Corrupt files on internal hard drives

[marshalllaw]

Hi all,

Lately I've begun noticing some strange data issues with my 2 hard drives. When copying files off a server or a portable hard drive, often the files become corrupt when they hit either of my internal hard drives (Seagate Barracuda 1tb and a WD 1tb green). It often takes a couple tries before the sfv's show a valid match in the files.

I also often observe when mounting some installation iso's such as my MSDN Microsoft Office, the installshield will say "file <xyz> is corrupt" even though the sfvs indicate that the file is not corrupt". I know for certain that these installation ISO's are not corrupt as they install perfectly fine on another computer.

My first guess is that both my hard drives from 2009 are probably failing and need a replacement but does anybody know of a good way to confirm that this is the issue or if there is a way to fix this problem?.

I suppose if there is no way around this, it may be a good time to get an SSD

Thanks in advance!.

 

[kenrivers]

Have you tried running chkdsk on either of the two hard drives you mentioned or done any other drive diagnostics on those drives?

 

[marshalllaw]

Have you tried running chkdsk on either of the two hard drives you mentioned or done any other drive diagnostics on those drives?

I've run chkdsk /f on every partition of both hard drives, but it found no errors. I also ran the SEAGATE diagnostic tool I found on their website. It did not find any errors either.

Cant think of what else could be causing it other than the hard drives. Could it be the SATA cables?.

 

[kenrivers]

Here are some suggestions I saw elsewhere:

"Run chkdsk /r on the drives - see if that helps."

"I had a similar issue awhile back. To make a long story short it turned out to be a bad ram module. Similar to your issue the data, whether copying between drives or downloading from the net, (depending on the size), would be corrupt. The fact that it was only with a certain size or larger file gave me the clue.

Tested this by switching the ram out, leaving only one stick in at a time. Took a little while but was able to track down the bad ram and confirm. Anyways, changed the suspect ram out and all was good again.... "

Hope that helps.

 

[marshalllaw]

My issue seems to be file size independent and pretty intermittent but I'll give this a go. I'll try run memtest 86 and see what crops up.

 

[marshalllaw]

Ouch. My 1 year old Gskill DDR3 ram kit failed memtest86 in like 20seconds of run >.<.

Looks like i'll need to get some new ram. I'll test each chip individually.

Thanks for the great suggestion!, I actually would not have thought to check the ram.

 

[kenrivers]

Did replacing the faulty RAM solve the problem?

 

[marshalllaw]

Just finished doing tests.

A new exact replacement of my existing ram kit fixed the problem completely!.

Thanks all!

 

[marshalllaw]

Best answer selected by marshalllaw.