Hard disc on the way out?

[A Very Civil Pilot]

I hope not, as if it is it will be too much hassle to replace!

Basically whenever I ScanDisc , it comes up with over 1 million bytes in bad sectors, out of the 14 million or so checked. It does fix them all, but there are still bad sectors found in the next scan.

During a Disc Defragmentation there are lots of red-lined boxes showing bad sectors. It usually sorts them out, but the last defrag hung up at 67%.

Does this look as if the hard disc is on the way out?

(15GB hard drive, Intel Celeron, running W98)

[Background Noise]

Don't know if it's on the way out but something keeps messing it up - maybe that 'something else' is the problem.

This may however be the time to get a replacement/second hard disk - you can more than double the size of that one for less than £50 and then suck all the stuff you want off it before it goes completely, and they're dead simple to fit.

Maybe then if it's formatted it'll be good again - if its worth it.

[A Very Civil Pilot]

So, is it as simple as going to PC world and then unplugging the old one?

[rickity]

Oh if only life with PC's was ever simple.

I agree that it may sound like the drive is on the way out, but it may be suffereing from a virus so it may be worth check that out ( free antivirus software form grisoft.com)

Consideration needs to be given if you decide on a new drive to the following

will a larger drive be supported by your bios (check the manual)
Do you want to make the new drive the bootable on (good idea if the old one is on its way out) so do you have all the drivers required and the operating system cd and can see the cd rom from a bootable floopy or boot from the cd rom, have you the installation disks and required product/licence numbers for any software you want to continue using. If the answer is yes to that little lot the job is relativly simple. Plug in the new disk as master, make the old disk a slave (see jumpers on the back of the disk drive) install the operating system and other software and transfer files as required.

If the answer is no to all or some of the above it raises the risk to losing data but thats going to happen if you do nothing. Doesn't mean that it can't be done or that its particularly difficult but it is more work.

good luck

Rickity

[A-V-8R]

Before you Scandisk/Defrag, may I suggest you ctr alt del all running programs and any that you have that don't show up, Ghost Keyloggers, for example.

Mine used to hang up, found out it was the Anitivirus program....

Microsoft says not to rely on their Defrag. Go to an outside vendor, me, I prefer Ontrack System Suite over Norton, and use theirs.

Also, get a good disk cleaner and clean out all the junk. Again I use Ontrack, but you may prefer others.

After cleaning the disk, not with scandisk, but with a file cleaner, get a program to clean out the Registry and defrag the registry.
The first time I ran Registry Fixer I found 1700 errors on the first pass, and 320 on the second...

I keep my computers on 24/7, the one in the living room has not been shut off in 3 years...


In other words, I think your HD is good, just needs a good reaming and cleaning.....

[A Very Civil Pilot]

No problems with the scandisc, I always shut everything down. It was just this once that it hung up at 67%.

I've got a reg cleaner, but it's trying to remember what is useful stuff, and what is cr@p. Quite often the reg entry name bears no resemblance to the programme name.

[BlueRobin]

Yes, it's dying - get rid of it!

[fobotcso]

Agreed! Get any irreplaceable stuff off now if you value it and replace.

When you fit the new HDD as Master and re-install the OS, keep the old as slave to copy over the data.

To confirm the old HDD health indepenently of Windows, why not boot with a rescue disk and run scandisk or chkdsk with that?

But one last shot might be to reformat and re-install the OS to eliminate errors caused by wear of the HDD pick-up mechanisms.

[DJPC]

If the disk surface is damaged - no data will be writtento or read from these areas again. The only IMO way to determine for sure
is Backup ur important stuff and
Fdisk ( Delete and recreate the primary partition)

Unconditional format ( boot from a and type - format c: /u)
If you get errors during this - chuck it, install a new HD
reinstall opsys if no errors-
I have had many HD 's fail, usual click of death sound when you boot. Dont wait too long to back up ur stuff!!!