HD Fooked and Seasons Greetings :)

[Saxif]

Yo folks,

I know most of you don't play much/at all or play SC (Cern) and those that do I see at geek club but I need to post count whilst Las is AWOL 

Anyway, my HD is throwing a S.M.A.R.T error a.k.a  a wobbly! (some kind of diagnostic tool thingy) and its also crashing and I am working on it to see if I can repair it, Scan are making me jump through hoops by making me erase everything and start again with reinstalling Vista.  I suspect that it'll be proper screwed though so I doubt I'll be back till a week or so in the new year.  Which sucks cos I'll be way way out of the lvl/arena/raid/rep curve

So see you guys in the new year, hope you all had good xmas's and all the best for the new year.  Cern, hope you had chance to complete Spore

Sax.

[Cernos]

If your hard disk is giving SMART errors it should be replaced immediately. SMART is an early warning system of disk failure but once these warnings start happening there is only one way and that's down. The drive WILL fail at some point quite soon, it might be a slow erratic death or a sudden one but you need to get your data off and your disk replaced now while you still can.

To quote from Wikipedia: "The purpose of S.M.A.R.T. is to warn a user or system administrator of impending drive failure while there is still time to take preventative action, such as copying the data to a replacement device."

If its still under warranty tell Scan where to get off with reinstalling Windows. This is pointless as the drive is clearly faulty and you need a replacment.

As for Xmas, had a really nice one thanks though I now have aching hands from playing too much Guitar Hero.

[Saxif]

Hmm, when I first chatted to Scan I didn't know what SMART was, obviously I googled it since.  I don't really wanna go through the hassle of formatting my HD, reinstalling Vista and then running EStool from the Samsung web site (takes 3hr 10mins) but I also don't wanna fuck off the guy who's helping me as he is the one who is gonna be sending me a new HD at the end of the day.  As for backing everything up, already done, just a pita to have to reinstal games and updates and anti-virus e.t.c then have to do it all again on a new HD.

Would rather spend my time playing than fixing but might buy a 2nd HD to act as a back up now this has happened to me

Sax.

[Saxif]

Will reinstalling Vista make the SMART error go away as its a preductive thing that monitors parameters over time?  If I format and start again will it need to run for a certain amount of time to amass enough data to predict that things are going wrong?

Sax.

[Cernos]

The SMART system is independant of the Operating System, it runs from BIOS I believe. Reinstalling Vista might make the warnings go away temporarily because it might reinstall onto a different area of the hard disk that is less damaged. Or it might make them worse. If you run the diagnostic tool provided by the HD manufacturer it should tell you how much damage the drive currently has.

But if you don't replace the drive all you would be doing is masking the problem and delaying the inevitable. This drive will fail, SMART is a pretty reliable indicator of that.

A second hard disk is definitely a good idea, then you can at least make sure important stuff is backed up. I always have a minimum of three hard disks in any machine (one for Windows and applications/games, one for data and one for backup (usually external). If you don't mind Windows, apps/games and data all on the same C drive, then a two disk system is fine (with the second disk as either manual backup or automatic backup via RAID 1).

Cheers
Cern

Will reinstalling Vista make the SMART error go away as its a preductive thing that monitors parameters over time?  If I format and start again will it need to run for a certain amount of time to amass enough data to predict that things are going wrong?

Sax.

[Saxif]

I am only running 1 HD in this machione atm but am defineatly thinking about putting another in now.  Running a programme called HDtune atm, see what that says.

Sax.

[Saxif]

Wll, I get with HDtuner a (B8) (Unknown attribute) error.  Everything else is fine and am currently doing a error scan with HD tuner but I am a little confused as there is evidence to suggest Samsung have released poor quality drives previously.  There is also evidence to suggest that they corrected their error and updated their utility tool which always used to throw up errors on their drives previously to discount that problem.  I am wondering if a reinstal might fix my problem as its a Unknown Attribute, it might be something random.  Have decided to buy a 2nd drive from Scan, gonna go Western Digital as I have had 2 drives from them before and no problems in the combined 5 years running time (3+2), stick that in and try and figure out how to use Acronis to copy everything across whilst I mess about with my Samsung drive.

Fingers X'd

Sax.

[Cernos]

Were you getting S.M.A.R.T warnings at boot? If so then this was being detected by your motherboard BIOS and would be a more fundamental problem and a pretty reliable indicator. If your warnings were coming from diagnostics running under Vista then there is room for the possibility its the utility which is throwing up false errors.

I've only ever had one Samsung drive and that failed very early in its life. I've not heard many good things about Samsung drives. Bbut Western Digital are very solid. I've always used them right back from the days of the old 486 (!!) and in all that time only had one failure and that was after about 4-5 years use.

[Saxif]

Yup as soon as it boots I get a "American Megatrends" page load up that tells me about my HD being "BAD".  Then I press F1 and it continues booting up.

Sax.

[eKo]

Means it's detected by the BIOS (thought so since you can enable/disable SMART there) and reinstalling will be for nought. My WD Raptor drive crashed earlier this month after a little over a year , but at least they don't make a fuss out of it (ok, the raptor drives do have 5 years warranty), I just handed it in and now have to wait 4-6 weeks.

Waiting to get it back to rebuild my PC, WD raptor drive for windows/apps, WD velociraptor drive for games and 2 750Gb Seagate disks in raid 0 for data/music/movies/series plus an external 500Gb USB drive:). Had to buy a new PSU as well as the one I have now wasn't strong enough for the 2 disks in raid, doh.

PS: Happy New Year! And don't get too drunk .

[Saxif]

Got a spare HD now, just got to get round to putting it into my pc.  I have been doing some modeling with my time off whilst my pc has been fooked which is good as I have been putting it off for ages

New years was great fun, went out as black and white with my bird, I'll post some phot's later, got drunk and had a hang over the next day but it wouldn't be new years in Weymouth any other way

Eko, you can prolly check out my facebook page for some phot's as can anyone else who's hooked into facebook!!

Take it easy,

Sax.

[Lasiien]

Hey all, hope you all had a good Christmas and Happy New Year too

[Darkly]

Aye, happy new year all

[Saxif]

Hey Folks,

Need some help if possible with my new HD.  Situation is still have old dodgy Samsung in pc, just put a new Western Digital in the pc to instal Vista to and use eventually as back up.  The problem is the fact that the new HD isn't being recognized in "My Computer" but it is found in device manager.  What I think is going wrong is I think it needs mapping as the 4 partitions I have atm on my Samsung use A-Z.  Vista is telling me my new Western Digital drive is working properly but as its not on "My Computer" I am at a bit of a loss

I don't know if it is important where I put the SATA cable on my mobo, so I just stuck it in a spare slot, should |I mess about with various slots?  I have 6 and 3 are currently in use.  Reason I can't map it myself is because I have no idea what it would come under, and anyway I am not operating a network, kinda confused atm

Sax.

[eKo]

If you right-click on My Computer on your desktop and select Manage, does the drive show up in Disk Management? If so I think you just need to right-click and assign/change a drive letter. Shouldn't really matter where you put the SATA cable (especially if you say the HD appears in the device manager). But since you want to (re)install Vista on it anyway, why do you need to see it already? Just run the Vista installation and install on the new HD.

Personally I'd pull the SATA/IDE cable from your Samsung drive, install Visa on the WD drive and once that's done replug the cable, but mainly because I'm so used to the C-drive/partition being the boot drive. Vista does support being installed on another drive/partition, so it wouldn't be a problem if you do it otherwise.