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Dying drive?

D

DF-1

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 17, 2011
Messages
2,888
Hello.

I purchased a 3TB drive about a year ago, the box had 5 year warranty listed on it.


The first time i noticed a problem was when the bios was loading really slow, and then proceeded to this



it took an extra minute on loading OS, and then another minute on boot from cd/dvd (which usually never happens)



The first time it happened i restarted the PC several times but nothing worked. I changed the bios settings to something that said something like "safe settings", it didn't seem to help.

I then changed the sata and power cable and it booted! so i thought my problems were over.


this was ~2 weeks ago. I ran HDtune health test, everything said the drive was okay. the PC worked flawlessly since then.


five minutes ago I got that same message again, i pressed the restart button, it restarted once, and then restarted again, and then booted to windows (im typing on the PC right now)

It doesn't seem slow or anything, but im afraid its dying. thankfully I've never had a hard drive die on me yet.


Is this one dying? I think I should back it up? I just started to look for some 4TB drives, i'm not sure which one I want to pick, I don't want them to die on me anymore..

the model of the problematic drive is ST3000DM001.

What should I do?

Thanks!
 
Yeah, any SMART attribs failing, or a non-zero reallocated or pending count?
 
PSU failing?

One way to test is to remove all other drives but the boot drive. Then add the drives back in one by one.

Another check: unplug the boot drive, see if you can boot a windows install disc from the DVD drive - if there is no massive delay, probably the drive or the SATA port is bad. Try another SATA port for the boot drive.
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
PSU failing?

One way to test is to remove all other drives but the boot drive. Then add the drives back in one by one.

Another check: unplug the boot drive, see if you can boot a windows install disc from the DVD drive - if there is no massive delay, probably the drive or the SATA port is bad. Try another SATA port for the boot drive.
Click to expand...

I really don't think its the PSU.

I tried another SATA port when i switched out the old sata cables (which I originally thought were the problem).

, i changed the cables. it worked flawlessly for 2 weeks, and now it did it again. chkdsk ran fine just now. (im currently typing on this machine/hdd)
 
Well, if you have a spare PSU it would be very easy to test.

I always recommend swapping in another (known to be good) PSU - it is one of the easiest components to replace and when one starts failing you see every kind of problem under the sun. Best to rule it out early on.
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
Well, if you have a spare PSU it would be very easy to test.

I always recommend swapping in another (known to be good) PSU - it is one of the easiest components to replace and when one starts failing you see every kind of problem under the sun. Best to rule it out early on.
Click to expand...

I don't have a spare. hmmm...

ive been playing games that require a lot more power when the system is actually on, rather than just booting up, so I wouldn't think its that, plus the picture above is the only thing thats happened to this pc. but I see what you're saying that it could be the psu, im just not sure where i would find a cheap, spare one to test it.

a PSU can cost about the same as a HDD, and if it is just the HDD failing I might as-well get a new hard drive.

not sure what to do, I don't have any money to spend right now :(
 
DF-1 said:
I think I should back it up?
Click to expand...

Yes, definitely. You should always keep backups of files that you don't want to lose, and even more so if you notice something that might mean your HDD could be about to fail.
 
Silhouette said:
Yes, definitely. You should always keep backups of files that you don't want to lose, and even more so if you notice something that might mean your HDD could be about to fail.
Click to expand...

Agreed. You should backup all data you do not want to loose regardless of the age of the drive (or media) you have your data on. All forms of data storage (regardless of how much you pay for it) have a non zero expected annual failure rate.

I purchased a 3TB drive about a year ago, the box had 5 year warranty listed on it.
Click to expand...

Remember that a drive can die at any time from before it arrives to you to its 5 year expected lifetime and beyond. For the first 5 years of operation it is expected that the drive will have a 1% or so chance of failure (even if you use it sparingly) after 5 years the chance of failure increases from that.

PSU failing?
Click to expand...

That certianly can be a cause of this problem. I initially suspected a drive motor issue however since the SMART data is clean I would lean twards some outher component in the PC causing this.
 
Last edited:
boot into windows and plug the drive in. Run a check disk on it and see if it drops out while you are running it.
 
shadowsnkx said:
boot into windows and plug the drive in. Run a check disk on it and see if it drops out while you are running it.
Click to expand...

I did that, and it did not drop.

since i first posted it hasn't happened again since, and I see no slowdowns.

I also ran seagates tools to test it, and it passed just like all the others.

Not sure why it started happening every now and then o_O
 
happened again today (7/1/13), im not sure why its doing it... smart says that the drive is healthy... and it hasn't happened in over a month..

when I pressed the restart button the PC started and stopped about 4 times before I clicked the PSU's off button, when i booted it up again it was fine (typing on it now)

I'm just not sure what to do...
 
Have you run memory tests for a decent period - say overnight?

Weird problems like this can sometimes be caused by a flakey DIMM!!
 
OS on a 3TB drive...... Not normal and needs caressing to make work.

OP, might pay to be very clear where you have the OS and the hidden boot partition before going nuts blaming a drive when it is already looking to be a messed-around-with system setup. The screenshot says nothing more than bad boot order or device....

the model of the problematic drive is ST3000DM001.
Click to expand...
Not sure where the claim of "Problematic" comes from. I have dozens of these drives and various systems and no issues. From what info has been given so far, you are using them out of the norm anyway.

Actual board site rather than Amazon link.... http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3892#ov
 
It's a failing DVD drive.

Try unplugging the dvd entirely and see if it fixes the issue
 
staticlag said:
It's a failing DVD drive.

Try unplugging the dvd entirely and see if it fixes the issue
Click to expand...

How did you come to that?

His DVD-ROM is the first boot device, it has found nothing bootable and then gone to next and found nothing.
 
Lost-Benji said:
How did you come to that?

His DVD-ROM is the first boot device, it has found nothing bootable and then gone to next and found nothing.
Click to expand...

I've seen it happen to 3 computers.

The DVD drive gets fried and will start throwing errors that cause the BIOS to think there is a disk to boot from in the DVD player. This is exactly what this error is, the DVD is causing problems with boot because it's got a higher boot priority than the hard disk.
 
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