Possible bad HDD?

[Kodilynn]

I just wanted to see what others thought. As of late the past 3 weeks or so, my torrents are randomly getting I/O write errors unless I save them to an external drive, windows explorer routinely crashes and restarts, and I'm getting an increased amount of random BSOD's depending on what I'm doing.

I re-installed Windows 7 64 bit thinking maybe it was an OS issue, but it's persisted. I'm thinking my laptop HDD is going the wayside. Since HDD's are relatively cheap to replace, I have no objections to doing so, but figured I'd field any other suggestions before doing so.

It's an ASUS laptop, and not a cheap one either. At a year and a half old, I'm a tad surprised I'm running into this.

Edit - last BSOD was on ntfs.sys but I failed to get the 0x0 written down before I just rebooted the damn thing. Ironically, if I try to access the Windows\Minidump folder explorer crashes and restarts.

 

[rob]

I'd blame memory or HD. Boot to memtest86 and test it over night.

If that passes, check the SMART logs of the drive.

 

[wilbunk]

make sure you reformatted when reinstalling windows as to not keep old reg files.

 

[Kodilynn]

make sure you reformatted when reinstalling windows as to not keep old reg files.

I did. Rob ill try that.

 

[Kodilynn]

Welp, now Windows is throwing I/O errors and I can't do jack shit. Considering this is after a format/reinstall me thinks the HDD is on the south end of life.

 

[Kodilynn]

Stuck on mobile for now, even safe mode is crashing, memtest86 is going but I think I'm wasting my time.

 

[devestator]

Welp, now Windows is throwing I/O errors and I can't do jack shit. Considering this is after a format/reinstall me thinks the HDD is on the south end of life.

It could be the HDD but as Rob said it could also be the memory. Just about everything gets filtered through the memory and if it has a bad sector(s) in it, it can cause corruption just like a bad hdd.

I have had hdds going bad cause freezes more than bsod's, or either they simply intermittently show up to the controller. But it really all depends on what part of it is going bad if it is the hdd as to how it behaves hehe.

If you haven't run the memtest86 yet, I'd still suggest doing that first as Rob said, unless you just want to get a bigger hdd anyway and need an excuse hehe

 

[Kodilynn]

Memtest86 running as we speak. Gonna take awhile but we will see.

 

[saar]

download aida64 it will let you know about your mem and hd smartstatus. or hdd monitor will test out smart aswell. if you have a good email accout that will accept an iso i have a iso that will boot seperate and can test the hdd. let me know kod. also if it was ram take all ram out and boot with one stick atleast a gig is needed for windows to boot, if it boots and no bsod then get some new ram if it does bsod shutdown test another the same way. but i have a bunch of programs that might help just send me a pm we can chat if interested.

 

[Kodilynn]

On pass 3 on memtest86 with 0 errors. Pretty damn sure it's the HDD at this point. Gives me a reason to replace it with a larger one or SSD I guess. Not worried about HDD test since memory is fine it seems. Kinda confirms things.

 

[Darkon]

1 check the event logs look for IO errors
run chkdsk /f /r
but from the sounds of things the HDD is bad.

 

[Kodilynn]

New HDD is in, turns out the Blu-ray drive won't read discs anymore. found that out trying to boot off 4 different working known good discs. Fuck me. So, installing Windows via external CDROM and ill go from there.

 

[rob]

Still under warranty?

 

[seductive_words]

On pass 3 on memtest86 with 0 errors. Pretty damn sure it's the HDD at this point. Gives me a reason to replace it with a larger one or SSD I guess. Not worried about HDD test since memory is fine it seems. Kinda confirms things.

Depending on how mobile this laptop is I would go with an SSD, you won't be disappointed. You can hook up an external storage HHD for mass storage.

If the laptop needs to be mobile then I would just go with an HHD, lugging around an external is a PITA.

I learned a while ago that laptops aren't worth buying unless you're going to be mobile a lot.

 

[Kodilynn]

It's going to become a tad more mobile in the next month, so went with an HDD for now.

Out of warranty by 2 months.

 

[Kodilynn]

New HDD, everything is installed. All set I guess. Welp, see what I can pull off the old one via external enclosures and move on.

 

[fauxshizle]

Kodi, I would also check the Male/female I/O slot on your Laptop/HD , assuming its that new, its obviously a SATA drive. If for some reason there is a very dirty or damaged pin/slot on the drive interface, a new drive might just repeat the same issues. If you do grab a new drive, make sure its a SSD.
If yer not worried about mega storage for the money, the sheer Read/Write increase will make you giddy, not to mention the reduced power consumption.

2nd issue could possibly be something that memtest may not be able to account for and could be intermittent enuff not to show up. If you are unlucky enuff to have somehow damaged the drive controller or the SATA bus on the board, this can and usually be warrantied. It can and DOES happen, even the HD itself can fuck up your drive controller or bus simply by having a power issue ie: Voltage that is supposed to engage the drive is for some reason leaking back onto the board or drive enclosure and causing some grounding issues...Ive had it happen to me ONE RARE time, took forever to realize that the reason the bus was burned was because of a drive that took a dump via the controller , leaking voltage back throo the SATA cable.... weird shit. BUT, the issues associated with this problem were similar to yours until the board bus eventually went to shit.

Just a couple ideas. Its NOT always bad memory, alot of time, issues like this have to do with voltage problems either from dip-shits who think they can overclock correctly (voltage) or they have a drive that doesn't play well with others in the (voltage sandbox).

 

[Kodilynn]

As the post above said, I replaced the HDD and everything works great now. Memory tested fine.

 

[William12]

I've never had memory cause I/O errors.

 

[Kodilynn]

I've never had memory cause I/O errors.

Me either, was always device failures. Soon as I started getting them intermittently on torrents I knew I was in trouble.