Bad Sectors problem

[Aamir]

I had 40Gb Western Digital harddisk that worked perfect untill few week ago, the bad sectors appeared with sound some kinda of sound that is comming out of the harddisk.
So i bought another one 80Gb Seagate, i installed WinXP, it was working nicely and Now it got BAD sectors??? i checked with Norton Utilities and the bad sectors are just at the begining of my first partition (i.e. C: )

Now what should i do?? Is it because of my Motherboard (i.e. Intel D845 GEBV2) which i bought 5 months ago or some other problem??

Is it possible to leave the Bad Sectors Area of H/Disk unallocated ??
If Yes, then how to find the location of Bad Sectors??

Should i sell this M/Board with Processor and get another one or continue with M/Board and get a new H/Disk??

 

[Rick]

Your motherboard/CPU have no possible effect on your hard drive.

They do go bad - and frequently - which is very unfortunate. It's a total crap shoot as even brand new drives might only last a week, while other drives might last for 6 years.

The best thing to do here is use your warranty, call up Seagate and get it replaced. All Seagate drives have a 5 year warranty on them as of about a year ago, so might as well get some use out of it.

 

[N3051M]

... and if you get three dud drives in a row, then you either have extremely bad luck, need to change suppliers or look into some other cause..

 

[raybay]

Be nice to your hard drive. Be sure your power supply isn't misbehaving. We use Seagate drives in nearly all our repairs, and have only seen one fail early in the past 15 months. However, we also buy refurbished, repaired Seagate drives for various uses, so obviously they can go bad.
Be sure your cleaning lady, or the maid service, isn't impacting the side of the computer while it is on.

 

[Tedster]

this sounds like a power supply issue. The odds of several drives in a row going bad are astronomical. Something is causing them to go bad and I'll bet it's your PSU. Perhaps it is cheap and/or underpowered.

 

[Aamir]

I noted these from motherboard bios
Processor Zone Temperature 45~47* C / 106~114 *F
System Zone 1 Temperature 32 * C / 89 * F
System Zone 2 Temperature 34 * C / 93 * F
Processor Fan Speed 3605 ~ 3641 RPM
+1.5Vin 1.532V
Vccp -1.717 -1.705 V
+3.3Vin 3.293 ~ 3.310 V
+5Vin 5.2631 ~ 5.2636
+12Vin 11.812~11.750 V
do these values look satisfactory ??

How can i check if power supply is going smoothly or not??

IF bad sectors are due to power supply, then how can i control that ?? is there any device that i can use ??

BTW can the PSU regulate the flctuations in the power?? like regulate/restrict to 220V??

I changed the PSU ...... few months ago i changed my old motherboard (Gigabyte 8IDML) because it went dead!!!! the reason i could see was due to PSU b'coz some capacitors were swollen at top!! so i changed the PSU (it has the same output as the old one[the sticker on PSU] except...former was Made in China and this one Made in Taiwan) with motherboard.

 

[N3051M]

I noted these from motherboard bios
Processor Zone Temperature 45~47* C / 106~114 *F
System Zone 1 Temperature 32 * C / 89 * F
System Zone 2 Temperature 34 * C / 93 * F
Processor Fan Speed 3605 ~ 3641 RPM
+1.5Vin 1.532V
Vccp -1.717 -1.705 V
+3.3Vin 3.293 ~ 3.310 V
+5Vin 5.2631 ~ 5.2636
+12Vin 11.812~11.750 V
do these values look satisfactory ??

Apart from the slightly high temps on the CPU and the +12V dipping slightly (still within safe specs) they look alright.. suggestions: clean out the dust from your system with a compressed air source and while you're at it check the sticker on your PSU and post it here.

How can i check if power supply is going smoothly or not??

Use my games faq to help you check if your PSU is adequate. Link in signature. Down in Part two of the faq.

IF bad sectors are due to power supply, then how can i control that ?? is there any device that i can use ??

Yep. A new PSU that meets/exceeds your pc's requirements. Or if you think its electrical related but not your PSU then see if you get power disruptions in your area.

BTW can the PSU regulate the flctuations in the power?? like regulate/restrict to 220V??

Depends on your PSU. Generaly most PSUs offer fault protection (over/under/spike power) from the mains side, but if you want a power conditioner a UPS or similar device is needed. The mains side is set to your country/region's electricity supply (110V or 240V etc). If you think that your PSU is adequate enough, and you think its due to your electricity grid (if your area has frequent black outs, power spikes etc) then get the aforementioned UPS or power conditioner.

The side you need to worry about is the PC side. The PSU is just a big transformer that takes the (say, here in Oz) 240V and brings it down to 12V, 5V and 3V (as well as a common ground negative). When the PC runs, all of its electronics need energy to run, and it all adds up (motors, chips, etc). Good quality PSUs with the correct Watt for your system can handle this nicely, but generic or cheap stuff won't, and tend to die and bring the rest of your system with it.

More in-depth explanation can be read in my guide.

I changed the PSU ...... few months ago i changed my old motherboard (Gigabyte 8IDML) because it went dead!!!! the reason i could see was due to PSU b'coz some capacitors were swollen at top!! so i changed the PSU (it has the same output as the old one[the sticker on PSU] except...former was Made in China and this one Made in Taiwan) with motherboard.

so.. did you change the PSU or the motherboard or both?

 

[Aamir]

PSU stciker i will post ASAP!!

Power line disruptions a lotttt in area, black out, power spikes..!!!

UPS!! wht kind of ups will work fine for me.

both, PSU & motherboard.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

I think you will need a good UPS like one from APC. Check out this page for more details.

 

[Rick]

this sounds like a power supply issue. The odds of several drives in a row going bad are astronomical. Something is causing them to go bad and I'll bet it's your PSU. Perhaps it is cheap and/or underpowered.

Your PSU has nothing to do with bad sectors.

Please don't perpetuate this myth.

Any hard drive in recent times (probably the past 15 years) no longer suffers from this problem. Otherwise, every time you had to perform a hard shutdown, you would have developed physical problems with your hard drive. This is not the case. Any problems you develop are logical (file system / software) and have nothing to do with bad sectors or damaged platters etc...

Here's a patent for a particular flavor of this technology:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5889629.html

Here's more about head parking:
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/actParking.html

Not having enough power will not affect your drive. It either has enough power to work or it doesn't. But it won't run at 50% because your 12v lead is only supplying 6v.

However, it is possible to damage your electronics. This would almost certainly not produce a single bad sector or even a few of them, though. Your hard drive would either work or not work if you're electronics were damaged by a power spike or brown out.

 

[Aamir]

Did i mention that i also hear some creepy sound from both h/disks. ... i think when it reaches the bad sector area of h/disk for read/write the sound comes..... otherwise no sound except when it is placed on its sides or upside down.

 

[raybay]

Thank you Rick. Your comment on power supplies could probably be repeated 100 times a week on this forum. Too few on this list understand how a power supply works or doesn't work.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

However, it is possible to damage your electronics. This would almost certainly not produce a single bad sector or even a few of them, though. Your hard drive would either work or not work if you're electronics were damaged by a power spike or brown out.

That being said, it would be better to have a UPS rather than let your PC be exposed to the effects of power surges, innit?

 

[russ]

If this could be a software problem you might be able to check the hard drive with a live cd of knoppix, Kanotix Linux, or some other Live cd. I'm sure they have a hardware check of some sorts to see if you really have this as a software problem. If you have problems with a live cd (that runs off of your cdrom and not your hard drive) then the problem may be a memory problem because linux needs good memory to work properly

 

[Rick]

That being said, it would be better to have a UPS rather than let your PC be exposed to the effects of power surges, innit?

Yes, I would recommend a UPS for anyone.

 

[Rick]

If this could be a software problem you might be able to check the hard drive with a live cd of knoppix

Knoppix is a cool tool. However, your bad sectors most definitely won't be a software problem either.

i checked with Norton Utilities and the bad sectors are just at the begining of my first partition

We should get a second opinion here... run a diagnostic utility from the manufacturer on your drive. Here's a fairly complete list of such utilities. https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic7602.html

Run the full diagnostic a few times. Bad sectors will show up on the first run. Other drive problems may not appear until after a couple of runs.

 

[Aamir]

................you're at it check the sticker on your PSU and post it here.
...................

the new psu

in case u couldn't read from sticker
SENSTRON
========
Model: AP2-5300F-RV2S
A/C Input: 115/230V 60/50Hz 7/3.5A
FUSE Rating: 6A/250V
DC Output: 300W
+5V 16-30A +12V 10A +3.3V 7-28A
-5V 1A -12V 1A +5VSB 850mA
+5V ANd +3.3V Total Max:175W

Caution:
========
Ser No: T9190096m1A

P/N: 6AP2-300B046

the old one that i replaced

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Woah the +12V rail on the new PSU is seriously underpowered. 10A?!!

 

[Aamir]

Woah the +12V rail on the new PSU is seriously underpowered. 10A?!!

what should i do?? should i change it? if yes then what to look for?
Do everything else look fine on new PSU?

 

[Rick]

I like how everyone says, "Wow, you're PSU is crap!" but doesn't have the courtesy to actually pay attention or ask you whats in your system...

• Processor: Intel 1.7 Ghz
• Motherboard: Intel D845 GEBV2
• Memory: Kingston 256MB
• Hard Disk(s): Wetern Digital 40GB + 80 GB Seagate
• Other Drives: Samsung DVD and LG CD-RW

Yes, the PSU you have is not very good. But, you also have a board with integrated graphics. If you aren't using a seperate (and decent) graphics card, then you don't really have any worries - especially with a 1.7GHz CPU.

300W is not only all you need, but probably more than enough. Of course, your PSU could be fairly inefficient... But I've seen a lot more run with a lot less. There's nothing to worry about here.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

10A on the +12V is too low. A PSU with at least 14-15A on the +12V rail is much better. So in that respect, ur old one was much better than ur new one! But the sound from the HDDs is definitely a warning, so they will die sometime or the other. Getting new ones would be top priority for you IMO.

 

[raybay]

I agree with Rick. On an Intel D845 you should have no problems with a 300 watt power supply if you keep the dust and pet hair out.