Windows detected a hard disk problem. help!

Have been on my PC for a few hours today and i got a windows message saying 'windows detected a hard disk problem'.

I am in the process of backing up my hard drive now.

Do i need to replace my hard drive straight away or do i have a while to gather funds?

Also this is my hard drive with Windows Vista on.

If i were to change the hard drive, can i go ahead and put the disk image onto the new hard drive and just boot up vista again? Or will vista be lost forever?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

Rossy87

Hi Rossy,

You would need to clone Vista to the new HD. The program you used to make the backup image will probably have a clone/disk copy feature.

If you don' have the new hd yet, you can clone it to whatever hd you are currently backing up to, then clone it to the new hd when you get it - takes space, obviously.

After you have done that:
try running checkdisk:

Rt click the drive>Properties>Tools>Check Now>find and fix errors - it will need you to reboot.



Also many drive mfrs have a bootable .iso you can d/l free and it will check and attempt to fix hd errors.

Here's one for Seagate/Maxtor :

SeaTools Desktop Usage Instructions | Seagate

Spinrite is excellent and will repair the drive, but it is not free.


GRC | Hard drive data recovery software

Ok. I have got a new hard drive on its way because i would rather replace it. Plus its on the girlfriends credit card so .

I have created a back up using the Windows 7 backup utility which has created a file where i can restore all my files from the old hard drive.

Does this mean i can just copy the files over to the new hard drive and go ahead and boot up vista or are there hidden things that i am not taking into consideration?

Again any help is greatly appreciated.

Rossy87.

You can transfer you files to the new hd, but if you want to boot windows, you will either have to install it from the proper install dvd, or clone the existing hd to the new one - just putting the backup image on the new drive won't work.

You need an app. that will clone it for you. What make of hd is your existing and new one?

Ok thanks for the quick reply.

My existing hdd is a 200gd Western Digital and the new one on its way is a 500gb Western Digital.

And what sort off apps would clone the hdd for me?

Sorry but this is the first time i have had to do this and i really dont want to loose any data or re-install vista.

Many thanks.

rossy87 said:

... And what sort off apps would clone the hdd for me? ...

I have had good luck with ping.

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

And I love the price !

I have a good hard disk, been working great under Vista Ultimate, now Windows 7 says I have an error. This is not any of my hard drives that I use a lot. So I used CHKDSK - says it's fine. Copied the few files I used off it and did a complete format. Left it empty and Windows 7 still says I have a hard disk problem. I turned off the message, but not sure why it thinks it's bad. I have 3 SATA drives and one EIDE - it's the EIDE one it says I have a problem on. Any ideas? It's now sitting there empty and Windows 7 says it's got a problem. Or is it Windows 7 that has the problem?

I actually replaced an EIDE drive with the SATA 320 gig that's now giving the error. It's the 2nd device on the string - the 1st - another SATA 320 where the 'c' drive is ok. I also have a 1.5tb drive on a separate channel. I think I'll completely low-level format the drive and see what happens.