I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP3 & current updates. I have a Seagate 500GB SATA hard drive that has been replaced 2 times now. I bought a brand new Seagate drive. It had problems so I had it replaced under the Seagate warranty & they sent me a refurbished drive. That drive went bad & I had that one replaced with another refurb drive & so forth. I'm on my 3rd drive in this system. I use it in my recording studio Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to record audio & MIDI.
It seems to run fine for a while, then it starts making crackling & popping noises, so I defrag it, then I run "chkdsk c: /f /r" & let that run when my system reboots. Right now, it has been running for more than 7 hours & it's only 35% of the way through stage 4 of 5, so I'm not sure how much longer it's going to take to complete. I've run chkdsk before on previous drives in this system & it can take up to 10 hours to complete.
I've tried swapping out the cables & changing the SATA ports & power connectors & none of that seems to help. Sometimes my system will just crash & I come in in the morning to find my system sitting at a boot prompt & telling me it can't find the boot drive. I go into the BIOS & have to reset the boot drive setup or sometimes I have to power the system off, open it up & pull the power & SATA cables off & reseat them.
Before I sent the Seagate drive back to Seagate the last time, I cloned the drive to a Hitachi & ran that in my system for the 2 weeks it took to get my drive back. The Hitachi seemed to have no problems at all, but that was only 2 weeks of running.
Since the Seagate is refurbished & under warranty I would like to keep using that drive, BUT I don't want to lose my data & it's been a HUGE waste of my time to keep replacing the drive & cloning it & so forth.
Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can try to troubleshoot the problems I'm having with this drive? I'd like to see if I can get some firm answer on if it's the system that it's in that's causing problem or if it truly just the crappy Seagate drive.
When it gets done running chkdsk (IF it ever gets done), I think I'll clone it again to make sure I have a recent copy of the drive, then I'll try running SeaTools on it to see if that will fix it.
Does anyone have suggestions on free software that I can use that might be able to fix problems that chkdsk misses or even something that does the same thing as chkdsk only does it more quickly & efficiently?
Does anyone know if it's dangerous to cancel chkdsk before it's finished? Will that mess up my drive or leave something partially fixed? I know it's not a good idea to cancel defrag before it's complete. Does anyone know if there's anything like, "If it takes longer that x amount of hours it's not really doing any good" or something?
It seems to run fine for a while, then it starts making crackling & popping noises, so I defrag it, then I run "chkdsk c: /f /r" & let that run when my system reboots. Right now, it has been running for more than 7 hours & it's only 35% of the way through stage 4 of 5, so I'm not sure how much longer it's going to take to complete. I've run chkdsk before on previous drives in this system & it can take up to 10 hours to complete.
I've tried swapping out the cables & changing the SATA ports & power connectors & none of that seems to help. Sometimes my system will just crash & I come in in the morning to find my system sitting at a boot prompt & telling me it can't find the boot drive. I go into the BIOS & have to reset the boot drive setup or sometimes I have to power the system off, open it up & pull the power & SATA cables off & reseat them.
Before I sent the Seagate drive back to Seagate the last time, I cloned the drive to a Hitachi & ran that in my system for the 2 weeks it took to get my drive back. The Hitachi seemed to have no problems at all, but that was only 2 weeks of running.
Since the Seagate is refurbished & under warranty I would like to keep using that drive, BUT I don't want to lose my data & it's been a HUGE waste of my time to keep replacing the drive & cloning it & so forth.
Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can try to troubleshoot the problems I'm having with this drive? I'd like to see if I can get some firm answer on if it's the system that it's in that's causing problem or if it truly just the crappy Seagate drive.
When it gets done running chkdsk (IF it ever gets done), I think I'll clone it again to make sure I have a recent copy of the drive, then I'll try running SeaTools on it to see if that will fix it.
Does anyone have suggestions on free software that I can use that might be able to fix problems that chkdsk misses or even something that does the same thing as chkdsk only does it more quickly & efficiently?
Does anyone know if it's dangerous to cancel chkdsk before it's finished? Will that mess up my drive or leave something partially fixed? I know it's not a good idea to cancel defrag before it's complete. Does anyone know if there's anything like, "If it takes longer that x amount of hours it's not really doing any good" or something?
