Laptop shut downs, possible hard drive issue?

Hello,
My laptop has begun shutting down. No over-heating, no blue screens, no reboot attempt. Just black screen, laptop is off. This was mostly occurring during playing a heavy full screen game but these are now occurring randomly as well.

It had been working fine until last Friday when I had the fans/vents cleaned at a computer repair shop. It came back blue screening and unable to reach the desktop. These blue screens spontaneously resolved by the next morning and I haven’t seen another once since.

I took the laptop back to make sure everything was reconnected correctly after the cleaning and these random shut downs then began to start during gameplay. I took the laptop to a second more trustworthy shop to again ensure everything was connected as it should be and to try to find the issue but they were not able to find the problem.

Having a look at the EventViewer I think the shut downs are related to these events as the times seem to coincide:
Level- Error,Source – atapi, Event ID – 11, Task – None, Category – The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1.
I tried to work out what my IdePort1 is. I went to: Device Manager > Expanded Disk Drives > Right Clicked my Hard Drive > Properties > Details Tab > Selecting "Physical Device Object Name" from the "Property" drop down menu gave me this value: \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP1T0L0-1

So am I right in assuming this error in the EventViewer is regarding my hard drive?

Assuming that the technicians between 2 repair shops aren’t entirely incompetent, the wires and hard drive are re-connected correctly so would this error indicate some sort of hard drive failure?
I’ve tried to google this error myself and took a look at some other threads here but find answers that don’t relate to my situation, or answers from people with multiple drives and or answers I just frankly couldn’t understand (I’m not very technical).

I have suspected hard drive failure for some time now and I’m just trying to find a way to confirm this is the issue before spending the time and money buying and setting up a new hard drive. I suspect drive failure because:

This issue only occurred after my laptop was opened and its components were manhandled.

My laptop originally had x2 500GB drives, the original failed some time last year and the one I currently work from was the second one. When it became my main drive I ran all SeaTools tests and they were all passed.

Currently, when I run SeaTools on this hard drive it passes S.M.A.R.T testing but fails long/short generic testing. I don’t know how to interpret that…

My hard drive is currently partitioned into a C and D drive. Filed stored on the D drive suddenly became inaccessible a few months ago causing windows explorer to stop responding, freezing and blue screening when attempting to open them. I’m certain there are bad clusters on the D partition but chkdsk fails to complete. It managed to find and fix some bad clusters but currently it results in getting stuck at a pitifully small number of files on stage 4 and usually blue screening so I have given up trying to fix this partition and simply stopped using it. I had thought maybe the bad clusters on this partition were causing the SeaTools tests to fail and that the hard drive might still be ok otherwise.

Chkdsk does complete on my C drive but I have found bad clusters on 2 separate occasions over the past 1.5-2months which makes me worry that they are appearing rapidly.


I guess I’m asking for opinions on whether this is hard drive failure or not, how I can confirm it or are there other causes for this error or other solutions I can attempt before buying a new hard drive?

LauraL said:

Currently, when I run SeaTools on this hard drive it passes S.M.A.R.T testing but fails long/short generic testing. I don’t know how to interpret that…............

I’m certain there are bad clusters on the D partition but chkdsk fails to complete.

I guess I’m asking for opinions on whether this is hard drive failure or not, how I can confirm it or are there other causes for this error or other solutions I can attempt before buying a new hard drive?

I suspect the hard drive is failing, but more details needed:

When it fails Seatools tests now, do you get any on-screen message about the failure?

The failure may mean that there are too many bad sectors. Drives ship with spare good sectors that are brought in only when existing sectors go bad. But there is a limited number of spares and you may have exhausted them.

Can you post a screen shot of your SMART screen?

I think a failure of the Seatools tests would be grounds for a warranty replacement, which presumably would not apply to you.

What exactly do you mean by "passes S.M.A.R.T testing"? As run from what tool? As indicated by what?

Hi, thank you for your reply.

When it fails Seatools tests now, do you get any on-screen message about the failure?

What exactly do you mean by "passes S.M.A.R.T testing"? As run from what tool? As indicated by what?

When I run SeaTools and use > Basic Tests > S.M.A.R.T Check > this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:



When I use Short Drive Self Test, this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:




When I use Short Generic, it halts at “Outer scan,” this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages.



Needless to say, when I use Long Genereic, it halts at “Long Generic – 3:10” (basically within 20 seconds, right at the beginning of the test), this is the result and there are no additional on-screen messages:

well to me looks like your going to need a new drive. i would not trust that drive.

CrystalDiskInfo Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

Download CrystalDiskInfo from the above link and run it. It's a "portable" application, so you don't have to install it. Just poke it after it downloads.

I checked it, it is free of viruses.

It will show you the individual SMART parameters and may give you some insight.

Post a screen shot of the results.

Keep your expectations low and locate your wallet.

For some reason I wasn't able to download from that link on IE or Chrome so I downloaded it from CrystalDiskInfo Portable - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com hopefully the same thing.

Here are the results:

Go to the function menu in Crystal Disk Info and look for "advanced features". Look for "raw values" under that.

Your raw values are probably set to 16 Hex.

Change that to 10 Dec and repost the same pictures.

16 Hex is hexadecimal and foreign to those familiar with standard numbers. 10 Dec will display in standard form.

The complaint is about "current pending sector count". Those sectors have been marked bad and are waiting to be remapped (send the bad ones to the sidelines and bring in the good spares).

Your drive is certainly failing; the question is how soon will it fail completely.

I notice you are using Seatools on a Hitachi drive. Is there no Hitachi tool?

I would immediately copy my most important data files to some other drive if you have not done so already as this drive could not start tomorrow for all we know.

Checkdisk or the manufacturer's utility will typically remap the bad sectors, but you can't yet get those tools to run.

469 sounds...unhappy...is a hard drive failing capable of causing computers to shut themselves off during demanding activities?

And as far as I'm aware I have no Hitachi tool or at least, I've never seen it/don't know where to look for it.

I don't have a frame of reference to be able to tell you that 469 is bad, but the larger point is that it apparently can't be corrected by Seatools or checkdisk.

I'm not sure exactly how a successful correction would appear on your screen when you ran Crystal again, but my guess is that the "current pending sector count" would drop to 0 from 469 and you would see the "reallocated sector count" move up from 0 to 469.

The drive has operated 24708 hours, which is 8.5 years worth of 8 hour days. That's a decent life span, so it's not surprising that it's failing.

If I read that Crystal screen correctly, the drive contains both C and D--which I assume means Windows and data of some type--on separate partitions. All the more reason to replace it when in doubt.

I'm no hard drive engineer and there may be someone out there who has other ideas about how you might be able to force the 469 bad sectors to be processed, but that's beyond my expertise.

I concur with Essenbe--I'd begin drive shopping. AFTER I backed up the data.