Question Potentially failing hard drive?

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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech

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Feb 19, 2016
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Had my first BSOD the other day.

Seemed very strange because I wasn't really doing anything that would've been particularly hard on the computer (was just browsing the web), and I hadn't made any recent hardware or changes at all.

The screen appeared, and my machine quickly restarted. This automatically triggered a disc check, which seemed to be uneventful and was completed fairly quickly, followed by a windows update.

For some reason, I didn't notice an error code when the BSOD appeared, so I had very little idea what caused the issue. When the update finished and I rebooted into windows, my computer initially seemed fine. I then looked into the event viewer and couldn't find any errors leading up to the crash. I therefore began to assume this could've just been a one off event. I then turned off the computer for the evening.

However, yesterday, I turned on the computer and noticed that it was running rather slowly, and some applications kept freezing. Considering the events of the previous day, I was perhaps more wary of these kind of issues. I therefore opened event viewer to see if anything was amiss.

Four errors - "DeviceHarddisk0DR0 has a bad block"

I then turned the computer off as I now assumed that this means that my hard drive is on the way out. It's a 10ish year old mechanical hard drive so I'd say it's probably getting a bit tired.

However, I'd like a second opinion to confirm this before I purchase a nice SSD and set about transferring my data over to that.

My PC (this is probably laughably old and low spec to a lot of people, but it suits my needs and so far it's served me well, haha) -

CPU - Intel i7 4790 (3.6GHz)
GPU - Zotac GTX 1060 6GB
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H81M-H
RAM - 12GB DDR3
HDD - Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB HDD
OS - Windows 10 Pro x64
PSU - EVGA 600W
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
Had my first BSOD the other day.

Seemed very strange because I wasn't really doing anything that would've been particularly hard on the computer (was just browsing the web), and I hadn't made any recent hardware or changes at all.

The screen appeared, and my machine quickly restarted. This automatically triggered a disc check, which seemed to be uneventful and was completed fairly quickly, followed by a windows update.

For some reason, I didn't notice an error code when the BSOD appeared, so I had very little idea what caused the issue. When the update finished and I rebooted into windows, my computer initially seemed fine. I then looked into the event viewer and couldn't find any errors leading up to the crash. I therefore began to assume this could've just been a one off event. I then turned off the computer for the evening.

However, yesterday, I turned on the computer and noticed that it was running rather slowly, and some applications kept freezing. Considering the events of the previous day, I was perhaps more wary of these kind of issues. I therefore opened event viewer to see if anything was amiss.

Four errors - "DeviceHarddisk0DR0 has a bad block"

I then turned the computer off as I now assumed that this means that my hard drive is on the way out. It's a 10ish year old mechanical hard drive so I'd say it's probably getting a bit tired.

However, I'd like a second opinion to confirm this before I purchase a nice SSD and set about transferring my data over to that.

My PC (this is probably laughably old and low spec to a lot of people, but it suits my needs and so far it's served me well, haha) -

CPU - Intel i7 4790 (3.6GHz)
GPU - Zotac GTX 1060 6GB
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H81M-H
RAM - 12GB DDR3
HDD - Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB HDD
OS - Windows 10 Pro x64
PSU - EVGA 600W
Click to expand...
Since your mixing memory I would run memtest first.
 
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That event log and the freezing programs sounds very much like a dying hard drive. I just fixed a machine with the exact same issues. First thing to do is make sure you have good backups of all important data. I'd use CrystalDiskInfo to check the SMART attributes. Then I'd run a full scan, using something like HDDScan or Victoria.
 
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Quite concerning if in fact there weren't any backups. The time to make (multiple) backups is *all* the time, not when it may be too late. If you haven't been properly keeping backups, that's your very first priority; there already may be some data that's lost from this drive completely and the longer you wait, the less data there may be for you to transfer over.
 
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DSzymborski said:
Quite concerning if in fact there weren't any backups. The time to make (multiple) backups is *all* the time, not when it may be too late. If you haven't been properly keeping backups, that's your very first priority; there already may be some data that's lost from this drive completely and the longer you wait, the less data there may be for you to transfer over.
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I should point out that, very soon after I noticed the errors in Event Viewer, I took a look at the available space in the C drive and it was exactly the same as it had been before the problems began (would this perhaps indicate no data has been lost? I'm not sure.,..)

I then shut windows down, and that particular computer has been powered off and unplugged ever since (I'm typing this up on a different PC). Could the drive lose data while sitting unpowered?

While I am very much aware that regular backups are extremely important, I've kinda dropped the ball on that, and my latest backup is actually pretty old - I'm sorry, it was a stupid thing to do, but that's the situation - do you think I'd be able to safely retrieve the data from the drive? Do you think cloning would be an option?
 
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The measurement of hard drive space will not tell you anything about the recoverability of your data.

The only way you'll know is trying.

I would not be running this PC. It ought to be put in an external enclosure and the attempt made to recover data to a different PC. If the drive is dying, you don't want to be running off it.
 
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DSzymborski said:
The measurement of hard drive space will not tell you anything about the recoverability of your data.

The only way you'll know is trying.

I would not be running this PC. It ought to be put in an external enclosure and the attempt made to recover data to a different PC. If the drive is dying, you don't want to be running off it.
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As I've said, almost as soon as I realised the drive was failing, I shut down windows, unplugged the computer and haven't used it since.

As I have also said, I'd like to clone the data if that is possible, and I'd do this by installing it into another PC as a secondary drive (so I wouldn't be running off it when moving the data)

However, I am worried that I will run into issues during the cloning process considering that the drive I'm moving data from is failing
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
As I've said, almost as soon as I realised the drive was failing, I shut down windows, unplugged the computer and haven't used it since.

As I have also said, I'd like to clone the data if that is possible, and I'd do this by installing it into another PC as a secondary drive (so I wouldn't be running off it when moving the data)
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Cloning probably won't work.
When getting to a bad block or sector, the clone process will simply quit. "Can't read from source..."

Connect this drive to some other system, and attempt to access whatever folders your personal data is in.
This will likely involve TakeOwnership.

But if you can access those data locations, COPY the data off to some other physical drive.

Don't bother attempting to clone the whole thing. That is almost guaranteed to fail.
 
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USAFRet said:
Cloning probably won't work.
When getting to a bad block or sector, the clone process will simply quit. "Can't read from source..."

Connect this drive to some other system, and attempt to access whatever folders your personal data is in.
This will likely involve TakeOwnership.

But if you can access those data locations, COPY the data off to some other physical drive.

Don't bother attempting to clone the whole thing. That is almost guaranteed to fail.
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Eeek! Okay, this is exactly what I didn't want to read! I'd been led to believe that there's cloning software out there that can deal with this kinda thing (for example - https://www.diskpart.com/articles/clone-hard-drive-with-bad-sector-1984.html) What are your thoughts on this?
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
Eeek! Okay, this is exactly what I didn't want to read! I'd been led to believe that there's cloning software out there that can deal with this kinda thing (for example - https://www.diskpart.com/articles/clone-hard-drive-with-bad-sector-1984.html) What are your thoughts on this?
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Well, of course AOMEI is wanting to sell you their product.

If you must try this, HDDSuperCLone.
Free.

HDDSuperClone

Welcome to the home of HDDSuperClone, HDDSuperTool, and HDDSCViewer Overview: HDDSuperClone is an advanced Linux based hard drive cloning/imaging tool. HDDSuperTool is an advanced Linux based hard drive utility tool. HDDSCViewer is Linux based graphical viewer for inspecting progress log files
www.hddsuperclone.com www.hddsuperclone.com


But I still wouldn't, until I made an effort to just copy any critical data off it first.
The OS and applications can be trivially reinstalled. Your personal data cannot.
 
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Yeah, if your important data is only part of the drive, then you don't want to waste any possible time remaining for this drive copying non-important things.

HDDSuperClone is best used, IMO, *after* you've successfully protected the important things. Then you can use it and work on the less important stuff.

And please have a better backup plan in the future! The general rule of thumb is to have at *least* three copies of all important data, in at least two different formats/devices, and one off-site. Data that isn't backed up is terminally ill. If your data is important, than so should protecting it.
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
Thinking about sending this off to a professional to image the contents of the drive and then clone this onto a good hard drive. Good idea?
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Forget the terms "image" or "clone".

You want data recovery, not full drive reconstruction.

The ONLY thing you really need from this drive is your personal files. Those are irreplaceable.
The OS and applications can be reinstalled from source.
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
I’ve explained what occurred to him, and I was told that imaging was the first step to recovering the data
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Imaging via consumer level tools will fail just like cloning will.

If you're going to give it to a data recovery company, do that..and only that.

Don't tell them how to do it.
Simply tell them the critical data that needs to be maybe possibly be recovered.
 
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USAFRet said:
Imaging via consumer level tools will fail just like cloning will.

If you're going to give it to a data recovery company, do that..and only that.

Don't tell them how to do it.
Simply tell them the critical data that needs to be maybe possibly be recovered.
Click to expand...
From what the guy told me, the first thing HE would do is image the drive. He would not be using consumer level tools to do this.

This is what I have been told will happen.
 
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blokewhoknowsnothingabouttech said:
I haven’t sent the drive over yet, I just got in contact with them, and asked what could be done

This is what they told me and I just wanted to see what your thoughts were considering there was talk of imaging the drive.
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How they do it is far less important than if they get some data out of it.

From your earlier comment, it sounded like you were going to do this 'clone' arter an 'image'.

Let them do their thing, and see what happens.
 
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All data recovery companies will clone the client's drive before they start any logical recovery work on it. If it has physical problems, these may need to be addressed before cloning.

If you have one or two very important files, I guess it would make sense to try to recover those before cloning, but in general cloning would be the first step.

BTW, HDDSuperClone incorporates a firmware hack which deals with the "WD slow responding" problem. Basically, it switches off retries and reallocations at the firmware level. These "behind-the-scenes" operations are what slow the drive down.
 
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