[SOLVED] How to verify failing Seagate HDD?

[Astralv]

Hey there
My music/ recording computer developed issues. Just recently it was working well and we were recording. It is Intel Ivy Bridge 3770K system with multiple SSDs and HHDs, which store music software and audio samples. The E drive is 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD. It was built in 2013, but used very lightly, approximately few hours a week or less.

Strange behavior: It suddenly not able to open projects with Cakewalk DAW. The Cakewalk is installed on C drive. The projects it supposed to open all stored on E drive. When attempt to open a project, the wheel is spinning and spinning and spinning and eventually, it says- program is not responding. It freezes. This audio software recently was sold to another company and had stability issues for years, so I have seen it "Not Responding" before, but usually it would be one time thing and then it would work.

I have tried to run Disk Check by Windows. After hanging for significant time with no progress, it says, "Windows was not able to scan this drive. Try the scan again. If problem persists, Scan and repair drive." Also trying to test E- drive with Seagate Tools and it runs scan on one of HDDs but not able to run on another (they not identified by letter, but I assume- the one that hanging is E drive).

I dont want to buy another drive and struggle with moving data from this drive if it is not broken. Any other reasons it may be acting out?

I was told to use https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/crystaldiskinfo.html Crystal Disk Info from this link to check it- what do you think? Thank you very much!

 

[Newtonius]

Yes use crystal disk info. It tells you immediately if your disk is failing. It's a tool that quickly shows you all the sensor info such as hours on, error read/write rates, temps, etc. A normal drive will have a blue light next to the name and temp to indicate it's okay while failing drives are yellow and have a caution label next to it. It's a warning to back up your data before imminent failure.

 

[USAFRet]

I dont want to buy another drive and struggle with moving data from this drive if it is not broken. Any other reasons it may be acting out?

Do you have a current, active backup of this data?
As in backed up in the last 24-48 hours?

If not, why not?
You should have that for ALL data you desire to not lose. No matter the state of the physical drive it lives on.

 

[Astralv]

Thanks a lot, I will try to install from the link they shared. I dont like to install anything on that computer as it barely has 40Gb left on 500GB SSD. Hope this program is not big.

USAFRet, I have another computer (newer) that has copy of this drive as of a year ago. We did not record much on this computer, so will only lose few songs in early stage of recording. I have tried real time backups in the past. Too many issues with backups. For example: My music computers have at least 6 drives each. Usually Backup drives fill up and not able to support all the data. I had 4TB, it filled. I went 8TB, I think it almost filled. The stupid thing about backup drives (I been using Seagate backup utility) is that they dont know how to restore to multiple drives. When they do incremental backups, you end up with many versions of the same drive and they usually fail when you try to restore. So why have backup if it fails to restore? I was told- if I build new computer, it would dump info from old computer all on one drive and let me figure it out. Figure out? I barely would have such a large drive to dump data from 6 full drives. So for this computer specifically, I bought 8TB Seagate that had issues- it was hanging and hanging and would fail backups. I spent hours with their support and they never replaced it. So I went on and bought another 8TB, and then used Acronis True Image. That is all another drama story.

So I moved this IV Bridge computer to another house, and I left its back up drive at old house. Because I was not doping incremental- I did- I think- Image? Or maybe just C drive image? My problem is that I cant remember what I did where. The frustrating part is that after I moved computer without backup drive, Acronis being driving me crazy. Every time I need to restart, it would say, "Acronis terminating processes- it will take few minutes", and it would take like 20 minutes to shut down. I had enough of it, so I went in Startup and disabled service. But it still once in a while pops up and would not let me shut down. As you can tell- this computer needs frequent restarts because it probably has errors on it and acting out. So I would lose my mind waiting 20 minutes to restart when I need to restart because my music software unable to open a project and hanging indefinitely- I lose patince and hard shut down it to terminate. Then it goes to check disk and other crap it likes do. It kills me! If I could, I would wipe it out and start over. Ivy Bridge is a nice processor and it had Asus Pro MoBo... But when I build 2nd music computer- it took almost a year to reinstall all the software synths an sample libraries- I have over 1000 titles of effects and software synths on it. The installation is always manual because I dont install on C, so I have to constantly manually specify where to install. But software still likes to throw its parts like tentacles on C drive or other drives- I find parts of software in all weird places. So- my 6+ drives cant work without each other. One fails- all system fails. So- honestly- I dont know how to back this monster up. I think I have Acronis back up of newer computer (a year old) and I can use it to restore if I buy another drive. Or- I will have to install and format new drive in newer music computer, copy E drive and then install in old computer. Pain. Because I dont even have free SATA for that.

If I can still see file son that potentially failing drive, but audio plays with "buffering" breaks- can I still copy data or is it already corrupted? Thanks for reading.

 

[USAFRet]

Backups, done correctly, will work.
From multiple drives or partitions.

I have multiple drives in my main system, each backed up individually to an external thing.
Along with all the other systems in the house. Each drive or system gets its own subfolder.
Full/Incremental/Differential as needed for each.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[USAFRet]

And last December, I had to put that routine into practice. One of my SSD's died suddenly...a 960GB SanDisk. 605GB data on it.
Poof gone. Don't know why, and mostly don't care. It was dead.

Put in a new drive, click click in Macrium...all 605GB data recovered exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran its nightly Incremental.

 

[fzabkar]

One of my SSD's died suddenly...a 960GB SanDisk. 605GB data on it.
Poof gone. Don't know why, and mostly don't care. It was dead.

I would at least check the TVS diode or e-fuse. If these have failed, then your PSU would be the most likely culprit.