• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Is my hard drive dead?

M

manny1222

Gawd
Joined
Mar 11, 2012
Messages
732
After building my pc for the first time in april, I had 2 of months of gaming without issues. Since then, my pc has been plagued by one issue or another, the latest of which is my hard drive.

I have a Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drive (ST31500341AS) which I got from another [H] forum member. This is the drive I use for steam, origin, downloads, and data. I have a 60GB SSD for Windows7. I turned on my pc yesterday and it went into a weird cycle of powering on for 5 seconds then off for 5 seconds, with no POST. I powered off, unplugged the power cable and plugged it back in after a while. When I powered on again, it started and windows wouldn't start, getting stuck on the blue screen where the 4 lights form the window. With each boot up, I could hear a clicking sound that lasted 10-15 seconds. Next reboot took me into the windows startup repair screen. I ran it and came back unable to repair. Also gave and error code 0x490. I booted Memtest and ran for an hour - my memory is still good. Really frustrated, I was getting ready to reinstall windows (for the second time in a week). In the process I noticed that the hdd wasn't showing up. So I stopped the reinstall. I also traced the clinking sound to the hdd. I disconnected the hdd and windows booted up without issue. When I plug it in again windows wouldn't boot up, but without it there's no issue.

So, is the hard drive fried or is there somehow to fix it?

Would this have had something to do with the frequent Nvidia driver crashes that ended up with having send in my GTX670 for RMA 3 days ago?
 
One of my old hard drives did the exact same thing just before it died; even though it wasn't the OS disk, it would prevent windows from starting, take an extraordinarily long time to start up, and occasionally drop out.

Back up that hdd. It'll die soon.
 
I can't back it up cos I can't get windows to boot when it's connected. I only have one PC so I'm not sure how to get to its contents. I'm assuming its dead already.
 
Sounds like the drive is dead or near dead. If there is any data on it, you may be able to save it by hooking it up to another computer and see if you can browse to the drive. If you keep trying to boot from it, you could be causing more damage. I recommend the usb hard drive adapter kits such as "Rosewill RCW-608 USB2.0 Adapter" for about $20. Hook your hard drive to this then connect the usb cable to a laptop or computer and the hard drive will show up like a USB thumb drive. Browse to it and salvage what you can. If the drive isn't found doing this, then your drive is a goner.

Another thing you could do is download and create a "Ultimate Boot CD" that contains hard drive diagnostic tools. Create the cd, boot to it, then choose a diagnostic tool under HDDs. The cd has tools from Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, and Hitachi. It will scan for bad sectors and such and can tell you if the drive is failing.

Download the free software here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Burn the iso image to disk, then boot the computer with the cd loaded.


Also, its still under warranty, so contact Seagate and get the RMA process started.
 
manny1222 said:
I can't back it up cos I can't get windows to boot when it's connected. I only have one PC so I'm not sure how to get to its contents. I'm assuming its dead already.
Click to expand...
Well, you could go out and buy a small cheap hard drive, then install windows to this new drive. Once that's done, you can hook up your current drive and see if you can copy anything from it to the new drive. Once you get everything backed up the the new drive, RMA it back to seagate and they'll send you a replacement. Once you get it back, hook it up to the computer and you'll keep the other drive running as your OS drive and you'll have this one for storage.
 
Pringals said:
Sounds like the drive is dead or near dead. If there is any data on it, you may be able to save it by hooking it up to another computer and see if you can browse to the drive. If you keep trying to boot from it, you could be causing more damage. I recommend the usb hard drive adapter kits such as "Rosewill RCW-608 USB2.0 Adapter" for about $20. Hook your hard drive to this then connect the usb cable to a laptop or computer and the hard drive will show up like a USB thumb drive. Browse to it and salvage what you can. If the drive isn't found doing this, then your drive is a goner.

Another thing you could do is download and create a "Ultimate Boot CD" that contains hard drive diagnostic tools. Create the cd, boot to it, then choose a diagnostic tool under HDDs. The cd has tools from Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, and Hitachi. It will scan for bad sectors and such and can tell you if the drive is failing.

Download the free software here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Burn the iso image to disk, then boot the computer with the cd loaded.


Also, its still under warranty, so contact Seagate and get the RMA process started.
Click to expand...

I downloaded Seatools from Seagate website and it's not finding the drive. I'll try to use an external drive enclosure that I have laying around. Only I think its for IDE drives only.
 
Pringals said:
Well, you could go out and buy a small cheap hard drive, then install windows to this new drive. Once that's done, you can hook up your current drive and see if you can copy anything from it to the new drive. Once you get everything backed up the the new drive, RMA it back to seagate and they'll send you a replacement. Once you get it back, hook it up to the computer and you'll keep the other drive running as your OS drive and you'll have this one for storage.
Click to expand...

His OS drive is an SSD that seems to be working fine, if he has to buy an HDD it's a big one to replace the current.

Maybe RMA the current one if it's still under warranty.
 
I don't know about warranty. I bought it used from a forum member. I guess I'll try to call Seagate to see.
 
Hotswap it in after you're already booted up, just detach the sata data when you boot, then after you're in windows, plug in the sata power. Hotswap is a feature of Sata.
Then, just back up the data you can't replace (if you don't already have backups)

If you don't have any data you need to recover, or you've already recovered it, then check your serial number on seagate's site here.
 
Another question, what firmware is currently installed on your ST31500341AS? Their are 2 diffrent firmware lines, the SDxx and CCxx. If you have a SDxx, is it at least SD1B? If not, you could have been hit by one of two different bugs with the 7200.11. If it is either of these firmware bugs you were hit with, you can get a USB/TTL adapter for about $15 bucks which will let you breathe life back into the drive and get it back running without data loss. It takes about 10 minutes total for either bugfix. That is if it is out of warranty. If it is in warranty and you already have a backup to restore from, just RMA it and let Seagate send you a new one... Check the remaining (if any) warranty on Seagates site.
 
manny1222 said:
I don't know about warranty. I bought it used from a forum member. I guess I'll try to call Seagate to see.
Click to expand...

Doesn't Seagate warranty by serial? You can go online and check the status by looking up the serial on the hdd sticker.
 
I called Seagate and they say they don't have rights to my serial number anymore. They gave me the number to Lacie. Tried to call but office is closed till Monday
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top