HDD click on C:\ partition

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RArocks12

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I bought a Samsung Spinpoint OEM from newegg in May. I partitioned it so Vista and programs were on their own partition and another partition had just my files (music, photos, etc). Recently I had been hearing just a single click every once in a while while trying to access something on the C:\ partition, like a file on the desktop or something. Just that though, one click, then nothing else at all. I figured it might be a bad sector or something. It hadn't gotten worse, or any more frequent so I figured it wasn't anything too pressing. Also, since it was only that partition that would click, never the partition with data, I didn't think it was the entire drive that had a problem.

This morning though, I went to fire up my rig and while the loading bar for Vista was going, I kept hearing a click about every 10 seconds or so. I restarted, chose safe mode, and it hung up while loading 'windows\system32\drivers\crcdisk.sys'. So it seems to me that this partition is screwed up somehow. Am I right, or should I be worried about the entire disk? Is there some other kind of diagnostics I can run to figure out the problem, or even fix the problem?
 
It sounds like bad sectors are forming.
This isnt necessarily bad as long as they are logged out (as unusable) successfully.

If Scandisks finding/recovery of bad sectors doesnt sort it, you will need to use a better tool.
I use HDD Regenerator, it has rescued a drive that constantly clicked.
I have no idea how it managed to get the drive to do anything but the drive is still fine a year after the event.
 
That drive sounds like toast to me.

If you want anything off there, you'd better be getting it, like yesterday!
 
I ran HDD Regenerator on my drive and it came up with 1594 bad sectors! Almost all of them being toward the first third of the disk, which I assume accounts for not being able to start up. Everything seems to work great now, though I'm probably going to RMA this drive just to be sure. Thanks for the suggestion Nenu!
 
Please let me know how the RMA process goes. I can't even get a reply from Samsung with emails. Going to call them on Tuesday.
 
The golden rule of hard drives:

Once it's got bad sectors, it's just going to get worse.

I use HDDRegenerator myself, and SpinRite (been using SpinRite since it was first written well over a decade ago), but again, once you get bad sectors on a hard drive, sooner or later things will get worse and more will develop.

If Samsung has a drive diagnostic, run it and see what it says. If not, use the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test as that diagnostic app runs on any brand of hard drive and see what results you get. Suffice to say, on most drives the S.M.A.R.T. bad sector reallocation limit is usually around 200 to 300 sectors - if that one really has nearly 1600 bad sectors, screw it. Back up the data quick, and I mean quick and either RMA the hardware or just toss it.

Samsung has been difficult to reach in the past by myself as well when I had a client's drive that required an RMA, much the same situation the OP is having now. It took nearly a week to get a response, but it was resolved over time (took 3 weeks to get a new clean drive swapped).
 
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