HD keeps messing up but tests say its perfectly fine.. could it be something else?

H

Hammyton

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Oct 30, 2005
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I recently got a 120gb hand-me-down HD from a friend and it worked perfectly for about a few weeks then recently one day I came home after I left some torrents going and I noticed the HD was gone in My Computer.... Well so I restarted only to find the HD is there and I can open some folders but a lot of the times it gives me a "corrupted data" message or something of that sort...

After a few more reboots the HD doesnt appear at all anymore and I can't even view any folders or files in it because windows says it is a bad volume or somtehing and that I need to format it. I tried running a chkdsk scan but it just says the master file table or something similar is corrupt.

I then ran a complete format after recoverying my software using data recovery software and DL'd a WD test software to test the HD for errors and after a few hours it said it was perfectly fine... I also ran a chkdsk and it came back totally fine.

I figure it just kinda messed up somehow so I figure whatever, then I move all my data back over to the HD since after a format it seems fine, but less than a day later it starts causing the same problems AGAIN. Now a lot of times when I try to access it and such it gives me a BSOD that says "Machine_check_exception" or something of that sort...

Should I format again and give it another shot or my HD just borked? Or could it be something else?
 
If the hard drive test ok but gets messed up then its time to start testing other hardware for errors.
Start with Memtest+ to check out your memory.
If the memory tests out error free then run a CPU stress test, something like Prime95.
If that runs ok, then try a different drive cable, etc, etc.

Also check you have nothing overclocked in the bios that could be corrupting your data.

Only after your hardware checkes error free do you start looking at the software.

Luck ........... :D
 
Indeed. Follow through on the h/w checks and make sure the complete system is stable.
Good call no running the WD diagnostics. You could also look at replacing the cable too.

I'm not sure what kind of system you're running, but if it's a litte older you may need a BIOS update to support larger hard drives.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, I will definitely give them all a shot..

I guess the "oither hardware failure" is definitely a possibility but what confuses me the most is that the hard disk worked perfectly fine for a week or so and THEN started messing up. Even after I re-formatted it since the MFT was messed it worked fine for about half a day before it started giving error messages.
 
Hammyton,

If the HDD is getting corrupted data written to it (because of bad Ram, CPU, etc.) it will crash. Depending on how badly it is getting 'mis-informed', it could last an hour or a week. Go through the checks suggested to make sure another piece of hardware isn't 'confusing' your HDD.

Good Luck!
 
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