The drive is still under warranty. I opened a case with their support team. I'll let you know what I find out there as well as the results I get from my other 2 drives.
Thanks Essenbe!
No problem. Just keep after it. BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the Seatools 'fixed' the bad sector by telling the controller not to write data there.
If it were me I would open a elevated command prompt ( click start, type cmd in the search box, right click on the cmd entry and select run as administrator) in the black box that opens, copy/paste sfc /scannow. If you decide to type it, notice the space between the sfc and the /. It is a system file checker which will scan your system files and attempt to correct any missing or corrupt files. What we want are the results to say windows found no integrity violations. If it says files were found but could not be repaired, close the box, reboot and run it again, after opening the administrative command prompt. You may have to reboot and run it three times for it to repair all system files. If it can't repair them after 3 reboots, let us know.
If they approve an RMA let me know and we will back up your user files and wipe the drive clean before you send it to them.
They sent me an RMA. Now I'm concerned. This drive contains my XP install with all my studio software and all of my projects. Most of the software will not run under 7 as is without upgrading to Pro for VM... even then there are no guarantees (some folks have had success with VM some not so much)
I ran the sfc once before with know issues detected but that was under 7 and I'm pretty sure it just checked my WD drive. Should I run the command under XP? Is there a switch to scan just my 1TB Seagate drive?
I do not want to lose my stuff. That's the whole reason I went through the trouble of installing the way I did with the option to boot from XP...
WD diagnostics says it has to be run from a floppy drive. Will it work from a CD if I boot from the disc? Not sure how to check the WD Black drive with the WD diagnostics utility...
I did this once before earlier in this thread but ran it again.
Here's the results of system file checker under 7:
Do you have a spare hard drive? if you do, you can just clone the drive to the new hard drive and be fine.
Also, see if this looks right. How to test a WD SATA, EIDE, or Solid State drive for errors with a Data Lifeguard Diagnostics CD or Floppy disk
Do you think I still need to check the WD drive since sfc found no issues with that drive? The file I downloaded from WD is not an ISO file... not sure how to make it bootable in order to boot from CD?
Can I run sfc /scannow under XP and if so what is different and what is the risk?
I don't have a spare hard drive but I can use the RMA option from Seagate to have them send me a replacement drive first (I would then have 25 days to return the failing drive). Couldn't I clone it then? If so would the clone still boot just like my original XP drive?
I've never cloned a hard drive before. I'm not sure what's involved. Could I just hook up the new drive and clone my XP drive from 7? I have 2 partitions on that seagate drive. Could I clone the boot partition and the the extended partition onto the new drive from 7 and then still boot into XP via changing the boot sequence in my BIOS? WOuld everything on those 2 partitions still function as before?
I know that's quite a few questions ut I think I may be getting a little outside of my experience / comfort zone...
Yes, you could clone it when Seagate returns your drive. But, a word of advice. You need a couple of external drives to back up your personal files in case a hard drive crashes. You at least won't lose everything. I'm a backup freak because that is what happened to me. It was very expensive crash too. But, as far as the drive goes, yes you can clone it when you get the replacement drive. If it is done correctly, yes it will be an exact duplicate of the XP drive.
You can run sfc /scannow in XP, I'm pretty sure. As far as the Western Digital drive, I just want to make sure the drive is not causing your problems. sfc just scans system files. The diagnostic program does the same as the segate diagnostic program, it scans it for damage or defects of the physical drive.
Okay. Thanks again for the info. I will try to run the WD diagnostics from CD and let you know the results.
When I tried to run sfc /scannow under XP it prompted me to insert my XP Home DVD which I did but then was a little concerned about how current my XP backups were (in case something went wrong) so I canceled and came back here to seek your advice.
Will definitely have to get another drive for back up. My original drive (the 250GB Seagate) had some kind of boot problem which is why I replaced it with the 1TB drive. I thought I had lost everything. I did a clean install of XP on the 1TB drive and was able to access my 250GB drive from the new one. I restored my programs manually and re-mapped my old projects. It was very time consuming but it worked. That was a few years ago so I'm not so sure how well that would work if I tried it again...
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