My neighbor's PC has been acting strange since a few days. This is how he described the symptoms
1. The PC just restarted while he was working on a Word document. This happened a few times in a span of 20 mins
2. The PC did not show up the mouse pointer when he started.
3. The mouse pointer shows up but the OS froze.
4. The system does not boot and shows up some 'system file missing' error.
All this happens in around 20 mins. So me being in the 'IT' industry, he calls me to figure out what's wrong. I figured that maybe his RAM is corrupt, but then since once when i try to restart, we get a 'system file not found' error. I thought that maybe his Seagate harddisk is acting up. So i fire up Seatools and run Short and Long DST tests. Even though the short test is pass the HDD fails in the Long DST test.
I recommend that he give his HDD for RMA and get himself a external HDD for backing up stuff. I also recommend him NOT to keep using the PC anymore until the backup can be taken up on the external HDD.
His vendor comes in the next day and tells him that there is no problem with the HDD :S and it's just because of temp files ! He deletes them promptly and asks my neighbor to continue using the PC as usual.
I need to know whether the Long DST is a sure way of confirming that the HDD may be dying. I don't remember the model number but i fear that he is having a Seagate from the 7200.11 batch.
1. The PC just restarted while he was working on a Word document. This happened a few times in a span of 20 mins
2. The PC did not show up the mouse pointer when he started.
3. The mouse pointer shows up but the OS froze.
4. The system does not boot and shows up some 'system file missing' error.
All this happens in around 20 mins. So me being in the 'IT' industry, he calls me to figure out what's wrong. I figured that maybe his RAM is corrupt, but then since once when i try to restart, we get a 'system file not found' error. I thought that maybe his Seagate harddisk is acting up. So i fire up Seatools and run Short and Long DST tests. Even though the short test is pass the HDD fails in the Long DST test.
I recommend that he give his HDD for RMA and get himself a external HDD for backing up stuff. I also recommend him NOT to keep using the PC anymore until the backup can be taken up on the external HDD.
His vendor comes in the next day and tells him that there is no problem with the HDD :S and it's just because of temp files ! He deletes them promptly and asks my neighbor to continue using the PC as usual.
I need to know whether the Long DST is a sure way of confirming that the HDD may be dying. I don't remember the model number but i fear that he is having a Seagate from the 7200.11 batch.
