WD Hard Drive Failure or Motherboard?

Hi all,

I was wondering if you could provide me with some feedback on a hard drive issue that started when I booted up my pc yesterday. Hard Drive is WD 160GB SATA.

I received this error at boot up:

Read Disk Error CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart

I restarted and luckily I was able to get to the desktop (took longer then normal tho).
Checked Event Viewer.. nothing showed. Checked Performance Logs... no errors showed.

Decided to double check all the connections... all plugged in nice and secure. Rebooted. Got the Read Disk Error again. this time it took me 3x to get to desktop. I decided to try another SATA connection on motherboard. REbooted.... got error again.

I ran a chkdsk/r and when system rebooted the Read Disk error showed up again.
After another 3 ctrl+alt+del reboots... I was able to get into Windows. I downloaded the Diagnostic Tools from WD and my drive failed both the Quick and Extended Tests. Not surprising lol

Anyhoo, here is a screenshot of my WD Diagnostic test results. I was wondering if it was a HDD issue or a motherboard issue? Any thoughts? I would rather replace a HDD then a motherboard. This WD 160 SATA drive is less then a month old also. BIOS sees the hard drive.also tried setting BIOS back to default.... sometimes that works but not this time tho :-(

I think I am living on borrowed time with this HD but before I replace I wanted to get more opnions.

Thx for the input

Did you create the bootable CD ? ?
The results are more accurate then running it inside Windows.
Also you should be running the Long test.

Did you try swapping the sata cable itself? I recently had a HD that failed to boot because of a dodgy cable.

+1 outside Windows and Long test.

Stupid question from me:

Is SMART enabled in the bios? worth a check.

I did a quick and a long test.... I also used bootable CD and failed all tests. I thought about swapping out SATA cables... havent tried that yet. Luckily I had a Seagate SATA HD to use. No Read Disk errors with this one yet. SMART is disabled in BIOS. (BIOS default) should I enable it??

brusse01 said:

I did a quick and a long test.... I also used bootable CD and failed all tests. I thought about swapping out SATA cables... havent tried that yet. Luckily I had a Seagate SATA HD to use. No Read Disk errors with this one yet. SMART is disabled in BIOS. (BIOS default) should I enable it??

Click to expand...

The error says it failed because SMART did not start.. so yes.

RMA the drive for a replacement.

hi all,

just an update:

I swapped out SATA cables and computer booted with no errors. I decided to test both SATA cables and HDD.
I installed XP on the 160GB drive and used the SATa cable that came with my Seagate... no errors during install... XP booted up great. So I decided to swap SATA cables again and no errors at all and quick boots! So I am unsure if my WD 160 GB HDD is actually defective. Maybe I had corrupt Windows 7 files because XP installed and booted several times with no issues. either way, system up and running with minimal issues. Windows 7 boots up and runs great on the Seagate 500Gb so if it aint broke don't fix it lol

May I recount my own experience with the same drive?

My first SATA HD was a WD 160 gig SATA hard drive.
I only bought it because of the low price at the time.
Normally I'd never buy a WD drive.

Well, after only a couple of months of use, the first drive failed.
I RMA'd it and installed the replacement. It lasted three months and then shot craps while I was on-line. It was so hot when I removed it that it burned my fingers.
Another RMA, but this third one was so scratched up that it looked like it had been kicked across a cement floor.
I had already replaced that drive with a new Maxtor 160 gig SATA2, so I gave the third WD away to a friend, to use for a storage drive. It lasted all of six months. When it failed, he just threw it away.

In a years time I replace a lot of HD's (in my computer business) from all sorts of systems. I'd have to guess that about 75% of them are WD's.
WD drives are a favorite with PC makers, NOT because of their High quality, but because of their LOW price.

Replace that WD drive with a Maxtor or Seagate while you can still save your data. And if you get an RMA drive, give it away to someone you really don't like.

Cheers Mate!
The Doctor

DrWho said:

Replace that WD drive with a Maxtor or Seagate

Click to expand...

But not the new Seagate 1.5TB's. They're absolute shockers. Maxtors are somewhat spotty too. I had one fail after 10mths and the other remaining one runs hot enough to heat a cold hobo

Unfortunately a lot of once trusted manufacturers are slipping with quality It's turning into a crap shoot whether your individual drive is good or bad.

G'day Mate

Note that Maxstor and Seagate are now the same company when you are looking for disks.

These days it's difficult to know what's what.

You get your Gas from the Electric company, buy your electricity from the Gas company, get your Telephone service from The Water company and get the water from your Cable TV company.

Nest we'll be sending the Laundry to Shell / BP and getting the Bus service from IBM / AMD etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

I would agree with the quality issues with HDD. I have two 40 GB IDE WD drives that are at least 5 yrs or more old and never had a issue. They still work today. This 500GB is my first Seagate.... so lets see what happens