troubleshooting hard drive problems

7/28/2019 Troubleshooting Hard Drive Problems

1/14

Troubleshooting Hard Drive ProblemsBy Chabane Maidi | February 7th, 2011

Error talk

Uh-oh, the notorious Windows detected a hard disk problem error. What now?

This article will show you steps you can take to make a proper decision about the

problem. These steps can be taken for almost any suspected hard disk problem

whether or not youve gotten this error.

The first step is identifying which drive is affected. If you only have one HDD

(hard drive disk), then this doesnt apply to you. Ward off the urge to close the

error as fast as possible, and click the Show details down arrow.

In this expanded view, you should be able to determine which drive is possibly in

trouble.

na University: IT Training Tips Blog Blog Archive Troubleshooti... http://ittrainingtips.iu.edu/pc-hardware/troubleshooting-hard-driv

4 6/12/2013 1


2/14

It appears the culprit is a Samsung drive that Windows has assigned the drive

letter D to.

There are many useful tools for Windows out there (HDDScan, Seatools for

Windows, etc) that can help diagnose hard drive related problems, however its

better to do disk checks using tools outside the Windows environment. There are

a couple reasons for this: first, when running Windows, the hard drives are

constantly being accessed for read and write operations, whether they are

updates, scheduled operations like defragmentation, simple web browsing, or

even simply accessing the file system like checking documents and opening

programs. A thorough hard drive diagnosis can be compromised by these

operations, so its best to use utilities outside of Windows. The other reason is

that there are often multiple versions of the same tool and the one that is run

outside of Windows is almost always more robust than its Windows counterpart.

Using the Chkdsk utility to search and destroy errors

Chkdsk (presumably short for check disk) is a command line utility, meaning

that there is no graphical interface for it. Chkdsk scans specified hard drives in

search of problems and attempts to correct them so that the hard drive may

run stably again. While many reported problems are unfixable physical damage

to the device, there are some errors that can be mitigated by the chkdsk tool.

Sometimes chkdsk can recover some previously damaged and unreadable data,

at which point you would want to immediately back up this data before taking any

more actions. In other cases, if chkdsk locates bad sectors, it may be able to

quarantine these sectors so that they will not be written to or read from

anymore. The bad sectors will then be replaced by what are called spare


4 6/12/2013 1


3/14

sectors.

Unfortunately, even if chkdsk is able to fix up a drive, it is often only temporary.

Problems are commonly akin to a rip in cloth that tends to just get worse over

time. If chkdsk reports problems, important files should be backed up despite its

ability to repair them.

How to access and use chkdsk

The best way to access chkdsk is from what is called the recovery consolelocated on the Windows installation DVD media. First, boot from the Windows

disk (for information on how to do this, refer to this knoweldge base article: On a

PC, how do I boot from something other than the hard drive?).

There are thousands of different models of motherboards out there, and each one

is a little different, so its up to you to figure out exactly how to boot from

something other than your primary hard drive. On the machine used for this

article, this screen shows up when the computer just turns on:

As indicated by this menu, the Boot Menu can be accessed if the F11 key is

pressed. This is what that boot menu looks like:


4 6/12/2013 1


4/14

Once again, even if your motherboard has a similar boot menu, it likely looks

different. In fact, the whole process could be very different. However, once you

are able to boot from the Windows installation disk, the steps taken should be

nearly identical to the ones found in this article.

To boot from the Windows installation disk, the CD/DVD drive in this list should

the be item to select. After waiting through loading screens, you should come to

the first screen you can interact with. Assuming you want to keep the default

language selections associated with the installation disk, just go ahead and clickNext.


4 6/12/2013 1


5/14

On the next screen, click Repair your computer.

Choose the radio button labelled System Recovery Options and then click

Next.


4 6/12/2013 1


6/14

Command Prompt is the recovery option of interest because it allows you to

punch in command line operations, like chkdsk.

The Command Prompt (command line) works by punching a single-line

command of text at a time. When the enter key is pressed, the command is

executed and the result shows up on-screen. The following steps are a few

commands that will help us use the chkdsk tool.

Remember how the potentially afflicted Samsung drive was assigned D as the


4 6/12/2013 1


7/14

drive letter? Unfortunately, that may not be the case outside of Windows. To

check the right drive, we have to know which letter the Samsung drive is. If you

only have one hard drive, then C is the letter, and you dont have to worry about

the next few steps until the chkdsk command.

Use the diskpart utility by typing diskpart and hitting enter.

Then after DISKPART> type list disk and hit enter. The commands have been

underlined in red.

A list of storage devices will be shown now. In the case of the image, there aretwo hard drives, one being 931 gigabytes (one terabyte as specified by the

manufacturer) in size, while the other is 298 gigabytes (320 gigabytes

manufacturer spec) in size. The third item of the list is actually a USB flash drive

listed as having 7663 megabytes (8GB spec).

The Samsung drive is the one with one terabyte, so in order to select it, the

command select disk 0 should be typed followed by hitting enter. Important:

You want to make sure that the number after select disk belongs to the disk you

want to scan using chkdsk.

Now that the Samsung drive is the selected disk, type the command detail disk

in order to not only verify this is indeed the Samsung drive, but more importantly

it will display what drive letter is being used outside of Windows.

These last two commands are shown in the following image underlined in red:


4 6/12/2013 1


8/14


9/14

chkdsk will now run. Since the parameter /r was used, this will likely take

several hours. We chose to use parameters that could attempt to do delicate

fixes to the drive, so it is highly not recommendedto stop the test prematurely.

If this is being run on a laptop, then seek a stable power source.

Youll know when the test is completed when your screen looks similar to this:

These results come in good news and bad news. The good news, obviously, is that

no problems were detected and that means theres a chance that the Windows


4 6/12/2013 1


10/14

error flags were just false alarms. The bad news, on the other hand, is that if

there is indeed a problem, its likely not something that can be fixed easily and

that theres some more investigation work to do.

If you got different results, then it was probably that either you had errors but

chkdsk successfully fixed them or chkdsk found errors and was unable to fix

them. In case of the former, congratulations! Theres a good chance that you

wont run into that Windows error again. If you do see the error again down the

road, or in case of the latter event, then continue reading onto the next section.

Using SeaTools for DOS

SeaTools is a famous name in the HDD diagnostics universe, as well it should be.

Practically all well-known hard drive manufacturers will take errors flagged in

SeaTools as enough information for them to deem your hard drive worthy of an

RMA (return material authorization). Why not use SeaTools from the beginning

you may ask? A boot disk has to be created in order to use the better version of

SeaTools, which would have been unnecessary if the problem was fixed with the

chkdsk tool. SeaTools comes in two forms: Windows and DOS (direct operating

system), and remembering that HDD diagnostic tests in the Windows

environment can be lacking, DOS is better.

To get SeaTools, follow this link here. Download the ISO file, and burn it onto a

disk using a CD burner tool, like Windows Disk Image Burner or NERO.

Windows Disk Image Burner comes with any installation of Windows 7 and should

be the default program associated with ISO files. If you double-click the

downloaded file, you may see a screen like this:

Put in a blank disk and click burn. Once the disk is ready, all you have to do is

boot from that disk the same way you did for the Windows installation disk

earlier. You may also make a USB flash drive bootable so as to not use a blank

disk, but that technique is outside the scope of this tutorial.

Once you boot from disk, you should come to a screen that looks like this:


14 6/12/2013 1


11/14

Go ahead and click I Accept to continue.

There will be a list of hard drives that belong to your computer in the center of

the screen. Verify that the hard drive in question is the one selected. If not, click

the correct one to select it. Once the correct drive is selected (marked by a little

checkmark next to the drive name), click Basic Tests at the top left corner of

the screen as shown in the following image:

Choose the Long Test because even if the Short Test says the drive is fine,


14 6/12/2013 1


12/14

youd want to do the long test to be sure. The long test will do everything the

short test does anyways. If the short test says that the drive is bad, then the hard

drive manufacturer may tell you to do the long test for the sake of certainty. Like

chkdsks scan, this test may take hours to complete, especially if its a large

drive, so youre going to want to make sure that it doesnt get interrupted.

Perhaps let it run while you are out, or even overnight.

After the test completes, your screen may look like this:

Since SeaTools is considered by many to be the best hard drive diagnostic tool out

there, if SeaTools finds no errors, then Windows is likely blowing the whistle

incorrectly. The final section will address this situation.

If SeaTools did report errors, then its probably just a matter of time for that

drive, and so replacing it may be the best bet. Hard drive manufacturers are

often surprisingly lenient with warranties. Give the drive manufacturer a call, and

see what you can do.

Using Windows Disk Management as a last ditch effort

Youve come a long way, and now you just want Windows to stop with the

phantom errors. One way that usually does the trick is to re-format the drive. If

Windows is installed on the drive, then youd reformat your drive using the

Windows boot disk and reinstall Windows. Dont forget to back up your personal

data!

If the hard drive is just being used as a data drive, then back up your data, and

use Disk Management to reformat the drive. If you are using Windows Vista or

Windows 7, click the Start button and type Disk Management where it reads

Search programs and files in greyed-out italics. Click Create and format hard

disk partitions that populates to the top of the Start Menu (this is the search

result using Windows 7. In Windows Vista, click Computer Management). A

window should pop up that looks like this:


14 6/12/2013 1


13/14

Right-click the drive you intend to format and click Format Youll come to a

screen that looks like this:

You can rename the volume label if you wish, its what the hard drive will be

referred to as in your file systems. Continue through the steps and choose Master

Boot Record (MBR) instead of GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the boot record to be

safe.

Youre all set! That should do the trick. If you still get error pop-ups from

Windows, then it probably only happens when files are being written to the disk,

and if it gets annoying enough, then you might have to go ahead and replace the

drive whether or not theres anything truly wrong with it. If thats not an option,

then a couple ideas might be to re-install Windows, or possibly try the drive in

another computer, as it might be a motherboard SATA/IDE controller failure. If

its fine in another computer, then look if there are new firmware updates for your

motherboard on the manufacturers website.

Tackling hard drive-related problems can really disconcerting, but if you try at it


14 6/12/2013 1


14/14

0 Tweet 0

enough, you can do it!

2 Responses to "Troubleshooting Hard Drive Problems" to

Troubleshooting Hard Drive Problems

max Says:August 30th, 2011 at 7:56 am

Is using Chkdsk like this better than just running it when windows is running?

Ken Crist Says:March 6th, 2013 at 10:33 am

This link was essential reference material when my old HDD was starting to fail. I used it to

determine:

1) My old disk needs to be replaced.

2) To scan my replacement disk to verify it is not damaged ( beyond the manufactured issued bad sectors)

I know this post is a little old, but hopefully Chabane Maidi will get my thanks for posting this.

Like 1


troubleshooting hard drive problems

Documents