Is my Hard Drive Dead? Virus or Hardware Failure? Data Recoverable?

[GoWest]

Hi all and thanks for having me on the forum

I think my hard drive has just died, but not totally sure. I’m usually a "War and Peace" kinda guy, so I’m gonna challenge myself to be as brief as possible. If more details are needed please let me know and I’ll elaborate. I also have plenty of screen photos.

- PC had possibly started to get a touch slower and glitchy over the last few months, but tough to be sure. CCleaner and a defrag would usually speed things up again. It’s an old PC…!

- Recently installed Audacity. It sometimes crashed and had problems around saving projects properly. Since learned both these things are common.

- Installed Firefox as some of the files I wanted to record using Audacity would not play in Chrome.

- Left my PC running a couple of hours while it “live recorded” something from the internet. Returned and found that all open programs had closed (just desktop showed), and my sounded card had switched from 44.1khz to 48khz.

- Tried recording again. When I got back it had stopped after xx minutes and the file wouldn’t re-open in Audacity. Things got dodgier... Chrome would not open (or opened and crashed). Firefox would open, but very slowly. Rebooted and got a black screen showing a “disk needs to be checked for consistency” message, deleting lots of corrupt file segments and index entries, recovering orphaned files, and various other stuff. Windows loaded after and I got back onto Firefox and Audible. So I set up to record again overnight.

- Morning – the recording had stopped itself again. Things started getting worse, with programs not opening, huge amounts of lag, etc. Then the Windows graphics changed… First it got rid of my custom settings reverting to default, then it went to something that looked more like Windows 98/XP! Finally it got to the stage where the mouse was working but nothing else.

- Tried several reboots and got more “…checked for consistency” messages as before. I ran CCleaner a couple more times. On one of them I saw an entry for “System Memory dumps – 395,893KB. 3 files” in the results.

- Then after a reboot Windows would not load and I got the MBR Error 1 screen. Ouch – been there before a few years back. Have not had Windows load since then. I also got BOOTMGR is missing messages, but not sure when and whether it was before or after I unplugged the two data HDDs.

- Loaded from WinDVD. Tried the “Startup Repair” option quite a few times but it wouldn’t solve anything. Tried “Windows Memory Diagnostic” but I don’t think it worked. I also tried Command Prompt > “chkdsk” a few times, and later I tried “bootrec /fixmbr” and “bootrec /fixboot”. For these last two it said the operations were completed successfully, but nothing changed.

- Changed CMOS battery, but didn’t help.

- Increasingly when I would load the WinDVD the HDD would not be recognised at all (i.e. where it asks you to select the HDD with the OS, the list would be blank). I would then have to hard reboot – sometimes a few times – before the HD would reappear. Then on another reboot it would be gone again. Eventually it wouldn’t recognise it at all. And it wasn’t found in BIOS either. I later put it into a caddy and attached it to a laptop. The laptop would not recognise anything whatsoever, not even the fact there was a drive there. But then later in the evening I tried again and messages came up for each partition saying they each had to be formatted. Trying to open them just brought up the message “XX is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”. Right clicking on them to open properties showed 0 bytes. But it did recognise the HDD model number under the Hardware tab. By the next day though, it would no longer show again.

Sorry it was so long, I did my best! So, my main questions are:

1. Is the drive dead?
2. Does it sound like a hardware failure, a virus, or???
3. Is there any way to retrieve data. 99.9% of my stuff is on other drives. But there are a few bits I’d like to retrieve if possible.
4. Is it best to not use the drive ever again, or should I format and try re-using? I have got another drive so don’t need this one if it is risky?


Huge thanks to anyone who has got this far and is able to offer any insights.

Cheers

 

[michael diemer]

I don't have an easy answer for you, but if it is an old PC, as you say, there could be any number of things wrong. The motherboard. The power supply. CPU's usually last forever but who knows.

I would plug in another drive, install an operating system (which could be Linux), and see how that runs. If it's the hard drive that is bad, you can access the files on it from the new drive. I mention Linux because it's fast and easy to install, doesn't need activation, etc. But you could certainly install Windows again. But then there's all that updating...however, you could keep it offline, and avoid that.

 

[GoWest]

Many thanks for the response Michael.

I think I'll do as you suggest and might even try the Linux route for testing purposes (I'd love to learn to use it for everything, but unfortunately there are programs I use that are not compatible and hardware I have with no drivers, but hey, that's another story). I've never done anything with Linux so know nothing about it, other than it's open source and there are a tonne of distros. Is there a particular distro you'd recommend that is easy to install and use, especially for someone who has only ever known Windows XP and 7?

As for accessing the faulty drive, I can try to do that after I've re-installed Windows/Linux for testing, but I presumed I wouldn't be able to... If BIOS and the WinDVD fail to even see the drive, and if my laptop doesn't see the drive in a caddy, will my test Windows/Linux see it? No harm in trying. I suspected not but have I missed something?

Thanks again

 

[samuria]

If the bios cant see it its dead big style or the cable is faulty or the port is faulty so new cable and different port. If the bios has been changed that could do it so check settings as they will revert to defaults check mode has it gone into uefi mode or similar. What is the drive a spinner or ssd?

 

[Clippy84]

Sounds like the HDD. If it's a mechanical spinning drive, and nothing it it is rattling (metal broken), you might be able to read it byte by byte with TestDisk, if fitted into an external HDD case and connected to the laptop (or the PC with a new drive fitted) by USB. Will take a lot of time to copy off the vital files, though.

 

[GoWest]

Thanks you both for your replies.

@samuria - It's a HDD (spinning). Nothing has changed in BIOS last time I looked, but I will just check again to be certain. Thanks for the tip. As for checking the port/cable, the drive is not being recognised when I connect it to the laptop (in a caddy), so I don't think that would make a difference. No harm in giving it a go though.

@Clippy84 - No, there's no rattling. And yes, it is spinning up. Thanks for the suggestion of TestDisk, which I'll take a look at. But if the drive can't be seen when in the caddy (at least not in Windows), will TestDisk be able to do anything? Will it see the drive when Windows can't?

Cheers