What possibilities could cause hard drive crash?

Hey all, just a quick question. I've been having OS and hard drive issues that won't quit. Lost a lot of data on HD. It's been crashing every other day now. I've fresh reinstalled windows twice now. I've learned more about repairing OS's and "bad sectors" than I ever wanted to! A real pain. Anyway, I have a new hard drive on the way. But, I have to consider the fact that perhaps my issues are with a bad ram or even, I wondered, the possibility that they could be from a bad IDE cable. The guys at the shop, in an effort to create economy of space, really folded the cord hard against the Hard Drive right where it plugs into it. I don't want to install the new hard drive and have the same issues.

The symptoms were: frequent bsod's with memory dumps and reboots, Failure to Read "Disk"(Hard Drive, on bootup); when I attempt restore point in Recovery Console I'd get a "there appears to be one or more unrecoverable problems with this "directory" or whatever; when I would attempt a repair install it wouldn't even be an option; Chkdsk in recovery console gave a message basically saying that the hard drive couldn't be checked; during bootup the pc would give a message saying "windows couldn't start because of a corrupt system file" or something to that effect; also, when I ran a dir command of Windows, it would give back error messages appearing as if nothing was there; sometimes when I would try rebooting with my Recovery CD, it would show that I only had 8123 mb or so instead of the 38000 mb that are normally there. One one occasion I even got the bsod during a fresh install of XP, almost as if the hard drive couldn't handle the writing of data.

What I'm wondering is, is it possible that all of this could simply be a faulty IDE cable? What do you think? Thanks.
:confused

 

Your hdd is probably just going bad. Id replace it if i were you just to either comfirm it to be the problem or rule it out. Otherwise youre going to be replacing stuff that probably isnt the cause of the problem.

 

It's the HD. All those messages point to a failing HD--they come and go until the HD is complete toast. Use the computer as little as possible until your replacement comes. Most new HD come with a fresh data cable.

You could always unplug your CDROM and use that cable for the HD but bad sectors are bad sectors they are not related to the cable.

Good Luck

 

Hi Good,

Those HD IDE flat cables are pretty sturdy. Folding should not cause a problem. I have found only 1 or 2 bad ones in over 25 yrs and they were all bad in the connector where the wire was not properly applied. I have to agree with the guys that the drive is probably bad.

Good Luck, Jim

 

O.k. thanks everyone for your replies. I think I can handle it from here. I'm just glad to hear that nobody suspected my ram. I really don't want to have to go through all that again...although, you do learn a lot. And, hard drives will crash. I'm just going to install the the new cable with the new HD and be done with it! Thanks again.

 

Well, I got a "new" hard drive. I bought used to save some cash. I did tons of research into stable hard drives and made sure I bought from a reliable seller with a very high positive feedback rate. Despite my efforts I may have only gotten another bad HD.

So, roughly the same things are happening now. Only one slight difference. When I run the winxp repair install, it gets just to the point right after entering the Winxp CD Key then it auto reboots and starts the process all over again. Done this several times now.

When I try to boot up to my desktop, right about the time the pc gets ready to load up my logon screen, I get the blue "memory dump" screen and the pc auto reboots and starts THAT process all over again - continual loop. I have run some restore points in Recovery console, but that doesn't change a thing. I've also run chkdsk and it will say it's repaired some errors or even that there are none, but the same things are happening.

I didn't completely break myself with the HD purchase, so I could technically buy a third Hard Drive, but before I do, judging from this and my previous posts, I just want to know what you guys think is causing all of this.

Thanks for your help.

 

So you got a new hard drive and reformatted and installed XP on it and it is behaving the same as your old HD? Are you getting the "can't read hard drive" error?

 

yep. That was the first thing that happened. Just like before, I'm just sitting there playing a game or whatever I was doing and then "boom" I get what I call the "memory dump" blue screen (it always comes up so fast and reboots that I can't read it all). Anyway, when it rebooted I got the "can't read hard drive" error. Ofcourse, I tried waiting a while and rebooting several times. When I realized that it wasn't going to "auto fix", I ran my winxp repair install.

Unlike with my old HD, It WOULD allow me to use the repair xp install option. Only this time around it seems much worse to me, because it keeps "crashing" and rebooting and starting over every time I try running the repair. I ran chkdsk /p and restore points in recovery console over and over but never helps. What can I do? It's maddening. That's my work pc as well. I don't want to keep buying hard drives.

Oh, and I just checked my Ram today and seems to be fine. So, I think we can rule that out if nothing else.

 

Try right-clicking on My Computer>Properties>advanced tab>Startup and Recovery>Uncheck Automatically Restart. It should give you time to read the exact error.

I would download the HD manufacturer's diagnostic tools(from their website) and run the LONG test. Because it is a used HD I don't think we can rule out a HD problem. Since you are having problems keeping things running it is probably wise to download the DOS version that can be run from CD. Let us know the HD manufacturer if you need help finding the correct version.

You might also try, separately. Did you try switching data cables? If not you should be able to simply unplug the end from your CDROM and plug it into your HD (leaving CDROM unplugged and original HD cable unattatched on the one end--and try running your PC to see if it crashes).

 

Ah. I wondered about that. I quess I thought that it might be 'safer' to let it restart in case of some 'emergency'. But, I will start doing that now for sure, thanks.

O.k. cool. I'll give that a go. I'm still curious about that cable. Besides, with my main pc down, I can't download anything with it and with my old pc(this one), it has no cd burner to transfer the program... and I never bothered putting in a floppy drive with my new pc. Just didn't see much of a use for them with a cd burner. I know, I know... I regret it all the time. I'll have to find another computer to get that dos hdd checker............ yeaaaah fun! :celebrate

 

You could try the Windows version. Worse that will happen is it will not complete. Try the short test first. But only the long test can attempt to fix bad sectors.

On the restart you just have to hit Alt, Ctrl Delete to manually restart after you read the message (if there is one).

 

Do you mean run chkdsk? The only thing that I can access right now is my recovery console, using my restore cd. And, the only command that I know of for repairing hard drive errors is chkdsk /p. What command would I use for the long version?

 

Sorry, I thought you could run Windows but it would crash sporadically.

Since it's a relatively new install why not just reinstall and see how it goes? Or you could put the HD in your old PC as slave and run the Windows version diagnostic from there.

 

I'm reformatting the whole thing right now. I was hoping there was some way past the xp cd crashing in the middle of the repair install, but I couldn't find anything that worked for me online and I'm tired of waiting around. So, let's just hope it doesn't crash in the middle of the fresh install!

Anyway, I'm starting to think/realize that the more information you put on a hdd the faster it will run into bad sectors. That if you just keep a minimal amount of data on an older HD, you will much less likely have a problem with it. Can anyone vouch for that, or is it just a coincidence that after laoding both of these HD's half way up with games, they crash? But, they both lasted a while so long as only a little data was stored.

 

Well, I've got my system up and running again. 'Course I had to wipe the HD clean and start all over again. At least, it worked. Thanks for sticking with me through that Sach2. I ran SeaTools and my HD came up clean for ALL tests. If I run a regular Scandisk though, it will likely fix one or two. Still need to do that. Anyway, I would think that SeaTools would have found SOMETHING, if there were anything wrong with the HDD. I'm wondering now if it is just something I'm doing wrong. I love to mod my pc games and I know a few mods may make registry entries.