HDD Woes

[PR-0927]

So I posted this on Guru3D, but seeing as how...I think no one here goes there, I figured I'd post this here, because it is a bit pressing, and I'd appreciate any assistance on the matter. Here is what I posted there:

 

So here's the story - I went out and bought a new HDD (a Western Digital 1 TB 6.0 Gb/s, model number WD1002FAEX). After much hassle figuring out the HDD cage screw situation in the Antec Nine Hundred and having to retrieve a SATA power cable from a friend, I finally booted it up. Worked fine. I bought it mostly for all the movies I had, and proceeded to copy them from my main HDD (it had like 8 GB of free space left).

 

After copying (387 GB, took about an hour), I deleted the movies from my main HDD, thinking it was all good. I installed XBMC and messed around with it, then exited it in order to create a "Movies" and a "TV Shows" folder in the videos folder I put on my new drive.

 

Upon creating this new folder, however, it froze. I was confused as to why, but it never unfroze, and eventually I shut down the computer.

 

This didn't work - the window wouldn't close, and Windows wouldn't exit it, for quite some time. Finally it went to the "Shutting Down" screen. It sat there FOREVER.

 

So I had to hard-reboot it. On load, it just sat there on the "Starting Windows" screen. I got impatient after a while and did another hard reboot. Then the same thing happened. I decided to wait it out, and finally the screen turned black. When it returned, I got a check disk thing. So it ran. PAINFULLY SLOWLY.

 

Then it entered Windows. Everything took a while to load, and Rainmeter, which I had running for a sidebar, had the icon in the system tray, but refused to load. When I opened up Computer, the main HDD seemed fine, but the new one no longer had the "fill bar" under the name/icon. Trying to access it caused it to freeze. I restarted. Same thing happened, with the check disk and all.

 

After restarting several times, I just logged in, and while typing this out, Rainmeter actually loaded. But everything is being slow to first load, and the network adapter took forever to connect (to a wired connection!).

 

In Rainmeter (I'm afraid to open up "Computer" because it'll likely freeze it again), it shows my HDD space for my main HDD and my new one. The new one used to say "387 GB/.9 TB." Now it says "1.0B/1.0B."

 

BUT THE THING IS - while running check disk (multiple times, always taking a while and listing the same errors), it mentions the name of many of the videos I had on there!

 

So I need your help, Gurus, and I have some questions as well:

 

• By any chance, is the HDD trying to run in RAID or something? I don't recall seeing this option in the bios.
  
• The HDD is a SATA 6.0 Gb/s drive. My motherboard only has support for 3.0 Gb/s. But if I recall correctly, that shouldn't matter, right?
  
• If the HDD (the new one) seems to be...dead, how can I recover information from it? I deleted all those movies already from my other HDD. I do have backups on my HTPC at home...but that's two hours away (I'm at college).
  
• On the same note as the above topic - doing a system restore wouldn't get my files back onto my old HDD, would it?
  
• Should I be trying to re-format the new drive, or does it seem like it's just bad? It's done many check disks, to no avail.
  

 

 

Thanks guys, I appreciate any/all help!

 

- PR-0927

 

And the thread, just in case:

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=330733

 

 

Thanks for any potential assistance!

 

- PR-0927

[Nerd_Annhilator]

Youd probably have better luck recovering the movies from the hdd you originally deleted them from...

 

sounds like you need to RMA that new disk.

 

(and let new drives run for like a week to see if they end up being okay)

[PR-0927]

I greatly appreciate a response! First one too!

 

I posted another post in that thread linked above, with an update:

 

Bit of an update, when I disconnected the SATA cable for the new HDD, the computer booted and ran fine (and so did Rainmeter). So I tried reconnecting it. Stupidly, I had set up a super-long check disk run, which I left on over night (of my primary drive). It booted fast up up to the disk check (and then I went to sleep because it took an eternity - but no errors had appeared by the time I slept), and I just logged into Windows now - Rainmeter is again failing and the new HDD appears as unformatted, without the "fill bar" under it in "Computer."

 

I tried running Recuva on both drives - it found most of the stuff from the new drive, but said it would take two days to recover! That's a bit long - I can probably just copy over the movies from my roommates HDD, and get the ones he didn't have on there from my HTPC, via my laptop, when I go home for the weekend next - much less of a hassle, when Recuva might not even do a good job.

 

So now I'm at a loss - do you guys think the new HDD is bad? Should I reformat and try again? Why the hell did it freeze up in the first place and then cause these problems?

 

Again...any help would be much appreciated!

 

- PR-0927

 

 

Recuva basically failed to find anything on the first HDD anyways - many of the videos were over 10 GB and didn't go to the recycling bin even.

 

- PR-0927

[Q]

Try putting the new drive in an external USB dock, if you have access to one, and see if you can access the files then.

 

What OS are you using?

[PR-0927]

I ended up re-formatting the new HDD and have been copying files to it - so accessing files from it via HDD dock won't work now (didn't have access to one anyways).

 

I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. Rest of my specifications are to the left of my posts in the links above, on Guru3D. I'm intending to see if it fails within 30 days - if it does, I'm taking it right back to Micro Center.

 

- PR-0927

[PR-0927]

An update:

 

Well, I ended up seeing these responses well after I took further action. I had reformatted the drive, and copied back movies on it from my roommate's external HDD. Copying took WAY longer than it should have, and once copied, moving files into and out of folders caused sporadic hang-ups. Playing a video froze my media player.

 

So I tried to do a non-"Quick Format." Took ages, and didn't even get half way when Windows showed up with an urgent-looking screen. It said something about "hard drive failure imminent" and "take actions to backup your data" and "the drive is reporting a failure." And yes, it was talking about the new one.

 

So I finally disconnected the HDD and am going to return it to Micro Center later on (I have midterms this week).

 

But now I have to hope that any new HDDs don't have issues and that it wasn't the SATA controller or anything, and that Windows wasn't lying to me, LOL.

 

I also need to figure out a good HDD to buy - trying to keep it $100 or less, at least 1 TB, and SATA 6 Gb/s preferred (the benefit over 3 Gb/s is negligible with it only spinning at 7200 RPM and not saturating the SATA 3 Gb/s bandwith, right, I know, but there is a marginal benefit in the end, right...or am I wrong?). Should I stick with the one I got and hope that a replacement is fine? Or should I try someone else's HDDs? I've pretty much stuck with WD - I know Seagate has the highest failure rate.

 

I really, really appreciate the posts you guys made - I would have done that had I not already been pulling out my hair and impatiently trying this and that (and if Windows didn't warn me). If something like this happens again in the future, I'll be sure to try this out).

 

- PR-0927

 

 

The thing I mentioned not trying (but would in any future event) was some suggestions about using an Ubuntu Live CD that some people commented there.

 

- PR-0927