Im at a loss as to what to do

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alidan

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harddrivenew.png


that is my c and f drive.

a few days ago my computer crashed for unknown reasons

than within a day, f:\ drive had a delay write failure and the computer wouldnt shut down

any i believe 2 days later anything to deal with the f:\ drive froze up and i needed to restart.


im at a loss as what the problem is. i have been told that it may be the sata cable, which i hope is the reason

i have read that it also may be that the drive is failing,

im concerned with both f:\ and c:\ drives, can anyone help a bit, ill supply you with more info if requested.
 
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hundredislandsboy

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Try a system restore (go back a week), then back up your data, then run Chkdsk.exe. a tool that checks volumes for problems. The tool then tries to repair any that it finds. For example, Chkdsk can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors.
 
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alidan

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ok, before i do anything i want to know why im doing it.

why would i system restore to a week ago? and should i restore farther back? like to around Christians? i believe the first time my hard drive crashed windows was around the 28th maybe the 27th, but i know not before Christmas.

and


if i run chkdsk, what will happen? i mean if it finds areas it doesn't like will it kill them? or could i even access those areas to begin with? i mean lets assume the worst here, what could happen to my hard drive if in the middle of chkdsk it decided to screw up in some way shape or form.

like i said i want to have a full understanding of what i am doing before i do it.
 
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hundredislandsboy

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System restore does just that - restores your system to a specified date where you know your system did not have issues.

chkdsk? If it finds areas it doesn't like, such as physical flaw in the hard drive, bad areas, it marks them for non-usage. That way your data doesn't get corrupted. Otherwise your hard drive would write data on those areas and then have a problem or "freeze" when the data can't be read.
 
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hundredislandsboy

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System Restore is in Windows/Programs/Accessories/System Tools.

Chkdsk will block out areas of the hard drive that might cause write/read errors. If your hard drive is old (more than 3, 5, 10 year old and the internal mechanism itself is causing the errors, then it's time for a new hard drive.

That's why they tell you not to press the power button wheile the hard drive is writing.
 
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alidan

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the harddrive is 3-4 months old, and the other one, the c:\ is less than 1 month.

they are seagate so some of those errors are thins im told are normal in seagates.

but f:\ was running for close to 2 months with those 3 yellow error areas and it worked fine for the most part, you have any idea why the the drive is freezeing up my computer now but didnt a while ago?
 
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alidan

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a virus? i doubt it, i have the same things running on it now that i did 3 months ago, even a year ago for that matter.

cpu usage, i went from a Pentium 4 to a phenom x4 955 so cpu usage there even at its worst, when encoding a video, it uses 70% of my cpu (im guessing what holds it back for using more is the encoder and my video card) but even than, at 70% usage, its still faster then my p4 ever was.

as for background tasks, my computer is close to clean in that regard. if there is a n actual number you want tell me where to look and ill give it to you. there are some things there that are just their, i got a quad core, and its goes so fast almost all the time that i never saw reason to optomise anything.

i dont think its the bios either, the hard drives were working fine for weeks until the f:\ error, and possibly the c:\ having an error too, but that may have just been the f:\ having an error and me noticing than that there was also a c:\ error.

hell everything could be the f:\ drive.

i don't want to defrag anything and usually don't because of space problems, but i also don't want to defrag if there is a chance that my computer could lose data because of it, i want to avoid that until the f:\ problems are found out.

just so you know i haven't done anything to the drives yet, i want to wait till i know exactly what im dealing with before that happens.
 
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hundredislandsboy

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While I appreciate your enthusiasm to troubleshoot your PC problems, I can see you are also reading on Google as much as you can about these procedures.

Since were talking about the possibility of bad sectors causing write and read errors (from your original post), did you use the /R switch with the CHKDSK command?

Does the manufacturer of hard drive have a website to download diagnostic utilities?

Here's what I would do.

1. Back up all the files that I can't afford to lose (DVD-R, or onto another hard drive)
2. Replace the SATA cable.
3. Full format.
4. A fresh OS install, drivers....
5. Then run more tests on your HD/s. If they fail, RMA if under warranty.

 
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alidan

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what is useing /R switch

yea they do, kind of. i dont think it will tell me whats wrong.

where can i get an sata cable that i wont have doubts about

reformatting and rma'ing the drives is the last resort for when i know that there is nothing more i can do.

but i really don't want to re do the os. at least without necessity. i need to know that one drive is the problem over everything else before i will format or anything either drive.
 
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alidan

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i on and off use google. its kind of aggravating when looking up tech problems because there are alot of places with good and bad information, and some make you sign up not knowing the quality of the information.

for computer cables, i really am at a loss, because if it is the sata cable than what do i do to replace it if i cant trust the company to give me one that works right in the first place.

but the sata thing, that hard drive was put into pio mode or something, which killed my p4 cpu, months ago, but because the problem didn't come back i assumed that it was something else that forced it into that mode and not the sata, but with the recent things, the sata cable may be the problem.

and how do i use /r switch? i did google that, and it kicked back allot of things that are no where near related, and im not sure how to word a search to get the results i want.
 
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alidan

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the computer itself is close to 5 years old, and i had the motherboard and cpu replaced about a month ago, i didn't let them touch the harddrive's

and the harddrive i got one 4 months ago at bestbuy (i couldn't wait the 2days-2weeks shipping) the one that i believe is having he noticeable problems is the 4 month one, so even than i couldn't do anything about it from them.

and about the harddrives testing things that came with the hard drive, it says that both harddrives fail, however im looking at what causes it to say fail, and apparently even 1 bad sector, 1 512bytes area of over 1.5tb is bad it says the whole thing is bad.

but here is where im having a problem now.

that program has to touch the bad sector, however when it dose it doesn't lock up the computer.

a bit confuseing

it dose have a bootable version that will try to fix errors, but ill have to use that before i go to sleep because its saying it could take 4 or more hours
 
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hundredislandsboy

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It looks like you're on the right track. What is the brand? Hard drives usually have 3 years manufacturer warranty. But they won't replace it without an RMA and you'll have to work with them to get one.

When you first installed the new hard drive, did you do a full format or a quick format? Did the format take around 3 hours or 15 minutes?
 
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alidan

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its a 1.5tb drive, hours, in all honesty i don't want to rma either drive, because what im finding out is that these drives are gambles. people who get them for raid, who can and will deal with replacing a single drive if it fails, got 6-8 and find about a 50% failure chance in their raids with them, but those were complete failures. right now i just need to restart my computer and the drive work, and i also know that i can rma either drive, back when i thought that the f:\ drive, it was the c:\ drive at the time, was failing, because something put it into pio (or something like that) mode and could only get a 3mbps read speed at best, i started contacting them and was told i could rma the drive because they have a generous return policy or something, id have to look the emails up to be sure.
 
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alidan

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new info

i looked up the event viewer just after restarting form what i believe is a hard drive problem.

errorlogentry.th.png


The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort1, did not respond within the timeout period.

i think this may be it, but Google is kicking up questions, and semi answers when i look their.

one of the suggestions is switch sata ports. do you think that would work?
 
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alidan

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i haven't changed the sata port yet, various reasons, like when ever i notice the computer froze, its either late at night, or i was in the middle of something else and want to get back to it as fast as i can, but there is something i forgot i did.

my old motherboard before it died, couldn't handle a sata2 drive, so i had to set it to sata 1,

do you think that could be causing the errors?
 
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