# Is this a failing HDD?



## KTBFFH (Sep 28, 2006)

Booted up Sat morning, 4:30pm Sat afternoon pc "crashed", it shut down and could not reboot.
About 4:20 pm event log started recording errors:
event id 51
"An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation."
(this error would repeat between 1 and 10 times) followed by an event id 9
"The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period"
these errors repeated several times, then just before the crash
event id 57
"The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur"
followed by event id 51, then crash.

My workaround for this is to:
1) disconnect this problem system drive and reconnect a spare system as the boot drive with this problem drive connected as a non boot drive
2) reboot
3) run Seagate utilities and Windows checkdisk to repair the drive
4) shutdown
5) disconnect the good system drive, reconnect the repaired problem drive as the boot drive 
6) boot up and all appears to be fine.

When the pc is trying to reboot after a crash it gets stuck on a screen "problem loading os" and will not go any further, that is when the above intervention takes place.
This has happened previously on Oct 11 and Oct 17.
This is a new Seagate SATA II 320gb drive, maybe 5-6 weeks old.

Running Seagate discwizard and Windows checkdisk seems to fix the issue.
Seagate does not report any disk errors and I set both to repair mode.

I am running XP Pro SP2.
Asus P5W DH Del mobo
3 internal sata hard drives, all Seagate 320gb
2 gb of RAM

What is going on? Any ideas or suggestions would be truly appreciated.
Thanks


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## Sherry22160 (Jul 17, 2006)

Try this:
Disable the Write Cache feature of this disk. To do this go to Device Manager -> Disk Drives, right click on your disk and choose Properties. Here you can disable this feature.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Disabling delayed writes is not the answer, and for internal disks, it will exact a serious performance penalty.

The fact that running the Seagate diagnostic fixes it sure points to a defective drive to me.


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

Just so you know I have had more problems with brand new Seagates right out of box doing this lately in my builds, so much so I have stopped buying them. I think there is something wrong with the drive and would return it.


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## KTBFFH (Sep 28, 2006)

Thanks for the info.
I am going to (try) and return it.

Are there diagnostic tools available, preferably free, that can provide reliable indicators to a drives health?

What drives are you using/finding more reliable at the moment? My local store is mainly Seagate and WD with some Maxtor and extremely limited Samsung.

Thanks again for your responses.


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

I only use WD and have mostly for about 6 years now. When I stray I have problems.


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## KTBFFH (Sep 28, 2006)

Whiles't researching this issue I came across a number of forums with threads dedicated to very similar issues to those stated (Googled event id# above). 
Reading through the threads there were infinite configurations with fairly consistent symptoms. All these issues were condensed down into a small combination of Event IDs (this makes sense since an event id can cover more than 1 specific issue) namely 9, 11, 51 and 57.

One thread, on hardwareanalysis.com, had 20 pages going back 2 years and there were a few reports which had similar symptoms to mine.
So I now have more questions than answers, especially, that if I have a paging error as stated above and my drive is not failing (no reports of bad sectors etc) what is causing the problem, maybe just incompatibility (rather than a failing) of the drive with the rest of the system, etc?

As I can not, for now, replicate my issue it is hard to determine root cause so I will do what I can to try and prevent it.

I picked up a WD, to clone my system drive to, and experiment with to see if this issue occurs on WD as well.

What I found strange is that when running the diagnostics/repair (Seagate and MS tools) that I did not get messages of bad sectors (could have missed them but don't think so). 
If bad sectors were present and found would there be/would you expect notification of such?

Has anybody come across similar issues when investigating a crash, bsod, problems loading os and checked in the event log to find these event ids listed prior to the crash and what were you able to do to fix it?

Thanks for your time so far and to anybody that has further insights to share.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

If no errors are reported by the Seagate diagnostics then maybe its a driver or memory issue. Possibly the data is being corrupted when being written to the drive.

Test the memory with Memtest86+ or try updating the Chipset drivers: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...&OSFullName=Windows* XP Home Edition&lang=eng


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## KTBFFH (Sep 28, 2006)

Thanks Triple 6.
Have run memtest and memory is OK and just updated the chipset drivers.

What are your thoughts on this:
In my scenario I have a drive that has the original XP install on it that I clone from and use for disaster recovery. I operated from this drive for a 2-3 week period when I first built this system (Sept) with no apparent issues. The issues started 2-3 weeks after cloning. Presuming that:
the issue was not a direct cause of that process 
that I can boot up and seem to run without the issues repeating on my good drive (note max time I have run on the good drive after is for 2 days only, but used it for longer when I first setup the system)
that when running both Seagate and Windows diagnostics/repair tools I did not receive any notification of disk errors

Then this maybe an XP/software, rather than a hardware, error and I should make that my priority. Thoughts or suggestions most welcome and appreciated.

Thanks again.


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## griffinspc (Nov 16, 2001)

Actually, I'd lean toward a corrupted OS install from your good descriptions above. Once you have the clone done and you have nothing to lose except a little time I'd do a fresh install of XP, not a repair, wipe the drive and start over. If it's stable after that fine if not RMA the drive.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

Well I love fresh installs of Windows...

It could possibly be a faulty cable...


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## griffinspc (Nov 16, 2001)

> Triple6, Well I love fresh installs of Windows


...Yeah, fun aren't they.  I guess if it's there and not being used I'd just want to confirm the drive failed or there was another problem.


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

Anyone thingking aboiut the few weeks and p[possible updates causing the problems?


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## KTBFFH (Sep 28, 2006)

Thanks for the responses.
Doing my normal routines on the desktop and the issue has not reoccurred, yet!!!
I am going to wait till the weekend before I install the new drive after a bit of video editing (which might cause it to happen again) and building myself up to a clean/fresh install of XP. 
Will post if anything new happens prior to hd install.
I have a new data cable to try and may swap system drive cable with another drive cable and see what happens.
Thanks again.

BTW Triple6 you far from SW Ont?


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

Eastern Ontario.


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