Help, Win7

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

I keep having a box pop up telling me that my D: hard drive is about to fail. That I should back-up the data.

 

It is a 1TB Seagate four months old.

 

I have looked to run scan disk, but it states I have to unmount the drive first, What is that, when I click okay this box dissappears and no action is taken.

 

The pop-up comes back on every couple of hours, and is on from hibernation

 

Could do with some advice please

Edited April 29, 2010 by andrewman~SPARTA~

[PANiC]

scan disk or chkdsk?

 

havent tried win7 but it should be givign you the option to check the disk after a reboot becasue it can't check the (windows/primary) disk when it's in use.

 

the error wil lbe bacasue of bad blocks probably, so you are doing the right thing by error checking. it will probably be ok after it's flagged the bad blocks.

 

i'd try chkdsk /f /r it should then give the option to preform scan after the next reboot.

 

 

there is some info here that you should just check over: http://www.w7forums.com/use-chkdsk-check-disk-t448.html

[PANiC]

also use seatools to check for any probs: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

 

 

if any serious probs then it will probably give you an error code to quote seagate when you are sorting out an RMA seeing as you have a ton of warantee left.

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

thanks P this is what I'm facing

[MH6~SPARTA~]

Go buy a Western Digital drive then clone your Seagate over to the WD drive. Then if/when it fails you'll still have everything.

 

Seagates seem to fail a lot more than they used to nowadays. So I go with Western Digital.

 

Edit: Oh wow, Seagate acquired Maxtor in 2006. That explains a lot. Maxtor used to make some pretty shitty hard drives.

[custard~SPARTA~]

If you have to RMA Seagate treated me very well one short phone call and I had all I needed to send it back they sent me a bigger HD by return of post, best of luck.

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

Sorry, I cannot open the JPG you uploaded.

 

Therefore, i ma not sure about what issue exactly you are going through.

 

However, before going totally mad after your HD, there are around a few malware programs claiming false issues on your PC.

 

Although the omost common one is a malware popping up IE windows saying you have viruse, i never saw (yet) something saying your HD is "about to fail".

 

HOWEVER, the concept that an HD is "about to fail" sounds weird to me. Either you are running a specific application, which will test the HD integrity of your HD and will provide a report, or I do not see any chance for the OS to come up with that kind of message.

 

Win 7 on top of my knowledge has NO application running in background testing for HD integrity, so this IS NOT something coming out belonging to the OS.

 

To me it lookos like you have a process, probably an unwanted process running in background that generates that pop-up, most of the time this is installed by some sort of malware.

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO IS:

 

When the popup appears, open the task manager and go through the list of processes you have, order them by user name (should be the account user you are logged in) and check each one process. DO NOT CLOSE THE POPUP otherwise the process belonging to it might desappear.

 

Having all of this open, open GOOGLE and make a search for each and every process you see on the list. Google will report info about each one and many of those process will result being normal stuff. The bad process should be identified as soon as you search for it.

 

You can also make a google search with the exact content of the pop-up error you are receiving. If this is a scam, some other user in the world already reported it and you can verify if this is a legitimate error message or not.

 

please upload another screenshot so i will be able to take a look at that when i ll be home.

 

Good luck

[Halli~SPARTA~]

Sorry, I cannot open the JPG you uploaded.

 

Therefore, i ma not sure about what issue exactly you are going through.

 

Good luck

 

 

Here ya go Batwing, I will delete pic in two days.

 

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

Thx halli, I am starting a search about the issue.. will post again later

 

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

Ok, after a quick search and understanding:

 

This is a legittimate error.

 

Windows interact with the S.M.A.R.T. system on the HD to advise and try to prenvent data loss.

This error could be generated because the SMART system is finding some sort of errors, however also if you can retrieve the errors, that does not means you can fix them.

 

You should be able to get more info using this program:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/

 

Download it and just unzip the folder, it does not require to be installed. Run the application inside the folder and then chose the scan you want run. I would suggest to run the SMART check to see what is the problem. Then you car run a Surface Scan to dig more into errors.

 

If by any chance it does not allow you to check the disk because it is in use, you need to boot your PC from a bootable external CD or DVD and then run the program again.

 

Buttom line, start looking for a new HD, because your one is gonna die soon.

 

Keep me updated about this issue, i am curious to know the result of your scan

 

NOTE:

In Win 7 when runnin the CMD dos windows return the error "you need higher privileges" you need to right click on CMD and choose "run as administrator"

 

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

I further digged your problem with a senior tech from Dell here at my job and he confirmed Vista and 7 have the functionality to interact with the SMART system to verify malfunctions on HD.

 

He suggested to run the chkdsk from recovery consolle so that the OS is not even loaded yet, however you can also run it as I said from the CMD, right clickking on it and running as administrator.

In this way, asking to chkdsk to perform his job, a reboot is required and checkdisk will start before the OS.

 

If recoverable errors are found, good probability you fix the issue, if UNrecoverable errors are found, back up what you can and get a new HD right away.

 

I hope this can help to solve your issue, good luck.

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

 

I further digged your problem with a senior tech from Dell here at my job and he confirmed Vista and 7 have the functionality to interact with the SMART system to verify malfunctions on HD.

 

He suggested to run the chkdsk from recovery consolle so that the OS is not even loaded yet, however you can also run it as I said from the CMD, right clickking on it and running as administrator.

In this way, asking to chkdsk to perform his job, a reboot is required and checkdisk will start before the OS.

 

If recoverable errors are found, good probability you fix the issue, if UNrecoverable errors are found, back up what you can and get a new HD right away.

 

I hope this can help to solve your issue, good luck.

 

Many thanks for your help guys, it is RMA time, so I have backed-up my files and will take it out today for posting. Glad it's not my primary drive

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

Okay the RMA has been received at Seagate, I await a return drive, and then I can reload my files and ARMA that currently reside on my son's PC

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

Quick update, they have now shipped a replacement drive, will be back into battle as soon as it arrives.

[andrewman~SPARTA~]

IT's arrived back, installed and I am migrating my files back onto the drive tyhis afternoon - need to play catch-up on ARMA. - They shipped back exactly same model - no upgrade - not unhappy.

 

So Seagate's performance - there and back in 20 days - that's a very long time

Edited May 19, 2010 by andrewman~SPARTA~