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Computer is broken.

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:36 am
by x21
Hi all

I recently had a boot failure that I cannot seem to recover from. I may not be on very much until I can get this fixed

x21

Re: Computer is broken.

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:45 am
by -§moKe-
What version of windows & are you running multiple HDD's that were installed at the time of the OS installation? Have you verified that the HDD or HDD's are not having failing issues? i.e. reallocation event counts, current pending sector counts, reallocation sector counts. You can use a program like Hiren's Boot CD 15.2 to load into the linux gui and click on the disk health icon to check for those things. They will show up as either attributes triggered or error logs. If you can get that to work, that a picture of it and upload it so someone can look at it.

I'm just a computer geek who runs a computer repair shop, in case you were wondering.

Re: Computer is broken.

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:10 am
by Dr.Flay
Agreed, bad blocks at the beginning of the drive sound the most likely.
Unfortunately Windows does not report SMART errors until the drive is very borked.
Doubly unfortunately over the years I have found that most drives only have SMART ability enabled, and not self-testing or logging of test results (HDD Guardian is a handy way to enable the 2 extra features from Windows).

Rather than running SMART tests first which will try to save the damaged block by moving it, I would first recommend using either SpinRite, HDD Regenerator, or MHDD to scan and repair the drive.
SpinRite and HDD Regenerator are commercial but HDD Regenerator will fix 1 block at a time for free. MHDD is free.
Usually you see the errors crop up early then stop happening, and very often it is just 1 bad block stopping the boot-up.

Once the drive can boot, then force a full SMART diagnostic. This will retire weak blocks.
If you buy SpinRite or HDD Regenerator, just do maintenance scans every few months, although regular repair scans with MHDD also keep them fast and extend drive life.

Make sure you run a SMART monitor tool for the whole life of your drives. They will record the changes you don't see, and give you early warning of failure.
I use Crystal Disk Info for monitoring (supports RAID), and HDD Guardian for SMART configuration and tests.

Alongside the old Hirens disc you should keep a copy of the more recent Ultimate Boot CD. This contains all the official tools from the HDD manufacturers.

Re: Computer is broken.

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 1:11 pm
by Leo(T.C.K.)
Good luck. Sorry can't say much more right now. Not the true expert in this matter, after all I had this happen to me in late 2013 and I didn't recover the stuff ever since. In the end I had to restart my work on unreal psx ep1 part 2. Which is part of the reason it's takin that damn long and the other is that me and codex are the only people working on anything now. vendirty is too busy irl to help out more etc. And I didnt hear from mrc and mmu instead makes releases of random maps.

Re: Computer is broken.

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 5:34 pm
by x21
I managed to recover most of my lost data. I am back up and running. EDIT: the drive passes all manufacturer tests

Re: Computer is broken.

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 7:58 pm
by -§moKe-
I am going to share what I have learned over the years, it's up to you to decide what to believe.

Unfortunately I know the truth of what I've witnessed at work. I had one of my employees test a ladies HDD with the manufacturer software. It passed, a month later when she came in to pick up her unit, she asked that we turn the unit on. It took almost 5 minutes to load into windows, which was extremely unreasonable. I asked him if he had tested the HDD before doing a complete fresh load of Windows on her laptop. His answer was yes, I decided to fire up the unit with my flash drive of Parted Magic, which I had just recently started using. Much to her surprise and his, Disk Health reported 6000+ error logs for 'uncorrectable errors in data'. None of the attributes were triggered, it passed the short dst drive test. I imaged it to a new HDD and her unit loaded into Windows in 45 seconds.

I have even had a situation where a HDD tested fine from with mfg software and looked fine in Parted Magic in Disk Health. Unfortunately we had already found bad memory on the customers laptop ( many hours later and multiple passes that didn't fail, until it hit a bad upper memory address block on one stick), and the unit still ran terrible. Since his unit was getting a fresh load of windows and still ran like crap after a fresh load, we used a good used HDD and did a fresh load of windows and it ran fine. We even imaged their drive and it ran fine.

So, just because stuff says it's running fine doesn't mean a thing to me anymore. I test stuff with all the random, weird knowledge, I've gained over the years. Things that aren't written in any book or taught, but personal experience & success has taught me well. I am trying to share that knowledge with you. I am not here to convince you, it's up to you to either learn from what I have to share or not.