Solved Windows warns WD Caviar Black HDD is dying, testing shows nothing

[daydr3am3r]

Hi
I'm having some weird problems with one of my internal HDDs. I have 2 640 WD Caviar Black. One of them has only one partition, used only for media (music, films, photos). About 2 days ago Windows start giving warning messages about that driver.
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
I installed Crystal Disk Info and this is what it shows:
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
I start testing the HDD using Disk Check, Tuneup Disk Doctor, WD LifeGuard Doctor, Disk Checkup inside Windows and Disk Check + Ultimate Boot CD on boot to see if is something wrong but everything shows up OK. Also I changed the SATA cables and re-tested, with same results.
Now here's the weird thing. About a few months ago I noticed that sometimes, while listening to music or watching a movie(all stored on that drive) I start experiencing low FPS, sometimes even 0 & the video/audio player start freezing. And always at the same frame/minute. So I backup up all the data, tried Disk Check and formated the drive and then Disk Check again. Everything turned out OK. About 2 weeks ago I had some serious driver conflict and I posted a thread here, under driver section. Apparently, I was able to isolate the problem and fix it till a week ago when an old 250 GB IDE drive
running on an external enclosure stopped working. Windows warnings claimed that the file system got corrupted and that I need to format the drive. I tried formatting the drive but it failed since now Disk Check was run to test the drive. Also, Disk Check failed vecause the driver is not formated. So I had to use diskpart to format the drive & then I used Disk Check but everything turned out OK. When I tried to add some data on it, the problem reappeared so I had to use disk part again. Now the only applications installed were nvidia chipset drivers, after the driver issue. Also, it seams that the driver installed Nvidia Storage Driver, driver that I don't usually install. Iesterday, while trying to create an UBCD USB, I got the same weird error I got with the external drive so I had to use disk part to format it.
So, in the end, is my HDD dying or not? What does "Reallocated Sectors Count" mean?
I'm using Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1.
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Kinda OffTopic: Since I bought my PC (it has almost 4 years) I changed 5 drives, this is the 6th. I made the mistake of choosing 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ES 2 ST3500320NS and 2 7200.12 and all died in the first 8 months. Anyway, in all 4 cases every testing app showed the HDDs are dying, unlike now.
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So, any ideas?

 

[1Bowtie]

Your second pic shows health status BAD, if i were you i would quit running programs to diagnose and get my stuff BACKED UP, NOW. If it's still running get everything off that drive while you still can. Then you can mess with the drive, cause when it goes it will be to late.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Your second pic shows health status BAD, if i were you i would quit running programs to diagnose and get my stuff BACKED UP, NOW. If it's still running get everything off that drive while you still can. Then you can mess with the drive, cause when it goes it will be to late.

Haha ) Already backing up data. I'll replace it, no doubt about it but I was curious about the fact that only 1 app detects bad status while all other apps don't. And what's weird is that Windows keeps warning me but Disk Check says it's ok. The drive is under warranty for another 2.5-3 years so it's OK.

 

[1Bowtie]

Good idea let WD warranty it, they have always been really good about RMA for a bad drive.

 

[daydr3am3r]

I see. Well, the data is safe now so I'll send the drive. It's kinda weird ) 1 WD drive in 10 years and 5 Seagate in 8 months :| Thanks all for the help. I also figure it out what "Reallocated Sectors Count" means. Found this here:
DRIVE HEALTH: The Hard Disk analysing and monitoring tool based on the S.M.A.R.T. technology. Allows you to predict HDD failure and prevent losing critical data.
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OK, just marked this as unsolved again. Chek this out: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/hddfail2.png/ "Reallocated Sectors Count" just changed. Also, talked to the guys for a replacement and the guy claims that if WD's WinDLG says it's OK they won't replace it. Could this, by any change, be an OS related issue and not a HDD issue?

 

[Legaia]

I would recommend to run a Checkdisk on that harddrive.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/96938-check-disk-chkdsk-read-event-viewer-log.html

Also i seriously doubt it's a OS related issue. I'm running a WD 640GB black disk as well and have been for almost 1½ year now without any problems.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Checking Event Viewer was the first thing to do. Occasionally I got "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk8\DR43 during a paging operation." Source Disk ID 51 & "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur." Source NTFS ID 57 and by occasionally I mean once or twice a day since Windows start warning about this. Done Checkdisk test on boot and inside Windows and both tests turned out clean. No errors. And I also have an identical HDD that works just fine and it has 2 years or so. That's exactly the reason I started this thread in the first place. All I have that shows HDD related issues is the warning Windows kept displaying and the BAD status inside Crystal Disk Info. Check Disk shows nothing. WD's WinDLG shows nothing. I even tried Ultimate Boot CD and it found nothing. And there are more than 10 apps inside UBCD.
And look what chkdsk returned:

Chkdsk was executed in read/write mode.  

Checking file system on H:\
Volume label is Media.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
  187392 file records processed.                                          
File verification completed.
  89 large file records processed.                                      
0 bad file records processed.                                        
0 EA records processed.                                              
0 reparse records processed.                                       
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
  213822 index entries processed.                                         
Index verification completed.


CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
  187392 file SDs/SIDs processed.                                         
Security descriptor verification completed.
  13216 data files processed.                                            
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  35468096 USN bytes processed.                                             
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
  187376 files processed.                                                 
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
  7652699 free clusters processed.                                         
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 625121248 KB total disk space.
 594116668 KB in 155896 files.
     86264 KB in 13217 indexes.
    307520 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  30610796 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 156280312 total allocation units on disk.
   7652699 allocation units available on disk.

Anyway, I already removed the HDD and I'm taking it back tomorrow.

 

[GeneO]

Your second pic shows health status BAD, if i were you i would quit running programs to diagnose and get my stuff BACKED UP, NOW. If it's still running get everything off that drive while you still can. Then you can mess with the drive, cause when it goes it will be to late.

Haha ) Already backing up data. I'll replace it, no doubt about it but I was curious about the fact that only 1 app detects bad status while all other apps don't. And what's weird is that Windows keeps warning me but Disk Check says it's ok. The drive is under warranty for another 2.5-3 years so it's OK.

You see the reallocated sectors - that is bad, especially so many. Disk drives keep a pool of unallocated disk sectors. When allocated sectors start failing on you disk, they are replenished by this pool. There are two bad things going on here. First, even though the bad sectors are being replaced, if they had data on them it could be corrupted and corrupted data copied to the new sectors. The other thing is you can replace enough sectors that none are left in the pool.

Other programs have not encountered the bad sectors as they usually have been replaced before encountered. So the fact that just the SMART data from the drive reflects the bad state of affairs is just partially chance. The fact that you also have read errors should be a warning to you s well.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Your second pic shows health status BAD, if i were you i would quit running programs to diagnose and get my stuff BACKED UP, NOW. If it's still running get everything off that drive while you still can. Then you can mess with the drive, cause when it goes it will be to late.

Haha ) Already backing up data. I'll replace it, no doubt about it but I was curious about the fact that only 1 app detects bad status while all other apps don't. And what's weird is that Windows keeps warning me but Disk Check says it's ok. The drive is under warranty for another 2.5-3 years so it's OK.

You see the reallocated sectors - that is bad, especially so many. Disk drives keep a pool of unallocated disk sectors. When allocated sectors start failing on you disk, they are replenished by this pool. There are two bad things going on here. First, even though the bad sectors are being replaced, if they had data on them it could be corrupted and corrupted data copied to the new sectors. The other thing is you can replace enough sectors that none are left in the pool.

Other programs have not encountered the bad sectors as they usually have been replaced before encountered. So the fact that just the SMART data from the drive reflects the bad state of affairs is just partially chance. The fact that you also have read errors should be a warning to you s well.

I already took the drive back for testing & a possible replacement. I was asking if this might be a software issue simply because the guy kept insisting that if WD's WinDLG does not return any errors the drive is OK. Hope they won't send me back the same drive :|

 

[CB]

Hi. Daydreamer.

Just curious. If your PC is messing up with almost as much 6 HDD in 4 years. I think there is something have to be suspected. I agree it's not OS related. There are many guesses can be made, under voltage PSU, overheat (poor case circulation), shaking beyond disk toleration, or else.

Kevin

 

[daydr3am3r]

That's what I thought at first. But the first 4 drives had firmware issues. 2 Seagate ES2 & 2 Seagates 7200.11. The 5th had & still has some weird problems but as far as I could see it has something to do with the file system. But it is just an 250 gb IDE drive and I bought it somewhere in 2004 or something like that. Overheating it's not a problem, as far as I can see. The voltage might be a problem. In the past 2-3 months I had more than 20 power failures (well, not me, the whole neighborhood). I also thought that it happened because of the large number of files on that drive. Since I used that drive as a media drive (1 partition), it had lots of small files like mp3s, pictures etc. Don't really know what to say. Right now I'm using the same PC and an identically 3 years old drive without problems.

 

[Legaia]

Well, For how long have you had the drive?

Since the problem might have been there in the first place not that it was at the time visable. So depending on where you live you might have rules giving you a helping hand in the matter.

Looking at the US law there are statements that provides the buyer a huge benefit.
You could consider asking for a repair or a replacement under the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002. Under these regulations if something is faulty within the first 6 months of purchase it is assumed it was faulty at the time of sale. If the shop refuses to repair or replace the CD player then it is up to the shop to prove that the CD player was not faulty at the time of sale and that you have damaged it. If the shop does agree to a repair or replacement then this should be carried out within a reasonable period of time and without causing you undue inconvenience.

Maybe there are other laws where you live but you might have some accosiation out there that is not requireing a fee to help you. Contact them and see what they have to say. For example in Sweden you have Konsumentverket that is dedicated sole to help people with these problems.

 

[daydr3am3r]

Sorry for the late reply. I got my HDD replaced after all. Thank all for your help
Oh, @Legia, We've got that here too. I'm just glad it wasn't the case.

 

[CB]

Glad to hear that, Bogdan.