Recurrent "A disk error has occurred", how to diagnose

[julioolvr]

Hi everyone,

Last week I got the dreaded "A disk error has occurred" message when booting up my PC. I google my way around fixing it by creating a Windows 10 bootable USB drive and using the recovery tools there. Just running the automatic "Fix startup issues" option (or whatever it's called) did the trick.

The problem is that the error kept popping up from time to time. Let's say something like every 5 times I turn my computer on, I get the error once. I still have that USB drive laying around so it's pretty easy to fix, but it's annoying and worrying.

So at this point I'm wondering exactly what's happening first, and then how to fix it. My theories are either a hardware fault (the disk is a 1TB HDD which is less than 5 years old) or a software fault (since it's so easy to fix by software means). The problem is that I really don't know how to test each of those theories. I'd like to avoid going to buy a new HDD when it might be just some software issue that can be fixed.

As a sidenote, and something that's probably unrelated but makes me wonder what's going on, I have also an SSD which is the one with Windows 10 installed. I didn't realize until the first time I got the error that the PC was actually booting from the HDD. Trying to boot from the SSD resulted in an error saying that it wasn't bootable. Which was surprising - I assumed the disk that boots is the one where Windows is installed, but I might have done something wrong while setting everything up that caused all this. I'd like to boot from the SSD and just have the HDD for storage. But again, this is just a sidenote - if it's something that should be easy to fix then please point me in the right direction, otherwise I just mention it in case it somehow helps with the main issue.

Thanks!

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there julioolvr,

As there is something wrong with your HDD, my suggestion would be to back up the data stored on it.
After that, you can just test it and see what is wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
Look for pending/reallocated and uncorrectable sectors. If there are some, you will need to replace the drive.

Regarding your SSD question, I would say that it's not really clear how your OS is on the SSD but you actually boot from the HDD.
Could you post a screenshot of Disk Management? I believe that things would get much clearer. Here's how you can get there: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=ULmk6X

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[CountMike]

You probably left HDD in while installing OS on SSD and got BOOT all mixed up. As some of that part is accessed occasionally even when windows are running from another one and if that one spins down or is damaged you'll get that message.
Best to check that HDD first. Pick a checking program for the make of your HDD from here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortname/hard_disk_drive_%28hdd%29_tools.html

 

[julioolvr]

Thanks for the quick answers!

First, regarding the disk status - it seems that some sectors are faulty. Here's a screenshot of CrystalDiskInfo for that disk (http://i.imgur.com/IRDW6xv.png):

Does that mean that the disk is definitely lost/will be in the near future? Is there anything I can do about it? Some way to just say "don't use those sectors" and be done with it? Maybe I'm talking nonsense, I really don't know.

As for the booting, here's what I got from Disk Management (http://i.imgur.com/gP8yOZ9.png):

It seems that C:, the SSD, *should* boot. But when I go to the BIOS and select it as the first hard drive for booting, I get that message saying that I should insert a bootable drive. Again, this is not as important as the other issue, but if I should change the HDD then I should probably figure out how to make the computer work solely out of the SSD first.

Thanks again!

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, you have around 200 bad sectors.(hex to decimal conversion)
Unfortunately, you will not be able to fix that. Bad sectors would continue to appear until the drive fails.
If the drive is under warranty, you can just contact the place you got it from or WD's Support and RMA it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=hu0hGL

I believe your system boots from the SSD, not the HDD.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[julioolvr]

I see. That's too bad, but I expected that to be the case. I just wanted to be sure before buying a new one.

As for the booting, I know that from the screenshot it seems that it boots from the SSD, but when I was first dealing with the "Disk error occurred" message one of the things I did was to remove the HDD and try to use the PC with the SSD, and it would just say that it couldn't boot from there. Anything else I can check? Should I open a new thread for that separate question?

 

[CountMike]

I'm afraid there's no bright future for that HDD. If nothing, get important data out of it first. What you actually have there is some bad sectors' data relocated to spare area and some about to be relocated. Once bad sectors start, there's no telling how many will develop soon.
Only way not to use them is to find their exact location and partition disk around them. You have to solve that problem with booting so you have healthy system to work from.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win7-windows-7-mbr,10036.html

 

[julioolvr]

Ok, that's fair. I'm currently running `chkdsk /R` on that disk, based on an answer here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1795054/repair-hard-drive-errors-bad-sectors.html that says "when you run chkdsk and it finds bad sectors several things happen -- there is an attempt to move any data to a good sector and the bad sector is marked in the HDD firmware as a user found bad sector so it will not be used again."

Although I'll keep in mind that even if that works, it's just temporary until I get a new drive.

As soon as that finishes, I'll remove the HDD and try to get Windows to boot entirely from the SSD. I'll come back and mark the problem as solved when I finish with that.

 

[CountMike]

Less you do to it, less chance to be damaged even more. First thing would be to save data from it.

 

[julioolvr]

Ah yes, I forgot to mention - there's nothing super important in that disk, mostly Steam games and my Dropbox and Google Drive folders. So everything cloud based, I can simply redownload.

 

[julioolvr]

Done! For future reference:

* I scheduled chkdsk /R to run when my computer restarted. That took a couple of hours. From then on, I haven't seen the error anymore but it might just be a coincidence. I'm using CrystalDiskInfo to keep an eye on the uncorrectable sector count, so far is stable, but I know that I'll have to replace the disk soon so there's nothing that can't be recovered there.
* I removed the HDD and left the SSD only, and used the startup repair tool in the bootable Windows 10 drive to allow the computer to boot from the SSD directly. I had to use Disk Management afterwards to switch drive letters around to how they were before so my apps could find where their directories are.

I marked D_Know_WD first answer as the solution because I can't select more than one, but thanks both of you!

 

[CountMike]

You are welcome, fixing is most important.