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Hard drive issues - Printable Version

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Hard drive issues - A Black Falcon - 16th May 2015

Okay, I'm having issues with a hard drive, and I wonder if anyone can help.

I have Windows Vista, and there are 4 hard drives in the system (two 320GB drives, a 500GB, and 2TB). One of the four SATA ports on the motherboard broke off several years ago, so I got a PCI SATA card for one of the drives. The 500GB drive is the one attached to the PCI card. I recently got a 4TB external drive, which uses USB.

Some time (I don't know how long, for a while I didn't notice the drive was missing... :p) after moving a bunch of stuff over to the new drive, the 500GB drive, the one attached to the PCI card, has vanished from Windows. Neither the drive nor any of its partitions exist in Disk Management, and the disk does not appear in the Device Manager either. The drive isn't listed in the system BIOS either, but since it's attached to a PCI card and not the system, that might be expected. The drive IS listed in the PCI card's RAID-settings BIOS, which is by Silicon Image, but you can't do anything there except set up RAID options, which I'm not using. So I knew the drive wasn't totally dead, something (I have no clue what) just went very wrong.

Next, I tried attaching the drive to the motherboard, using the SATA port that the 2TB drive is on (I forget which of the two physical 320GBs is the boot drive, so I didn't want to mess with those unless I have to). I didn't attach the 2TB to anything, just left it unconnected. This... caused Windows to fail to correctly boot -- the screen went black after the Windows logon screen (where you choose an account and enter your password). I could get the Task Manager to open and get to a few things through that, but it didn't really work. This was quite concerning to say the least.

After this, I re-hooked up stuff the way it was at first -- 2TB to motherboard, 500GB to PCI card. If the problem is something relating to the PCI card, I don't want to mess up some other drive too by hooking it up to it...

Most recently, I tried a Linux boot DVD that I made several months back, to see if I'd get any farther there. Here things get interesting -- Linux can see the 500GB drive! Now, the 500GB drive has three partitions on it, two about 220GBs and one about 9GB. Linux could see, and access, two of those partitions, the small one and one of the 220GB ones. I copied some files off of both partitions to another partition and it worked fine; access was slow, but it's doing it off of an OS on a DVD, so maybe that was a factor. Anyway, it worked with no problems.

Now, the third partition, called Amur, is an issue; Linux can't mount that drive. It can see the partition name and the amount of data on the partition (~120GB full of ~220GB), which is correct, but can't open (mount) the drive. Maybe this is related to why Windows can't see the drive at all? The OS gives the error message "This location could not be displayed. Sorry, could not display all the contents of “Amur”: Error when getting information for file '/media/ubuntu/Amur/$RECYCLE.BIN': Input/output error". Hmm.. interesting; I don't know what it means, but it's something different anyway. Is there any way of fixing this and gaining access to the drive again?

Going back to Windows afterwards, the drive still doesn't exist in either the Disk or Device Managers. Other partition management programs in Windows cannot see the disk either.

So uh... any help here? I'd prefer to not lose the data on the drive (I could at least copy over the two partitions Linux can see to another drive, but not the other one of course), but anything that gets the drive working again would be great.


Hard drive issues - Great Rumbler - 16th May 2015

I think the problem is that apparently you are still using a computer from 2003...


Hard drive issues - A Black Falcon - 16th May 2015

2007. Though the hard drive with issues is from ~2008-2010, and the PCI card from 2012 or 2013. It's not THAT old.

I do still have my computer from 2001, but it's working fine... well, I had to re-install Windows a few years ago, but it works now. I quite rarely use it, though, of course; that probably helps.


Hard drive issues - Sacred Jellybean - 16th May 2015

man, what a miser


Hard drive issues - Dark Jaguar - 22nd May 2015

Sorry to say it ABF, but from what you describe the drive appears to have failed. If you can't even see it in the BIOS, it's gone. The average life expectancy of a hard drive is about 5 years, so you should be glad it lasted as long as it did, but it's not unexpected it should fail.

Yes, some drives last a lot longer than that expectancy, but don't draw too many unrealistic expectations from those cases. I will suggest this though. Right now, you should be sure to buy Western Digital or Hitachi. At the moment, Seagate seems to be suffering some quality control issues so they've been suffering some pretty bad failure rates.


Hard drive issues - etoven - 22nd May 2015

A Black Falcon Wrote:Okay, I'm having issues with a hard drive, and I wonder if anyone can help.

I have Windows Vista, and there are 4 hard drives in the system (two 320GB drives, a 500GB, and 2TB). One of the four SATA ports on the motherboard broke off several years ago, so I got a PCI SATA card for one of the drives. The 500GB drive is the one attached to the PCI card. I recently got a 4TB external drive, which uses USB.

Some time (I don't know how long, for a while I didn't notice the drive was missing... :p) after moving a bunch of stuff over to the new drive, the 500GB drive, the one attached to the PCI card, has vanished from Windows. Neither the drive nor any of its partitions exist in Disk Management, and the disk does not appear in the Device Manager either. The drive isn't listed in the system BIOS either, but since it's attached to a PCI card and not the system, that might be expected. The drive IS listed in the PCI card's RAID-settings BIOS, which is by Silicon Image, but you can't do anything there except set up RAID options, which I'm not using. So I knew the drive wasn't totally dead, something (I have no clue what) just went very wrong.

Next, I tried attaching the drive to the motherboard, using the SATA port that the 2TB drive is on (I forget which of the two physical 320GBs is the boot drive, so I didn't want to mess with those unless I have to). I didn't attach the 2TB to anything, just left it unconnected. This... caused Windows to fail to correctly boot -- the screen went black after the Windows logon screen (where you choose an account and enter your password). I could get the Task Manager to open and get to a few things through that, but it didn't really work. This was quite concerning to say the least.

After this, I re-hooked up stuff the way it was at first -- 2TB to motherboard, 500GB to PCI card. If the problem is something relating to the PCI card, I don't want to mess up some other drive too by hooking it up to it...

Most recently, I tried a Linux boot DVD that I made several months back, to see if I'd get any farther there. Here things get interesting -- Linux can see the 500GB drive! Now, the 500GB drive has three partitions on it, two about 220GBs and one about 9GB. Linux could see, and access, two of those partitions, the small one and one of the 220GB ones. I copied some files off of both partitions to another partition and it worked fine; access was slow, but it's doing it off of an OS on a DVD, so maybe that was a factor. Anyway, it worked with no problems.

Now, the third partition, called Amur, is an issue; Linux can't mount that drive. It can see the partition name and the amount of data on the partition (~120GB full of ~220GB), which is correct, but can't open (mount) the drive. Maybe this is related to why Windows can't see the drive at all? The OS gives the error message "This location could not be displayed. Sorry, could not display all the contents of “Amur”: Error when getting information for file '/media/ubuntu/Amur/$RECYCLE.BIN': Input/output error". Hmm.. interesting; I don't know what it means, but it's something different anyway. Is there any way of fixing this and gaining access to the drive again?

Going back to Windows afterwards, the drive still doesn't exist in either the Disk or Device Managers. Other partition management programs in Windows cannot see the disk either.

So uh... any help here? I'd prefer to not lose the data on the drive (I could at least copy over the two partitions Linux can see to another drive, but not the other one of course), but anything that gets the drive working again would be great.

Well congrats, sir you found a way to peek my interest enough to post.
I agree it sounds like a controller failure..

What you need it this (I use this at work):
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/thermaltake-dual-bay-docking-station-for-most-internal-sata-hard-drives/9419596.p?id=1218102199901&skuId=9419596&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=9419596&extensionType=pla:g&s_kwcid=PTC!pla!!!127785011599!g!!72241082119&kpid=9419596&k_clickid=560bee4d-6a1c-4af3-bc4a-8db826fa5f47&kpid=9419596&lsft=ref:212,loc:1&ksid=560bee4d-6a1c-4af3-bc4a-8db826fa5f47&ksprof_id=8&ksaffcode=pg14114&ksdevice=c

And this (spin right) $89
[URL="https://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm"]https://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm

Assuming you really need your stuff back...
[/URL]


Hard drive issues - Dark Jaguar - 23rd May 2015

I took it he was just looking to find out if he could get the disc working again.

If data recovery is your thing, the cheapest solution would be to buy an identical make/model of that exact same hard drive and swap the controller boards. However, that assumes that the controller board is the only thing wrong. I can't promise that's the case, and also the act of switching those boards around is risky. Modern hard drives are calibrated to microscopic precision, and if it gets thrown off it'll never work right again. There's a possibility this already happened and the disc surface has been scratched.

Be aware of all of this before you go searching out any such recovery tools.

Ultimately, the safest solution is a RAID setup using a number of possible backup options (you lose storage space, but gain redundancy). Failing that, an external backup drive is always an option.

I'll be frank, I'm not taking my own advice here. Setting up such solutions costs money I'd rather be spending on something else. My solution has, instead, been to upgrade my hard drives every 3 years or so after researching what's the most reliable brand on the market. I almost got into some trouble after going a bit too long between upgrades, but I was able to get the drive started just long enough to transfer the partition to a new drive (and then extend said partition, as generally my new drives are also upgrades). Actually, these days magnetic hard drive density has slowed down quite a bit. This isn't too surprising. Magnetic storage was starting to reach theoretical limits, and 3 TB seems about as high as they're willing to go for individual drives. Further, flash memory has really taken off. That's been getting denser and denser at incredible rates, and in the next 5 years I expect it to overtake magnetic storage in both density and cost per gig. In other words, all the hard drive manufacturers are pooring all their research into flash now, not magnetic storage. The only annoying thing is that 3 TB drives aren't dropping in price as time goes on. It's a bit frustrating in that sense (though not nearly as frustrating as Microsoft selling a 500GB XBox 360 Hard Drive for $110).


Hard drive issues - A Black Falcon - 23rd May 2015

So despite that Linux can see and write from two of the three partitions, you think the controller has failed? Bah.


Hard drive issues - Dark Jaguar - 25th May 2015

I think I misread some stuff there. If another OS can see the partitions, then it's entirely possible it's failed. Linux can't see NTFS, so don't be surprised that that one won't show up. If the drive is still loading, your next step is to delete and recreate that partition.


Hard drive issues - nickdaddyg - 5th July 2015

My other PC (a 2007 Vista OS HP) is now experiencing hard drive problems. Audible clicking.
I've actually decided today to get rid of it, and buy a refurbished XP OS Dell. The HD was not worth replacing, as that Vista turned out to be crap almost right out of the box.


Hard drive issues - A Black Falcon - 15th July 2015

Audible clicking? Yeah, that's pretty much a shot drive then. Too bad. I still have no problem with Vista though, patched up it's a perfectly good OS.


Hard drive issues - Dark Jaguar - 20th July 2015

My hard drive was starting to read slowly, and it took me about an hour to figure out that it was a good sign my drive was getting ready to fail. I've finally upgraded it to a 4 TB HDD. I did run into a problem there. My drive hadn't failed, so I didn't have issues copying the partition over. However, I've learned that the old MBR partition tables have a hard limit of only being able to store information for 2 TB of data. So, I wouldn't be able to expand that partition to fill the whole disk. The newer GUID partition table has a FAR higher limit, but it's only compatible with the newer UEFI firmware standard (which has replaced BIOS for PCs). I'm not at a point where I can afford to upgrade my entire PC just yet, but I eventually found I could put the boot loader for Windows 7 on my secondary 1 TB drive (which uses MBR). This gets the boot process far enough along for the OS to take over for the BIOS, and Windows 7 does in fact support GUID just fine, so then it switches over and I can boot just fine. The whole transfer process took over a day (as I said, the old drive was failing) but all's well with the world now.

One thing I can say for sure is that recent Seagate drives are failing more often than they have in the past. I'd go with either Western Digital or HGST (owned by Western Digital) for more reliable hard disk drives at this point. HGST especially has very high reliability and very good prices.


Hard drive issues - A Black Falcon - 16th April 2016

So as an update, last week I finally tried to do something with this drive again, after just leaving it alone for a while. Using that Linux livecd, I copied everything off of two of the partitions on the drive onto one of my other drives. It seems to be fine, hopefully. The last partition, though, which has ~90GBs of games on it, sadly can't be accessed even by Linux... and I can't manage to get anything in Windows to read it either. Argh. I really wanted to avoid having to just lose all that data... most of the games on the drive are things I barely played anyway, but some I got a good ways into and really don't want to have to start over if I want to play them again, including Dragon Age: Origins, X-Blades, and a few more.


... And on a related note, though Jade Empire was on one of the partitions that was accessible, the game seems to have broken in the several years since I played it last, and now it won't boot... or rather, trying to boot the game just displays a loading art screen which goes nowhere. Searching online I see other reports of the issue, but no suggested solution. I tried suggested solutions for other problems that game has now, but nothing fixes this... argh. What do I have to do, buy the Xbox version and start the game over from the beginning even thoguh I still have my PC version save files, just fo finish the game (I got fairly far into the PC version back in 2010, but didn't finish it).