320GB Hitachi hdd problem

[-Bogdan-]

Hi all!

I have a problem with a Hitachi 320GB hdd. I use win XP sp3, the drive is SATA 2 but i use it as a SATA 1 because my PC is old and it doesn't work with sata2.

The hdd is about 15 month old, and it has been used for storage, and as the base drive for torrent use.


The problem i've encountered is: i opened the pc case, to remove a case cooler i didn't want anymore, to do that i had to unmount the hdd. After it was all done, i placed the hdd back in it's place and after boot up, at a certain point i got a win error saying that Disk 0 failed or something close to that.
So i restarted the system, everything goes well, until i stress the hdd a little, and it fails again and again.
PS - by stress i mean trying to copy it's contents to another hdd - it copies a little (100mb to 2 gb) and fails.

I've bought another sata cable, still doesn't work.
I've upgraded the pc's power supply, still doesn't work.
I've tried it in another pc - i wasn't even detected properly...

Could you guys explain to me what is wrong with it, and if there is something i could do, besides going to a professional data recoverer that would probably drain me of about 2-300 euro for 200gb of data.

What bugs me is that i didn't do anything to it, haven't dropped it, haven't played with it, just remove from case, place on the table, put back into case... And before it never issued any problems, no read errors, no endless seeking nothing.


I've uploaded two photos of the drive, one is the label the other the circuitry, in case it helps anyone figure out easier what is wrong with it.


I've just remembered, i had about 20gb of unallocated space on the drive, because i wanted to install an unix operating system to play around in it, but as i didn't install that, i called back the space, by using windows's hdd management, and i extended the partition i was already using. In the hdd management program it displayed the disk as having two partitions on it, and in windows as being a single patition of two hundred ninety something GB's. It worked ok, for about two weeks then the disk failed problem occured. If it's from that... maybe i could undo it, make that secondary partition unallocated again and perhaps the rest of the data will be ok.

Attachments

[BGman]

Maybe your HDD is OK, but the chipset fails because of overheating. Put back a fan blowing to the South Bridge.

[mr_spokk]

Or he just hits a bad sector...try to image the drive in a non windows enviroment first.

[labtech]

Maybe your HDD is OK, but the chipset fails because of overheating. Put back a fan blowing to the South Bridge.

OP said: I've tried it in another pc - i wasn't even detected properly...

So maybe it is the HDD in the end.

I would suggest to confirm it is not the motherboard, run a live linux cd (as you were pursuing that anyway) or something else like MHDD for drive diagnostic. MHDD is available for free in the software section of the forum.

If everything is smooth, then the system is ok.

So, it is a matter of ruling out culprits one at the time.

[-Bogdan-]

Thanks for your replyes!

I've ran an Ubuntu 11.10 cd and when trying to access/mount the hdd, "Hitachi" is the volume name, i got the prompt that you can see in the picture i've attached.

So, if it's the ntfs, could that be fixed without data loss, because i can't back-up everything i have on the drive for a proper format?
If bad sectors are involved, can i partition around them? Or is it just best if i give up the drive because one bad sector invites more?

I've downloaded an iso of MHDD, and i'll burn&run it in a while.

Attachments

Ubuntu prompt upon mounting the Hitachi drive

[-Bogdan-]

It seems i can't edit my post.

I've ran the mhdd utility, and it's a more complex tool that i thought i would be (i.e. just another msdos hdd scanner )

The scan results basically show that there are 24 "X UNC" sectors and it also warned me about other ~30 sectors.
Had 25 x >500ms, 38 x <500ms, 332 <150ms, 3381 >50ms, 65809 >10ms and 2381931 >3ms.

So there are 24 bad sectors, a few probably on their way to becoming bads - the ones i've been warned about and a few that aren't easly accessible - brown and orange blocks.
Hope the remapping will solve the problems, but the main question still remains...

Once an HDD develops a bad sector is it on the verge of collapse?

Anyway, thanks labtech for sharing the MHDD software, at least now i think i have an accurate diagnosis of what's wrong with the hdd.

@mr_spokk Yes, it's basically true, it probably hits one of the bad's or one of the hard accesible sectors and stalls resulting in drive fail due to lack of response.
@bgman No, the south bridge is fine, it has it's own heatsink added by me, and although it's warm, it's not hot probably about 35 celsius - witch it's been constantly for a few years, except for when turned off The fan that i removed is a fan that was used for general airflow not an elementary fan because the pc is an "open case" one - as in it always has the lid taken off.

[mr_spokk]

Just as I thought, use a program called MediaToolsPro to do a image of your drive to healthy drive then run any logic datarecovery program on the clone to access your files.

[labtech]

The scan results basically show that there are 24 "X UNC" sectors and it also warned me about other ~30 sectors.
Had 25 x >500ms, 38 x <500ms, 332 <150ms, 3381 >50ms, 65809 >10ms and 2381931 >3ms.

So there are 24 bad sectors, a few probably on their way to becoming bads - the ones i've been warned about and a few that aren't easly accessible - brown and orange blocks.
Hope the remapping will solve the problems, but the main question still remains...

Once an HDD develops a bad sector is it on the verge of collapse?

It depends on from what perspective.

If we care about continuing the use the drive for data access as is with regard to file structure, then yes things are getting complicated, because we are likely dealing with NTFS corrupt structures. Based on what they are exactly, it could become tedious and time-consuming in getting it straightened out, especially with a deteriorated drive.

If we do not care about the data, but only drive functionality, then there could be some restoration/refurbish options, but you will likely lose some of the space as you would manually have to allocate the space in such manner that would avoid those problematic sectors.

Generally speaking, such a drive is not to be trusted with data that there is no back-up of. Potentially, other problems could be developing fast as far as the read-write components go, and so on.

Anyway, thanks labtech for sharing the MHDD software, at least now i think i have an accurate diagnosis of what's wrong with the hdd.

You are welcome