Reply With QuoteLast time this subject came up Ryan Michael recommended using SpeedFan to examine the SMART data. The program has a link to automatically evaluate the various fields, in case you overlooked something.
I need some debugging ideas.
My computer has been very slow lately, especially while trying to multitask with a hard drive process going on in the background, such as copying a file or installing something. This is in WinXP with a 4 year old Western Digital 160 GB hard drive.
I benchmarked it with Sandra. Read speed came up as 4 MB/s. I checked the IDE controller in Control Panel and it was listed as PIO mode. Used a script online to reset that and now it's back in Ultra DMA Mode 5. Sandra shows it around 60 MB/s read. It still takes forever to install games, load games, and even general web browsing on multiple tabs and running applications in parallel. The hard drive light stays on almost constantly during these times. It's a quiet drive so I don't notice it until I look.
Apparently Windows puts it down to the slower mode after too many CRC errors. The script sets a registry field to reset the error count after each operation. This makes me think it's not fixing any underlying problems: the script merely sets it back to the high speed mode each time. Maybe I am still getting a lot of errors. Could it be a write problem? I can't benchmark that without wiping the drive, apparently.
I checked the SMART data with Western Digital's tool. Everything lists as "OK." I re-seated the SATA cable. One of the alignment nubs doesn't seem to go all the way into the hard drive case, but the pins seem to seat all the way.
I'm not positive it's the hard drive but it seems like the best lead. I've got plenty of time to screw with this before I give up and buy a new drive. Everything has been backed up in the meantime. Any other ideas?
Last time this subject came up Ryan Michael recommended using SpeedFan to examine the SMART data. The program has a link to automatically evaluate the various fields, in case you overlooked something.
Yes, I see that now in the QT3 Google search. SpeedFan has a cute analysis but this looks like what I saw before.
Wikipedia says that high values are better in some of those, like the raw read error rate that is listed as decimal 200. It is bad when it's below the threshold. Can someone explain how to interpret a high value for "rate" as a good thing? The "worst" is also listed at 200 for that field, so what gives?
Okay, I found the recent thread where Ryan went into it some more. It looks like the sliders aren't all there is to it. However, SpeedFan didn't list any other warnings below the chart, other than a note about that power on hours count. Fitness was 94%, performance was 100%.
While I don't mean to tell you how to spend your free time, you're really trying to save a four-year-old 160 GB hard drive? It's old. It's dying. It costs less than $40 to replace, and you're going to have to replace it in the near future anyway.
This was my week off from work to finally catch up on videogames, and now I can't play. (Well, the noisy video card fan has a lot to do with that too.) I'm ready to ship something overnight but I want to spend the afternoon on it too.Originally Posted by sinfony
I'm not positive it's the hard drive yet. Also, if I can hold out until May it'd be great. I plan to build a new PC.
Weird, I'm seeing CRC errors but no sector errors. Could it be that your motherboard controller is dying? Or the controller on the drive, of course.
I assume you're looking at the raw values. How are they different from the current values? [EDIT] Okay I need to settle down today. I'm missing stuff right in front of me. From Wikipedia:
Each attribute has a raw value, whose meaning is entirely up to the drive manufacturer (but often corresponds to counts or a physical unit, such as degrees Celsius or seconds), and a normalized value, which ranges from 1 to 253 (with 1 representing the worst case and 253 representing the best). Depending on the manufacturer, a value of 100 or 200 will often be chosen as the "normal" value.
Is the hard drive a IDE or SATA drive? In the first post, you mentioned the PIO mode issue, which occurs with IDE devices, and can happen even to otherwise perfectly functioning hard drives. Then later you mentioned reseating the SATA cable. So which is it?
It's a SATA drive. Can they not go into to PIO mode? Sandra showed a 4 MB/s read rate until I ran some random script on the Internet to reset it back to Ultra DMA 5. Then it returned to 60 MB/s rate in Sandra.
There's no such thing as PIO mode or Ultra DMA for SATA drives running in SATA mode. Sounds like your motherboard's SATA controller is misconfigured as an IDE controller in the BIOS. I'd recommend that you change that, but I seem to recall some talk about Windows requiring reinstallation when you change a boot drive from IDE to SATA so I'm not really sure what to do now.
Oh, no wonder Ryan was confused. I just assumed those were SATA modes.
I checked the BIOS and the manual for my motherboard and I don't see anywhere I can specifically force SATA mode vs. IDE. The CMOS settings page shows "IDE Channel 0 Master/Slave" etc. There is an option to allow the SATA ports to operate in Native IDE mode. That has been set to Legacy this whole time. I changed it to Native but I don't think that did anything.
The drive is 4 years old and the motherboard is 2-3 years old.
Device Manager shows a 2-port and 4-port Serial ATA Controller under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers." It also shows 3 entries each for Primary IDE Controller and Secondary IDE Controller. That is where I can see whether the drive is in PIO mode or not.
Besides "Native IDE" and "Legacy" are there any other options for the SATA ports?
Either way, what I've seen with Windows is sometimes it gets "stuck" on with a SATA port running really slow.
Assuming you have no other SATA devices, just move the hard drive to any other SATA port. If you have other SATA devices, and no free SATA ports, unplug one for time being. Put the hard drive on that port.
That should resolve the speed issue. If so, report back for further instructions.
I tried plugging the hard drive into other SATA ports, and also unplugging my DVD-RW, which hooks into an old-fashioned IDE port. I still have the odd pauses and intermittent hangs when I do certain multitasking.
Tomorrow I'm going to plug in a newer hard drive from my HTPC. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to see it in the file explorer. If I can, I'll see if I can copy files on that drive without stalling everything.
You could have a bad sector or two that hasn't been detected yet. Download the demo version of HDD Regenerator and run it; it will fix the very first bad sector it finds before quitting. If you only have a handful, you can run it a few times and not have to worry about paying for it.
The SMART data isn't lying. There's definitely a write problem with that hard drive.
I moved my newer 1 TB hard drive from the HTPC to my main computer. I copied a 1 GB file within that drive. It took about 20 seconds. Then I copied a 1 GB file from the problem drive to this new drive. It took about a minute, seemed normal given that the old drive might not read as fast as the new one.
Then I tried copying it back to the problem drive. Explorer is really struggling, bouncing between 6-40 minutes remaining to write the file. Multitasking is hopeless. I can't even get the Programs menu to come up within a minute when I click it in the Start menu.
Is it safe to blame the drive controller now, or is there anything else I can test while I have the other hard drive in there? I can order a new drive for my PC and transfer the files over. If I can eliminate the motherboard as a problem that's a good thing. I'd like to leave my full upgrade until May.
BTW, HDD Regenerator turned up nothing.
Use Acronis TrueImage to create a backup drive image of your failing drive onto the 1TB drive. Since you're having write errors, it should get a perfect copy, and you'll be able to clone that to a new hard drive and be back up and running with minimal hassle. The installation CD is bootable (assuming you buy a disc-based copy), so you'll be able to pull the old drive, swap in the new one, boot off the CD, and re-image from the 1TB drive.
Really interesting problem, Tim. I can't recall ever seeing a drive that had write issues but no other issues to speak of.
Looks like Acronis 2011 is on sale at Amazon. Is it more reliable than say, the Western Digital drive transfer tools? I guess it wouldn't hurt to have around for other tasks.
It's far more useful. It'll become a solid backup program once you've got your system up and running. Just don't use the "Live backup" feature, it's completely buggy.
Last edited by RyanMichael; 01-02-2011 at 11:58 AM.
Amazon won't have more copies of 2011 until January 5th, so I think I'll use the trial version instead. I assume that has full functionality.
I can't decide between the 1 TB Caviar Black drives. I have the older version (1001FALS) in my HTPC, and have no complaints. Amazon actually has the new version (1002FAEX) for cheaper, but I've read a few consumer reviews about higher noise levels. I can't find an objective review of that exact version. Like every other time I go to research parts, I'm paralyzed by concerns that never end up mattering to me. I'm not a silent PC freak so I should be fine.
This is good anxiety training for when I build my new PC.
Do I need any special options to make an image of the drive, or do I just go to backup and select C:\?
It says cloning is unavailable in the trial version, dangit. I guess I'll just have to eat the full retail price, unless I want to wait another day and ship from Amazon.
If you're just trying to clone a drive, Driveimage XML will do it for free. I am 93% sure that I used that last time I cloned a drive, and it worked fine.
Ahhhh... much faster.
I had some trouble booting, so I used the Recovery Console 'fixmbr' command. I don't know why there was a problem. I did some Googling and Windows never saw this new drive/partition, so it shouldn't have tried to assign it a drive letter. I also used regedit to delete the MountedDevices entries. *shrug*
I figured it would mess up my DRM on a few games. I need to ask for a few more activations for Wings of Prey.
You had to do fixmbr because Driveimage XML is too stupid to write a proper boot sector on a cloned drive, so it doesn't always clone properly. Sad but true.
Haha, well there you go. I couldn't break down and pay the $50 retail price. I plan to try an SSD when I upgrade my PC in May, so I'll be doing this exercise again. I'll try True Image during the next Acronis sale, or get it on sale from Amazon.
I'm using Macrium Reflect as a non-bloated alternative to Acronis True Image but I don't know how well it handles restoring a complete bootable partition since I've never tried it.
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