Hard drive going bad

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The Windows 8.1 Update side of my dual boot has been acting up sporadically of late. I ran chkdsk /r which found some bad sectors and recovered a driver file in the Windows folder. It starting running closer to normal, but I ran the latest release of Seagate’s Sea Tools “Fix all (long)” test, and it failed. Sea Tools offered up a link to Support, and my drive is still under warranty (for just 6 more months) and I went through the links and filled out the necessary info yesterday, and got an email today that my replacement drive has shipped.

I’ve got recent drive/partition images for everything on that drive (I have four 1TB drives in the tower), and I’m continuing to use the one that has bad sectors. For sure, I won’t be installing anything until I get the new drive, but as long as it’s playing nice, I’ll continue to use it until the replacement arrives, then secure-erase it and ship it back to Seagate.

But that got me thinking, if I had a sudden unrecoverable failure, I don’t have a spare. I’d have to head out to the store and get one at the going price (and I much prefer sale prices). So, it being Black Friday, I decided to shop for a spare ahead of time. Which leads (finally!) to this:

“Seagate Desktop Solid State Hybrid Drives – 1 TB, 8 GB NAND Flash” from Tiger Direct at $50 off. I ordered two.:fanfare:

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

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[bbearren]

I found this youtube video that gives a decent look at the comparison of SSD, SSHD and traditional HDD system boot times. Skip forward to 2:36 to see the beginning of the actual comparison.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by bbearren.

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You obviously have too much spare money – can I have some 😉

cheers, Paul

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[bbearren]

UPS delivered my hybrid drives this afternoon, and I’ve got tomorrow off, so I’m diving in. Interestingly enough, the drive that failed was not the Windows 8 drive, it was the Windows 7 drive. I had forgotten that when I did my upgrade/rebuild, I put my Windows 8 drive in the Drive 0 SATA port, and Windows 7 in the Drive 1 SATA port. It was Drive 1 that failed the Sea Tools test. And the error message I would sometimes get on a reboot was “There is a problem with the hard drive …” I’ve got four in the box!?!

In an effort to simplify the drive swap, I tried a full-drive image of the Windows 7 drive (with 8 partitions), and Image For Windows was successful. This leads me to believe that the root of the drive failure is in the controller board more so than the disk/sectors. IFW will fault on bad sectors if they haven’t been corrected with chkdsk /r and marked as unavailable. My long unexplainable pauses evidently were caused by Windows 8 accessing one or more of the partitions on the Windows 7 hard drive, and having a hard time because of the controller board. My replacement drive from Seagate is due Thursday. That one will be my spare.

I’ve swapped the first set of drives, and I’m restoring the Windows 7 drive image to the new hybrid Seagate drive. Once I get that sorted through, I’ll replace my Windows 8 drive with the other hybrid, and restore my Windows 8 full-drive image to that one. That one has a few partitions as well, so I’ll probably have some drive letter sorting to do on it, also. When I get it all sorted out and back online, I’ll update this thread, hopefully with an improved performance report, as well.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by bbearren.

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[bbearren]

Success! Both drives swapped out, images restored, almost hassle free. Using the full-drive image, I think, was the key. When I booted my TBWinRE USB stick, I opened a Command Prompt, started Diskpart and converted the new SSHD drives to GPT, exited Diskpart and CMD and opened Image For Windows, and restored the drive images. I didn’t have to do any drive letter sorting at all; everything just booted normally.

I rebooted back and forth between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 several times, allowing the 8GB caches to get acclimated, and it got noticeably snappier the first couple or three times. I’m liking it.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by bbearren.

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Seagate is always a good bet, on sale or not.

I have one of those hybrid drives like in the sales ad and it does work, but I’ve never seen the speed increase that they advertise making it faster than a standard SATA drive.

I have liked Seagate for years, since my first 20 meg HD that I used back in the early 80’s.
But for safety, I back up my main 1TB drive to another 1TB drive as often as I can get to it.
I do the cloning with an old DOS version of “Ghost” (Ghost 11.5) which Symantec says does not exist. lol

You can indeed get some great deals from Tiger Direct, if you watch their sale ads closely.
Thanks for the post.

The Doctor 😎

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[bbearren]

I have one of those hybrid drives like in the sales ad and it does work, but I’ve never seen the speed increase that they advertise making it faster than a standard SATA drive.

I have some saved restart timings on the Windows 7 side; when I get a chance I’ll run some more for a comparison, and post the results.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by bbearren.

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[bbearren]

I have to put in a good word for the folks at Seagate. My warranty replacement drive arrived yesterday afternoon, and I installed it. It was a “Certified rebuilt” Seagate 1TB drive with the same model number as the drive that was failing. I opened Disk Management, initialized the drive as GPT, and started a full (not quick) format. It didn’t complete, and gave a hardware error code and notice to see the Event Log.

So I tried DISKPART, and again got a failure to complete with a hardware error code and notice to see the Event Log. I fired up Sea Tools, and the drive wasn’t even recognized. This morning I called the 800-seagate number, and after the automated sorting, and a very brief wait time, I was talking with a nice lady from customer service. I explained my situation, and she asked for my RMA number. She looked up my original warranty replacement process, then put me on hold briefly. After returning to the line, she apologized that they did not have any NEW hard drives to match my original, so she would ship me via UPS second day a 2TB NEW hard drive to replace the warranty replacement.

She said to expect my new 2TB drive on Tuesday, and asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I thanked her and wished her a good day. I was a bit surprised, but well pleased, that they escalated from “Certified rebuilt” to a new drive, since I had trouble with the rebuilt drive. I’ll update again on Tuesday.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by bbearren.

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