Storage Solutions Laptop primary HDD - very sluggish

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DarkAngel

DarkAngel

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My acer laptop has a WD 3200BEVT as primary HDD.(Intel P6100, 4GB DDR3, Windows 7 64-bit)

Now a week back suddenly the start up repair screen came up and after an hour of repair the PC booted. Then the next day the same error and now the PC didnt boot into Windows. I checked the errors and it was some registry errors.

So i installed a clean install of Windows7 Ultimate 32-bit and all was fine. I installed all basic drivers. Re-started system after installing drivers and then it worked fine. Then shut it down and the next day itself it was giving the same errors.

So this time i again re-installed the OS and used Comodo's registry cleaner to clean errors. So again the next day same errors.

So i was fed up and downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit and booted with live USB. All worked fine. But when i tried to install i wasnt able to.

I downloaded the 10.04.1 32-bit edition and again live USB worked well. I ran a mem test and it passed it in ~27 mins. So i was able to install this version. I installed it in the previous Windows partition after deleting and formatting it. Did all the updates. Worked fine for one whole day.

Shut the PC down booted back and i got UUID errors. So browsed a lot. Again booted using USB. I was able to mount the 3 non-OS partitions but was unable to mount OS partition. So after trying a lot for a day i decided to format the whole HDD and then re-install Ubuntu.

So again same issues after shutdown and boot back. I was fed up and downloaded a fresh Dec 2010 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit retail version from TPB.Upload had +28/-0. Installed it and it took a long time. File expansion got stuck at vaious points and slowly completed in 1.5 hrs.

Put all essential drives, Avira, Firefox. Activated OEM using ABR backup i had. Now it was taking 25 mins to boot :O Installed HD tune Pro and it gave warning saying there is 83 Current Pending sectors. Tried to quick scan for bad sectors. Again like installation it would get slow at some blocks and took 18 mins but all the blocks were Ok. Even shut down took 2-3 mins.

Now today morning again booted it up and it took 25 mins. Installed Intel AHCI (Rapid Storage). Restarted. Again 25 mins. It asked me to restart again and now system booted in 45 secs. So i shut it down(10-15 secs) booted back and again 45 secs. So i was overjoyed and updated the Avira. Rebooted and now it again took 2 mins to shut down and 25 mins to boot up.

I am fed up with this. So will zero filling the HDD be of any help. Help me out guys. Thanks for patiently going through the whole post.
 

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its best to rma the disk before using it again ....try benchamarking it and see what results you are getting. also check it on a desktop , restore OS image if u have it available . may be the partitions were not mounting because of windows not shutting down correctly.
 
Try a "low-level format" (STFW for that) and then reinstall OS and HD testing tools like HDTune whatever to check the health of the disk.

If the low level format (which marks and disables any bad sectors of the disk) does not work and you still continue to face these problems, then its a dying disk and RMA if you can...
 
As of now i just formatted ~48GB for installing Windows 7. Rest is unallocated free space. My doubt is why did it all of a sudden boot up normally between all the drama that its causing :(

No option of RMA. Lappy bought from US. So if the issue persists even after low level formatting i will have to go for a Seagate 5400.6 series.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

WD Support / Downloads / WD Scorpio & AV-25 / WD Scorpio Blue

WD themselves have a tool. Guess i will try it out today if the issue persists and post the results back.
 
I myself came across this type of problem, In Dell Notebook out of 320gb only 80gb can be used rest unable to create partition or format.
 
^^Any solution?...

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Erased using MHDD.

Windows installation took 30 mins. (took 1:50 hrs yest)
HD tune shows '0' pending sectors
Quick error scan took only 1.1 min(took 18 mins yest)

Should have done this a week back :ashamed:
 
After erasing the HDD and OS reinstall all was fine for 3-4 days. Then suddenly Pending sector count was '2' and the next day the system said it should check the disk at startup and then after it checked it count was '16' :(

I did a scan+erase delays. The OS was unusable after that so did a fresh install. Count was '0' for couple of days. Suddenly chrome was loading for ever yest and i checked the count was '2' again. Today at start up it again told Windows want to check disk. I cancelled it and now the count is '3'.

Is there any option to revive the HDD and stop this from happening or is replacing the HDD with a new one the only option :( (Laptop from US. So no way to RMA now )
 
Download HDD Regenerator and create a Boot Disc with it. Use this boot disk to scan and fix the errors.

If that doesn't help, your drive is failing and u'll need to replace it.

:(
 
Finally even MHDD gave an error saying

'Catastrophic Error' Drive broken :( So got a new Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB. Everything working fine as of now :)

I have a warranty query. The disk is imported on Dec 2010 and Seagate website says warranty till Dec 20,2013. But the bill date is Feb 19,2011.(But the bill doesn't have Serial No of the drive). So will i lose out on the 2 months warranty?
 
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