prepared.

I agree, but I disagree that I need to learn about SSDs. That's the OSes problem, not mine. I will simply install it, and pray it works. That's theway it should be, and I hope it is. Of course I will make frequent backups since, as you say, no warning is given if SSDs fail (then again, that's sometimes the case with mechanical HDDs too).

Any speculation along the lines of whether a mobo can corrupt data on a HD is appreciated. I think that's probably not that possible given that data transfer these days has some sort of error correction code built into the protocol I would imagine.

Thanks Paul!

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

[Nonsense deleted]

--

Is it true you're depressed and suicidal? Meds my fiend, meds. Don't do it...

RL

 

[Flasherly]

On Sunday, December 14, 2014 7:23:07 AM UTC-8, RayLopez99 wrote:


Wow!

Just now something really weird happened. HD Tune stopped at a
certain block, testing, and would not move. I heard the Seagate HD
distinctly make the infamous "clicking sounds" or "clicking sounds of
death" that failing HDs make when they cannot write to a sector!
However, after about five or six such sounds, the HD finally wrote,
and HD Tune moved on, marking the block as "green" for good. It may
be that this Seagate drive is on the 'verge' of failing but it still
passes all the tests. BTW, S.M.A.R.T. is turned on in the BIOS and
needless to say SMART is not showing any obvious problems with either
drive.

RL

Was having various problems - intermittent and vague copy operation
lockups. I'd been using a PCI controller brand with the problems, and
didn't really have much choice but to stick with the same brandname
when I purchased another PCI controller, although a more advanced
model. Not to say that initial problem condition/controller couldn't
manifest system wide problems, though it didn't and largely stuck to
copy lockups. Haven't heard a peep from this new controller, so far,
working like a charm with any drive up to 2T I've given it.

I'm thinking I'd like to see your drive manifest the same problems on
another computer controller.

 

[Dustin]

RayLopez99 <[email protected]>
Sun, 14
Dec 2014 17:11:32 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote the
following message:

[Nonsense deleted]

What nonsense? Oh nevermind...Good luck with the problem you find
yourself in... I *did enjoy* reading your theories.

 

[RayLopez99]

Just now something really weird happened. HD Tune stopped at a
certain block, testing, and would not move. I heard the Seagate HD
distinctly make the infamous "clicking sounds" or "clicking sounds of
death" that failing HDs make when they cannot write to a sector!
However, after about five or six such sounds, the HD finally wrote,
and HD Tune moved on, marking the block as "green" for good. It may
be that this Seagate drive is on the 'verge' of failing but it still
passes all the tests. BTW, S.M.A.R.T. is turned on in the BIOS and
needless to say SMART is not showing any obvious problems with either
drive.

Was having various problems - intermittent and vague copy operation
lockups. I'd been using a PCI controller brand with the problems, and
didn't really have much choice but to stick with the same brandname
when I purchased another PCI controller, although a more advanced
model. Not to say that initial problem condition/controller couldn't
manifest system wide problems, though it didn't and largely stuck to
copy lockups. Haven't heard a peep from this new controller, so far,
working like a charm with any drive up to 2T I've given it.

I'm thinking I'd like to see your drive manifest the same problems on
another computer controller.

THIS IS KEY!!! I was Googling this today. But my research showed that in modern HDDs the controller is built into the HDD? But, if there's an on-board controller (or something) on the motherboard, it would explain why seemingly both drives have a 'clicking' problem, though, only the drive "C:" shows Chkdsk problems almost every day (despite my shutting down the PC gracefully, having a UPS, etc).

Unless, as is possible, both drives are experiencing failure the same time?

Also, during peak (100% in Task Manager) times in "C" Seagate drive, I heara very high pitched faint "ping" that's metallic, like a miniature golf club striking a miniature golf ball far in the recesses of my HD. Like a little Scotsman lepercon playing golf on my platters? Is this a sound of impeding failure or natural? Please opine you HD experts.

RL

 

[Paul]

THIS IS KEY!!! I was Googling this today. But my research showed that in modern HDDs the controller is built into the HDD? But, if there's an on-board controller (or something) on the motherboard, it would explain why seemingly both drives have a 'clicking' problem, though, only the drive "C:" shows Chkdsk problems almost every day (despite my shutting down the PC gracefully, having a UPS, etc).

Unless, as is possible, both drives are experiencing failure the same time?

Also, during peak (100% in Task Manager) times in "C" Seagate drive, I hear a very high pitched faint "ping" that's metallic, like a miniature golf club striking a miniature golf ball far in the recesses of my HD. Like a little Scotsman lepercon playing golf on my platters? Is this a sound of impeding failure or natural? Please opine you HD experts.

RL

The only thing the drives share, is a common power supply.

A hard drive will spin down, if the voltage drops below about
11V or so. (The motor runs off 12V.) The drive has to put the
heads away, if the power is going off for a long period of time,
which is why it is set up to sense that 11V level. The drive
is expected to continue spinning, between 11.4V and 12.6V (+/- 5%).

But you don't describe your noise, as a spindown event.
So it probably isn't that.

*******

CPU ---- Southbridge (Controlata registers)
|
| (SATA packet)
|
Processor on hard drive
|
(read or write platter)

The chipset on the motherboard is "dumb", and just
sends SATA packets. There is no connection particularly,
between traffic from one port and another.

The hard drive is "smart" and has its own processor.
It interprets all the commands in the ATAPI spec,
and if you had a copy of that, the spec is huge.
So the hard drive has lots of different terse commands
to interpret. Some of the code running in there, does
SMART related stuff, as well as your regular reads
and writes.

The processor on the hard drives doesn't talk to
processors on other hard drives. There is no hardware
path capable of doing that. The processor on the
hard drive, is an I/O processor, and responds to
I/O requests from the main CPU.

The hard drives share a common power supply, but
you would only suspect the power supply itself,
if both drives clicked in unison (no lag between
the two clicks). Generally, if a person describes
the symptoms as "clicks", that's a danger sign,
and time to transfer the data to another drive.
There is not a lot of time to waste...

Paul

 

[RayLopez99]

The hard drives share a common power supply, but
you would only suspect the power supply itself,
if both drives clicked in unison (no lag between
the two clicks). Generally, if a person describes
the symptoms as "clicks", that's a danger sign,
and time to transfer the data to another drive.
There is not a lot of time to waste...

I am going to defy you and logic too by continuing down my path of perdition! I will not change drives! LOL. One thing I did a bit differently and it may be working (though it is too early to tell): I made sure I did a complete clean install by deleting partitions from inside Windows 8 setup DVDthen formating instead of just clicking on formatting which I think maybe does not really do a complete reformat. Also the options for this clean install of Win8 are under "Custom" and hidden away a bit, so it is easy to make the mistake when installing Windows 8 over Win 7 or earlier versions of Win 8 to have Windows 8 keep the old versions under \Windows.OLD folder,where possibly viruses and/or bad file links may reside (as I did apparently on Nov. 25). This time I did a complete clean reformating of the suspect C:Seagate drive. BTW Dban "Nuke it" format program failed to reformat the Windows 8 drive, I think there's some sort of special thing Windows does to deny this program the ability to reformat drives even when the program runson a CD under Linux (as mine did). Either that or it's an old version that does not work on Windows 8 (I got it off a Utility DVD/CD).

Fingers crossed...no chkdsk problems...but it's only day two...I will update this post if anything bad happens...

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

On Sunday, December 14, 2014 11:23:07 PM UTC+8, RayLopez99 wrote:


Amazing, but apparently bad RAM can cause file problems on your HD! Never heard that before. This system does have RAM that sometimes is not seated properly (RAM chips seem to work themselves up from the socket somehow) andseating them 'fixes' the problem...and btw when the RAM is 'bad' the system does pass the MemTest86 RAM test often, but will sometimes fail (after passing the MemTest86 test, even run all night) the "Prime95" stress test, which amazes me. I will run both of these tests now to see if the RAM is seated properly.

RL

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091011021151AAA9p2i


Why Does Check Disk Keep Running On Start-Up On Windows Xp ? Read details for more info?
First it starts-up, goes into chkdsk and says "windows needs to check the disk for consistency etc.." i let it run and when it finishes it restarts, then the start-up options screen comes up. when i select "start windows normally" it begins this whole cycle again, UNTIL i choose "Last Known Configuration That Worked" from the start-up Options screen, that's the only way i can get to the My desktop. Please help, i Have Sp3. Ran an anti-virus scan (result> clean) & De-fragmented the Drive. thanks

ANSWER:

There are inconsistencies with the files that the system is detecting. The files are showing up as corrupt or fragments of files are showing up. That's my guess as to why it's launching chkdsk. Could be anything from a bad HDto dead or dying RAM DIMMs.

Download this free utility, Memtest86+ and run it. Choose the version that works for you (either CD ISO, floppy disk, USB key, etc).

If the utility detects bad memory, more than likely you will need to replace the defective part. Otherwise, the rest of your data can be compromised.

EDIT: Also, check the hard drive for errors as well. Open up My Computer, right-click on your C drive and go to Properties. In Tools, choose Check Nowfor Error-Checking.


http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/258205-32-file-corruption


I have recently replaced some bad RAM that had a failed bit at an address around 977.4MB. I also had several correctable errors crop up when I ran chkdsk (on a Win XP machine).

How likely is it that I have serious file corruption, particularly in system files?

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/datacorruption.html

Causes of data corruption and loss

Common causes of data corruption and loss include:

Power outages or other power-related problems.
Improper shutdowns, such as caused by power outages or performing a hard restart: pressing and holding the power button or, on Macs so equipped, the restart button.
Hardware problems or failures, including hard drive failures, bad sectors, bad RAM, and the like.
Failure to eject external hard drives and related storage devices before disconnecting them or powering them off.
Bad programming, particularly if it results in either hard restarts or data that is saved incorrectly.

Any of these causes can result in a corrupted hard drive directory. A corrupted hard drive directory can cause files to apparently "go missing" and lead to further data loss or corruption, such files being overwritten with new data as a corrupted directory may no longer accurately reflect what disk space is free or available vs. the disk space that contains data. The term data is used here to mean both files you have created as well as application and operating system code.

Technologies such as File System Journaling have helped to reduce the potential for directory corruption due to power outages or hard restarts, but journaling is not foolproof. Likewise, while hard drives have become exceedingly reliable, they are still known to fail catastrophically with little or no warning.

 

[Paul]

On Sunday, December 14, 2014 11:23:07 PM UTC+8, RayLopez99 wrote:


Amazing, but apparently bad RAM can cause problems

Yes.

First you test for a solid RAM and CPU setup.

Then you worry about the hard drive.

The SMART statistics inside the hard drive, are
independent of the motherboard. If there are
reallocations listed in SMART, those would not
be caused by the motherboard.

Neither is the "clicking" of a disk, dependent on the motherboard.
A hard drive may spin down, if the PSU voltage is out of spec
(and make a spin-down noise). Otherwise, there's no reason for
a hard drive to "seek to zero" and click. It means there is
trouble brewing in there.

The most sensitive thing to RAM errors, with respect to
system operation, is registry corruption. Is the registry
getting corrupted ? Portions of it are held in RAM
during system operation.

Paul

 

[RayLopez99]

Yes.

First you test for a solid RAM and CPU setup.

Then you worry about the hard drive.

The SMART statistics inside the hard drive, are
independent of the motherboard. If there are
reallocations listed in SMART, those would not
be caused by the motherboard.

Neither is the "clicking" of a disk, dependent on the motherboard.
A hard drive may spin down, if the PSU voltage is out of spec
(and make a spin-down noise). Otherwise, there's no reason for
a hard drive to "seek to zero" and click. It means there is
trouble brewing in there.

The most sensitive thing to RAM errors, with respect to
system operation, is registry corruption. Is the registry
getting corrupted ? Portions of it are held in RAM
during system operation.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Registry is not an issue since when I run CCleaner I don't get a lot of orphaned registry entries, just obvious stuff.

I just ran Prime95 and for 40 minutes no problems (usually if there's a RAMproblem it manifests itself in seconds). I will run the memtest86 now overnight.

The 'click' of the HD is very very very subtle, a very faint metallic pinging sound, barely audible, and sometimes two or three in a row (like the heads are trying to write), but when it happens, it seems right away if you check for disk errors from File Explorer, it finds some (and correct them using Chkdsk on the next bootup). these pings don't happen every day, more like once a week a few weeks ago, then once every few days more recently. Obviously if it's what I've read about the drive is failing, but failing gracefully and SMART says it's still OK.

I did seem to get these CHKDSK problems right when I swapped drive D (current drive C, a Seagate, with drive C: (current drive D a Western Digital..

I decided not to get an SSD here in southeast Asia (Philippines) because: (1) prices are literally double the US prices. Sure I could get a friend orrelative to send me an Egghead SSD (I like the Samsung EVO model, very expensive but apparently the 'best'), but it will literally take 30 days to get here, and sometimes the Post Office will try and stick you with 'duty tax' that nearly doubles the cost, even if the package is marked 'gift' and not commercially boxed (you can fight them and they will back down, but it's a hassle), and, (2) the SSD they tried to sell me at a computer superstore (and it was 512 GB which is very hard to find, usually they sell 256 or smaller, 180, etc SSDs) was a "Silicon Power" model (never heard of them untiltoday) but, this is key, it was a 2012 December model (from the Serial number and model number)! Two years old. Remember what I said about refurbished here. I would not at all be surprised if this is some US used SSD shipped over here. All used junk from the US gets sent here. It's dirt cheap but used (as I type this, I'm wearing somebody's T-shirt from Florida--nice 100% cotton, which is hard to find in PH since they like, due to wear and tear issues, polyester/cotton mixes)--that I bought for 50 cents. Same actually with "new cars"--all cars here in PH are used, even when marked 'new' and all, bar none, every single one, has a mechanical problem of some sort.Literally the car dealers from all over the world ship their lemons to PHwhere they are sold as 'new' (under warranty to be sure, but still with major problems like the gear box is messed up on a stick shift, doors won't close right, etc etc etc, and btw never buy a used car here either, since hardly anybody here does even routine maintenance like oil changes, they drive it until it breaks then they 'fix' it, jerry rigged style).

So, in lieu of the above, I might skip even buying a HDD (since the WesternDigital HDDs I saw today, Blue and Green models, look, from the package, as refurbished, and of course they are 2x more pricy than US equivalents).

But it leads me to ask: (1) from HD Tune info panel on a HDD, or otherwise,can you tell from firmware and/or serial number if the hard drive is used or when it was built (the sticker says Made in Thailand, and recall they had floods in their electronics plants a couple of years ago there, so I would not be surprised if these drives were all factory rejects from that floodyear)? (2) what is the harm if I do the following:

1) go back to my old setup. Switch the WD 500 GB, now drive D:, and make itC: again, doing a clean reinstall. The WD is five years old (middle aged for a HD, but I've had them last 10 years plus), and use this "failing" Seagate 1TB as a backup (drive D and to store movies?

2) if I do 1), I will of course do daily backups, will turn on the 'differential file backup' feature of Windows 8, which copies to the second physical drive all important User data files, and I will do both drive image backups using Linux-based Clonezilla from a CD, and a Windows based program likeAcronix.

Any issues? Worse case, if in fact, as you say, Sata drives cannot 'contaminate' each other if one is corrupt, I will wake up one day to find the Seagate drive (which will go back to being the "D" drive) is dead, and all my Drive C: image backups and movies on it are unreachable, but since I also use an external USB drive to store image and all the movies, I don't see theharm in that, do you? If anything not using the Seagate defective drive will prolong its life, since though it will be spinning, most of the time itwill not be reading or writing if it goes back to being the backup "drive D:"?

PS--except for the nice people here, and my girlfriend half my age, this place is Third World and whack, lol. Not a serious place to do business except for light stuff like call center chit-chat...

RL

 

[Dustin]

Paul <[email protected]> Tue, 16 Dec
2014 15:48:28 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote the
following message:

Yes.

First you test for a solid RAM and CPU setup.

Then you worry about the hard drive.

The SMART statistics inside the hard drive, are
independent of the motherboard. If there are
reallocations listed in SMART, those would not
be caused by the motherboard.

Neither is the "clicking" of a disk, dependent on the motherboard.
A hard drive may spin down, if the PSU voltage is out of spec
(and make a spin-down noise). Otherwise, there's no reason for
a hard drive to "seek to zero" and click. It means there is
trouble brewing in there.

The most sensitive thing to RAM errors, with respect to
system operation, is registry corruption. Is the registry
getting corrupted ? Portions of it are held in RAM
during system operation.

The registry was always the most likely failure point on NT4 based
systems, as they didn't keep any real recent backup of it anywhere
else. NT5 based (after windows 2000) did so. So you could, recover a
registry prior to the last hard shutdown event, file io failure
(hardware side), etc. It's still the most sensitive item other than
files you may be working with.

Even if the registry was becoming corrupted, all it could cause is a
continuous chkdsk wants to run cycle every time you start the computer
because it's no longer properly using the right keys anymore. With
that said though, even though chkdsk is running at each startup in
this scenario, a corrupted registry won't cause chkdsk to see file
system errors that aren't actually present. The troll ray does have a
little problem going on, but he's claimed to know this and that
already since I encountered him a few years ago, it's interesting to
read his theories etc.

I used to waste my time trying to help him out too; didn't realize he
was a troll at the time, either. I don't expect you to take my word
for any of this though. It's better that you read post exchanges and
see how things go, and reach your own conclusions.

Ray might actually remain semi professional in this newsgroup. That
would be a remarkable change from the same individual I know from
another newsgroup where he brings malicious software related
questions, but won't accept the answers, even though they're from
actual Experts in those fields. I want to know if he will act the same
here, as he's asking hardware questions. [g]

 

[Paul]

Some SMART errors problems are not INSIDE the drive and may not
be the fault of the drive at all, but a bad cable or interface
in the computer:
Seagate ST32000644NS and ST32999641AS
(C7) Interface CRC Error Count
possibly
(B8) End To End Error Detection

But those might not put you into an immediate panic.

I'm trying to get across the subservient nature of the
hard drive design, and the lack of Peer to Peer relationship.
The hard drive does not control anything. It doesn't shove
packets up one cable and down another, and run amok inside
the computer. That's what I'm trying to get across.
I'm trying to prevent the formation of Skybuck-Flying-type
theories here...

Paul

 

[larrymoencurly]

Amazing, but apparently bad RAM can cause file problems on your HD! Never heard that before. This system does have RAM that sometimes is not seated properly (RAM chips seem to work themselves up from the socket somehow) and seating them 'fixes' the problem...and btw when the RAM is 'bad' the system does pass the MemTest86 RAM test often, but will sometimes fail (after passing the MemTest86 test, even run all night) the "Prime95" stress test, which amazes me. I will run both of these tests now to see if the RAM is seated properly.

MemTest86 and MemTest86+ are based on the same testing methods, but
for some reason they often give different results. Also there's
another diagnostic, Gold Memory, that beat MemTest86 in the very
recent (less than 15 years ago) comparison test of memory diagnostics,
and only the very expensive RST products from PhD beat it. A couple
of times, Gold Memory has found errors that I couldn't find in a long
time, and one person was having funny computer problems despite
overnight runs of MemTest86+ saying everything was OK. Gold Memory
reported a bad bit in 75 minutes, although it had to run another 10
hours before reporting it again (no other errors found). IOW always
run more than one memory diagnostic. Also almost all memory sold
now is made from overclocked or junk chips, as Ocaholic.ch proves
when it shows the chips under the heatsinks -- lots of 1600 MHz
memory actually has 1333 MHz or no-name chips, and the fastest DDR3
sold now is made from 1600 MHz 11-11-11 chips.

Try the surface scan diagnostic of MHDD (HDDguru.com has it,
and it's also on the Ultimate Boot CD) and the Windows version,
HDDscan, because they not only report which sectors are 100%
bad but also which sectors need several attempts to read. MHDD
is better because the Windows version reports a lot of false
positives, but I don't know if MHDD works with drives bigger
than 2TB. Here are MHDD results for 1TB 7200 RPM drives with
1TB/platter, Seagate on the left, Toshiba on the right:

< 3ms: 7,640,000 / 7,650,000
<10ms: 16,800 / 3,700
<50ms: 45 /1,500
<150ms: 715 / 0
<500ms: 0 / 0

500ms: 0 / 0

Both of those drives passed SMART.
FYI, one spin takes about 8ms.

 

[RayLopez99]

On Wednesday, December 17, 2014 6:42:12 PM UTC+8, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

[interesting stuff, noted, thanks]

I do feel the problem was the hard drive, not the memory, and I bought a brand new one today. I think my problem is solved, so far so good, and if there's any further problems I will post here.

I take back some of the things I said about the Philippines being sub-par. It is, but there are a lot of skilled people here that make do with what they have, and do a good job of it. Anyway it's common knowledge that something like 20% of 'new' PC components are in fact re-used (if not higher, atFry's in California it seems every package was already opened).

RL

 

[B00ze/Empire]

Hey.

I'll reply to other questions later but this now ->

Also, during peak (100% in Task Manager) times in "C" Seagate drive, I hear a very high pitched faint "ping" that's metallic, like a miniature golf club striking a miniature golf ball far in the recesses of my HD. Like a little Scotsman lepercon playing golf on my platters? Is this a sound of impeding failure or natural? Please opine you HD experts.

My experience is that a metallic sound from the hard drive is the heads
hitting the platters. I could be wrong, but at least when it happened to
me that's what it was. It was a SyQuest 88MB cartridge drive. I
opened-up the drive, flexed the heads a little, and the problem went
away. I would not recommend that on modern drives. But yes, if it sounds
like metal on metal, it's a bad sign...

Regards,

 

[RayLopez99]

Hey.

I'll reply to other questions later but this now ->



My experience is that a metallic sound from the hard drive is the heads
hitting the platters. I could be wrong, but at least when it happened to
me that's what it was. It was a SyQuest 88MB cartridge drive. I
opened-up the drive, flexed the heads a little, and the problem went
away. I would not recommend that on modern drives. But yes, if it sounds
like metal on metal, it's a bad sign...

Regards,

Interesting. Incredibly, I took the drive to a PC shop as a gag, to show it to them and throw it away. They said not to, that they would, if I donated the drive to them, try and repair it by flexing the heads a little... LOL! So I gave the problem drive away and they were happy. I guess if you know what you're doing you repair a HDD that way, but don't try it at home with data on your drive...

RL