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Western Digital HD question
10-01-2010, 07:32 PM
Last night the desktop started having issues. After a couple hours of troubleshooting, I've come to the conclusion that I've got a bad sector on the hard drive -- a Western Digital 1.5TB disk. Windows 7 can still boot, most things appear to be running fine, it's one (large) app in particular that seems to be sitting on the bad spot.
However, it's a *really* bad spot. CHKDSK hangs when it reaches it, as does the Western Digital official drive-testing software that I obtained from their website. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to replace the disk and reinstall, because any imaging software I use is going to puke as soon as it hits that sector as well, and I can't find a utility able to mark it as such without falling into the tarpit. Very frustrating.
So... has anyone had any experience with getting a WD hard drive replaced under warranty? This was bought new (OEM packaging) back in February of this year. It's still under the 1-year manufacturer warranty period. But I've never had to deal with replacing a WD drive. Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, yes. But never WD.
Am I going to have an uphill fight in front of me?
(Also, if you can recommend any drive utilities that stand a chance of marking that bad sector so I can maneuver around it, that'd be appreciated too)
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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Never had to replace a hard drive that came with my computer before. Sorry - no store/warranty experience here.
I assume you do have other hard drives, internal and/or external, to move the important personal data to in case the disc fails completely? If it were me, I wouldn't trust that drive further than I could throw it, after it started messing up like that. And I agree with your plans - I wouldn't bother trying to route around the bad sector, Id' just replace the drive. *nod*
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Yeah, bad sectors like that just don't appear for no reason. Something in the drive is seriously borked and it's only a matter of time.
As for replacement... *Sighs* You may be better off just buying a replacement drive right now, especially if you do not have a back-up rig to use. The thing is that turn-around times for warranty calls can take MONTHS, all told. This is including the time it takes for them to aknowledge and process your claim, ship the computer back to the manufacturer (they won't stand still for you to remove the drive from the tower - only certified techs are allowed to do that), have them do the work in their own sweet time (after all, it is for free), and finally ship it back to you. Oh yeah, and they usually have you pay for the shipping, too.
If you're really lucky, they'll let you have the store handle all the nasty details about packaging and shipping... but you'll still wait months for your machine to come back to you.
If you are extremely lucky (and this is only if the store you picked it up from has an in-house shop like Best Buy's Geek Squad), they'll do the work on site and it will only take a couple of weeks instead of months.
Really, IMHO your best option is to fix it yourself, especially if you have do have the technical skills to do so. You're only real obstical is the data recovery and that's more about finding the right sofware to do it.
Since this is going to be a (more or less) straightforward disc-copy, may I recomend you look into the Linux side of things? I know there are a few very useful utilities that can clone an image from a borked disc to a healthy one with relatively few problems. It's just a simple process of burning the program to a blank CD, plugging in the new drive (with the borked one still attached), booting up, entering some appropriate parameters, and then turning it loose.
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I'm amused somewhat that everyone seems to be assuming this was the drive that came with the system. I *did* specify OEM packaging for the *drive*, after all. I'm talking about the manufacturer (Western Digital) warranty process, not the computer builder (Dell) warranty process.
Ahem.
Misunderstandings aside: I will be getting a replacement drive and dropping it in, it's the question of getting the image swapped over vs. reinstalling. And to do *that*, I need a way around that bad sector. It appears to be a serious hardware fault and I'm tempted to low-level the drive after I get a successful image off it, see what happens, but the point is that right now it's a literal tarpit: as soon as the scan hits that sector, it enters an endless loop. Judging by the sounds it's making, it's seeking properly but unable to read the sector at all, and so it tries again... and again... and etc.
I've let it run for 5 hours just to see if it was an abnormally long timeout, but no dice.
I don't care what flavor utility I use, I'm just wondering if anyone knows of one that can behave intelligently instead of relying on the drive's own internal diagnostics (which are obviously flawed, here) about that sector.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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Oh... well in that case...
Since you are going to just get another drive, then have at it. However, I can't think of a utuility off the top of my head that would do the job without allowing itself to get mired in read-errors. You may very well have to go for a reinstall, and that may be the preferred course of action, especially if you have a cache of your preferred programs' install apps. This way you have a clean install with everything you want and no remnants of what was left behind.
And don't forget to back-up/export your settings - especially those bookmarks! They can be a pain to rebuild.
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A Linux LiveCD
10-02-2010, 12:16 AM
Can help you clone the drive using the dd command.
Here is a tutorial :
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/cl ... u-live-cd/
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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SilverFang01 Wrote:Can help you clone the drive using the dd command. Assuming that it doesn't hang on the bad sector, too.
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some people might scoff, but I've had good success with spinrite.
It might take some time, but it will
a) recover the sector, or
b) get the drive's firmware to mark that sector as bad, so that other disk recovery utilities don't fall down that tarpit.
if you don't want to cough up the dough ahead of time I'm sure you can find a working copy somewhere. But I've used it on dieing drives and gotten them hobbling along for enough time to get the data off.
-Terry
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A quick search finds this: http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/.
From the Site:
Quote:Many of the 'conventional' cloning products, disk copiers and disk imagers are
not particularly good at handling disks containing bad sectors or corrupt disk structures. The DiskPatch cloning feature is designed to handle disks that contain unreadable areas, and to ignore any damage
in disk structures such as partition tables and file systems. Keep in mind
though that the DiskPatch clone feature does not offer the functions that
'conventional' imaging tools offer, like resizing partitions; clone is meant to
facilitate recovery.
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Disk editor
10-02-2010, 06:47 AM
This isn't something you would probably want to use, but what about a Disk editor?
It might be harder to find than a needle in a haystack, but it might let you look at the "area of doom" on the HD and give you an idea whats going on there.
There are free versions of hex editors out there, never seen one for windows 7, but just do a search for a Hex editor or disk editor.
(just did a search)
Here is a link to a vista compatable Hex editor's webpage.
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
I've never used it and it doesn't list windows 7, but it is vista compatable.
hmelton
God bless
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