Wd Hard Disk Data Lifeguard Diagnostics....

[ProDave]

So Mrs PD's Acer laptop is still acting up.

Following last weeks crash blamed on a dud AVG update (removed AVG and lappy seemed fine and a LOT quicker)

I's playing up again.

In the last week it's crashed with a BSOD twice.  First time it restarted and re booted on it's own fine.  Second time on the re boot attempt it reported "No Operating system found".  Power off and back on and it re booted normally.

So is the HDD acting up?  Is it sometimes not responding hence the crashes?

Well I downloaded WD's Date Lifeguard diagnostic tool to try and find out.

First thing is it reports it's  S.M.A.R.T status as "pass"

But trying to run a "quick test" times out after a minute of no progress (and no HDD activity light on the PC) saying "18-Quick Test: Read Verify Sector EXt Error"

I've googled that and the only mention I can find of it are people trying to recover dead drives that they can't write to or can't even read.  But his drive is responding normally reading and writing fine.  And why was the HDD light not on suggesting to me it wasn't even trying?

The drive is a WDC800BEVS-22RST0

All OS disk tests come back fine.

Any other tools I can use?

 

[steptoe]

You could run a Ubuntu Live CD/DVD and use the diagnostics on that, the big advantage of that is it is running off RAM and is therefore able to check the whole HDD.

oh, you can also run it via a USB stick if that's the lappie with no CD drive, just remember and change your boot order,

I use uNetBootin to make my USB sticks, dunno if that's available in windows,,,,

 

[NozSpark]

First things first.... backup any data that you have on this drive asap... I lost a hdd that had all our photos on it... worst of all was that they were mostly of our daughter between the ages of 3 and 8

BTW it is a proper drive failure which is only recoverable (maybe) by forensic recovery

 

[Blue Duck]

Any other tools I can use?

A hammer!

 

[steptoe]

^^^^^ +1

for Noz's post

 

[NozSpark]

..... Then bin the drive.... they're cheap enough now days

 

[ProDave]

If it comes to bin the drive and get a new one, then it will be a flavour of Linux going on it.

but until then, I just want to understand what's going on.

On one had it's "working fine" but a "quick test" says it's completely dud.  They can't both be right.

So I'm looking for another disk test tool?

What size USB stick do you need to make a basic bootable linux image?

Photos and documents are already backed up on two separate backups (different media)

 

[steptoe]

I'd recommend photorec, or perhaps even try clonezilla if you want to rip absolutely everything off it then go through at your leisure, you will need an external disk larger than you currently have,

And don't try spinning the disc up again until you are ready to get your stuff off it.

Couple of gig probably, it deffo fits on a 4gig, you can put an older version on a 1gig stick, fits on an 800m CD ,

 

[Blue Duck]

Try get yourself a laptop harddrive caddy only pennies from a computer fair. Whip the drive out and plug in into another computer backup then diagnose.

 

[steptoe]

Here

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

 

[Steve3948]

Try get yourself a laptop harddrive caddy only pennies from a computer fair. Whip the drive out and plug in into another computer backup then diagnose.

This is what I would do, Sata-Usb caddy around £13 powered, if used for SSD no need to use the power side.

This could be a Ram issue, if you have more than 1 stick in it try taking one out and and then swapping and see if it makes a difference.

I take it you've cleaned the dust out of it on a regular basis, they tend to overheat and do all sorts of silly things.

 

[ProDave]

I've cleaned the dust out. I've swapped the two memory cards over (not tried it with only one though)

I've found a 4G usb memory stick.  I just need Mrs PD to copy some photo's off it to somewhere else then I can try booting ubunta on it.

To me it sounds more like an intermittent hardware problem. It sounds like the hdd stops responding and it takes a power down and back on to get it working again. whether that's a fault in the hdd, mother board or what who knows.  I would have thought if it was a fault in the hdd the SMART monitoring would pick it up, and I still don't understand why the WD diagnostic fails.

 

[Steve3948]

Definitely try one stick at a time, if one is faulty moving it won't help.

I had a machine where I put two new stick in and a week later it started playing up and after hours of reinstalling the OS and messing around, it was suggested trying one stick at a time, and I found that one stick was faulty causing issues just like yours.

Have you carried out the check disk command to see if you have bad areas. 

 

[ProDave]

Checkdisk from within Windoze says it can't run because other tasks are using the disk (only bare windoze running no other programs running)

It then says would you like to schedule a chkdsk at next start up, to which I say yes. but it never does it.

Previously when restarting in safe mode command prompt and running chkdsk it finds no faults.

that's why when I get this memory stick cleared I will try ubunta.

 

[ProDave]

Here

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

Okay I'm trying this now.

Step 2 has me foxed

"browse and open the downloaded .ISO file"

I have not yet got a  .iso file downloaded (the isntructions don't mention that)

So where do I download the required .ISO file?

Sorry of I sound thick.

 

[ProDave]

That looks like the one.

My browser is now telling me it's going to take 6 hours to download that on my very slow "broadband" connection.

 

[ProDave]

Yep it's downloading at the staggering speed of 48KB / s

Wake me up when it's finished.  ut the kettle on

Did I ever mention our broadband speed is very slow...

 

[steptoe]

Oh, dunno how that works, with UNetbootin in Ubuntu there are already a selection on Linux flavours available, you only have to download a .iso if you want something different.

Jeez Dave, and I thought my internet was slow,,,,

 

[ProDave]

Step 1 said to choose which version of Linux you wanted. I chose ubunta.

Step 2 was browse to the .iso file.  There are none on my HDD. and the pendrive linux download was only 1.1Mb so can't possibly have included any .iso files.

I expected it to be inteligent enough to just go an fetch the .iso I needed from the net automatically but it seems not.

the .Iso I am downloading is 970Mb and has so far downloaded 20% with another 4 hours to go.

My broadband speed is usually about 1meg download, so heaven knows why this one is going so slow You would think I was on dial up with a 56K modem.

I thought Linux was easy?

 

[Steve3948]

Jeepers that is slow, I downloaded and put on pendrive in about 5 minutes yesterday.