Is my hard drive on the way out?

[Two_dogs]

G"day,

I came home the other day to be greeted by a new blue screen of death.

One of the puppies, (4 Years old and quite computer literate, just ask him) had been playing some of his educational games earlier in the day. He sometimes gets a bit bored and plays with my stuff too. On this occasion he had been rearranging the desktop icons and probably other tinkering as well. (I have tried different user logons with different desktops for each of us, but it always seems to cause more problems, WinME)

This before unseen BSOD advised, 'Cannot write to 'C' drive. Some files or folders may be lost'. The computer was completely locked up and I had to shut down with the power switch. On reboot the auto scandisk program started with the 'Thorough [performs Standard test and scans disk surface for errors]' option enabled.

I needed access to my computer at the time so did not wait for the test to finish, but cancelled instead. Re-ran scandisk in normal mode and it repaired some file size problems. The computer was very sluggish and locked up several times while trying to run Outlook, though other apps did not seem to have the same effect. Each time I started Outlook the program failed to load and locked the machine up. On each reboot the scandisk 'Thorough' option was enabled by default. I then ran the 'Inbox repair tool and recovered some files and Outlook ran normally.

I eventually ran scandisk in the thorough mode, which took about 4 hours for a 20G drive, and it reported 12 bad clusters, 5 unused and 7 containing the file C: \windows\help\wmplayer.chm. I am assuming that part of my outlook.pst file was also on bad clusters and the repair tool moved them to another cluster as the program now runs fine and all items appear intact.

Q1. Is the scandisk defaulting to the 'thorough' option part of the SMART disk monitoring program, as the usual auto scandisk option is for a standard test? Also, what info does the SMART drive monitoring program give the user and how, popup dialogue box etc?

Q2. Is it time to replace the hard drive before it all goes pear shaped? Could it be the computer has suffered a hard knock and crashed the stylus on the drive?


Two Dogs

[Saab Dastard]

2D,

I would suggest that it is not your HD that is in need of replacement, but your O/S! Windows ME really is a pile of p00!!

Others on this forum espouse Linux and / or Macs, but assuming you wish to stay with MS, with XP you can have separate, restricted, accounts for the "pups" where they can play to their heart's content without breaking your system.

It would also be a LOT more stable and have much better support for peripherals - although not all Win9X progs will run correctly under a proper 32-bit, pre-emptive, mutithreaded, protected-mode, multi-tasking O/S like XP!

But for security's sake, do make sure that your important files are backed up somehow - in case your hard disk DOES fail!

And you should always do so anyway if upgrading the O/S - just in case!

[Conan the Librarian]

Q2, errr. No. Worry thee not on that score. If you know or are prepared to get the model number of the hard drive, the manufacturers offten provide utilities to check the health of their hard drives. They understand that the one thing that is going to get you to spec another manufacturer, is the catastrophic loss of data on one of their products.

It is still a good opportunity to chant the mantra re: backing up your data, just in case... External drives are cheap nowadays and even if your whole PC were to die, you can use it on the next one, by simply plugging in to a USB port. It also gives a certain peace of mind

Conan

[DBTL]

All the usual symptoms of a HD going bad are there. A knowledgeable computer shop will be able to clone you a new drive out of the contents of the old one, while the going is still any good.