Windows 7: Windows detected a hard disk problem. help!

That means your drive is on its way out!

Immediately backup all data you care about and replace the drive.

Taken from here: Spin Retry Count S.M.A.R.T. attribute

Hi Guys I was planning to come back and report how I fixed my HD problems.
And I would like to thank every one that made suggestions. That helped me eliminate somme possibles problems. My HD are working fine now.

I know what was wrong.

The last thing I did went this way.

1-After installing my 1TB HD as my C: drive
2-I reformated it and installed Windows 7 again - but I decided to wait a while before installing all my usual apps

Guess what after 3 day I still could copy a folder as big as 1.5 GB with out any problems to that drive C:
That is when I decided how to determine the problem. Some thing I install could be the colprite.
So
3-I installed Office and waited 2 days and tested still ok.
4 - I did that with all my favorites Applications.
Now I have every thing I need - and still no problems.

I am sorry to say I have not installed all the apps I had then so cant say witch App caused my problem.
Since that all was ok I installed a second HD one that was reported faulty it works fine to.

So I suggest that It's fun to try Apps but be carefull. and when we have a problem throwing money at it is not the way to go.

Problem solved: A bad app got from a P2P.

bye, Guy

Definitely? Is there anything else it could mean - e.g. a faulty or incompatible SATA controller?? I don't want to send it back to the shop and have them say there's nothing wrong with it, then charge me for the privilege.

I emailed the drive test reports to the shop yesterday and they said this:

"It would appear that the drive is faulty; however I would advise to try this hard drive on a different computer to verify the problem is not due to the SATA controller on the motherboard being either incompatible with the drive or faulty."


PS. Jonathan - data is backed up and I've downloaded Speccy.

By the way - Speccy is saying Status: Good for the 2TB Deskstar. Presumably this doesn't mean anything since DiskCheckup, HDTune, HDDScan and SeaTools are all saying Spin Retry Count: Fail.

Speccy is a hardware specs program, that happens to also check temps and SMART data.

However, I wouldn't necessarily trust that it's the most accurate. I use Speedfan for temps and the manufacturers' programs for drive health.

The advice they gave you is good; try testing the drive in another machine.

Yes, I think Speccy may be less accurate than dedicated drive testers such as SeaTools.

I will try the drive in another machine - assuming I can find one!!

Jonathan - I've now tried the drive in another Windows 7 machine. Here is the comparison between that machine and mine.


MY MACHINE:

• Post screen - SMART 'status bad' error
• Windows 7 dialog - hard drive failure warning
• Drive fails Spin Retry Count with HDScan, HDTune, DiskCheckup and SeaTools

OTHER MACHINE:

• Post screen - SMART 'status bad' error
• Drive fails Spin Retry Count with HDScan, HDTune, DiskCheckup and SeaTools

So - the only difference is there's no Windows 7 warning on the other machine - probably because that machine has a Zalman GS1000 case which has hot swap drive bays.

If I put the drive back in my machine using an Antec hot swap drive bay (instead of an ordinary internal bay), again no Windows 7 warning appears. Hence, I suspect the AHCI controller used for hot swap bays prevents the Windows 7 warning from appearing.

So I'm now wiser now!


NB. Both machines have Asus motherboards (different models) - but Asus use AMI bios and the SMART controller is probably the same for both machines.

Thanks for posting SWLD.

That doesn't sound good to me. I'd be careful about storing important data on that drive, if I were you.

Something weird has happened. The drive has now stopped showing any errors in any of the hard drive test programs (HDDScan, SeaTools, DiskCheckup & HDTune). All four programs now say SPIN RETRY COUNT = OK

I'm not sure if it's got anything to do with the hard drive but earlier on, I started getting a Windows dialog box showing error sretoa.exe not working. I can't find any info at all about sretoa.exe - there is not a single entry in Google.

'sret' could mean 'Spin Retry' - then again it might not.

I give up.

Well that's the nature of hard disk drives. One moment they won't let you boot, or fail the SMART test, and the next, they're fine.

As soon as you put something you care about on the drive, is goes completely again.

This post is old but for new people reading needing a easy answer,
sometimes windows 7 likes to say its a hard drive error when theirs nothing wrong with it.

first and for most always keep an up to date back up of your os.
second
a solution to turning off that annoying hard drive failure message if you know its not your hdd.
Please open gpedit.msc. Navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Troubleshooting and Diagnostics\Disk Diagnostic\

Double Click on “Disk diagnostic: configure execution level”, set it to “disabled”. “Not configured” is enabled by default.