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.

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??

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