edit: sorta think I fixed it, ensue old post--

The drive is a Samsung HD103SJ or something, it's a TB SATA drive. Took it out of my desktop, previously 0 bad sectors and no problems at all. Switched drives with the server, handling it carefully all the while. Booted to Parted Magic and found errors running a SMART test, which I only haphazardly decided to do, didn't notice any noises or drive performance changes. It told me there was a single pending sector, and no bad sectors, all else was okay. Now I was able to boot up to the Ubuntu previously installed on the drive, meant for the desktop, but actually booted fine on the server (with a different GPU and everything even the GPU drivers still worked, well, they were both Radeon HDs but it was like a 4550 and a 5750). Anyway Disk Utility says it fails to read from the drive though I am actually using it right now. It still says 1 pending bad sector, all else appears alright. I was scared shitless for a second because I've got a load of stuff on this drive I need to get off...

I'd say back it up, then maybe RMA or something if you can. Can you try any other disk utilities? The Ubuntu one is pretty shitty last time I used it. Hopefully it's nothing major, and you can repair it...Drive prices are pretty high.

(It's a shame hard drive prices are so high nowadays. I actually bought my drive at Best Buy because it was cheaper than at Newegg. )

You say that these errors happened after you transplanted the drive? I would first try to rule out controller / PSU errors. Stick it back in the desktop and test it again.

One thing is for sure, make sure that you have an up to date backup. And if the drive is still giving errors, do yourself a favor and get a new drive.

Personally, I've never had much luck with Samsung drives. But really, any drive can go bad.



Seriously? That's sad, isn't it?

I recently upgraded my laptop hard drive. I paid $100 something for it and now it's almost $300 on newegg.

Supposedly there was a hard drive manufacturing plant in Taiwan or something that got wiped out due to some kind of natural disaster or something.

yeah or a bearing manufacturer, hence the overall price of drives going way up, not just a specific mfg. becaues then they'd probably just go bankrupt. All drives need bearings.

Anyway I'm doing a semi-emergency backup now. The problem is this was my largest drive by FAR, so I accordingly backed up other computers *to it*. THis is why it was to be put into the server. Once the backup finishes I'll screw with it more. I've had it for a year and a half, sure as hell don't want to pay for a new drive, second-worst case will RMA.

Yup. It's a Seagate 1TB drive. It was $70 at Best Buy, it's $110 on Newegg now.

$70 TB? I'll take that. Maybe make a trip there this weekend.

Anyway, I have tried first the SMART reader on Parted Magic, not sure what it was, and then the Ubuntu one afterward. Both indicated a critical read error, and still after about 20 minutes the single frickin pending sector. My guess is it's this one sector causing read errors but I'll troubleshoot it further once I dump 2.5 years' worth of server backup (non-recursive backup either, it exists only on this drive, basically in-between data) onto my external drive which is like 120GB.

Pretty sure the price went up.

Good lord that will take a while. o.0

Yup. 6:55 AM and I'm almost done after trashing all mirrored backups, i.e. ones that are true backups, keeping only data that I don't have elsewhere...... then I'll remove the drive and figure it out. Bad news though I"m up to 6 pending sectors and several read errors while copying

This is where RAID would have saved you. Either that, or scaling out your backups to a NAS like I did.

http://taldar.in/

/filez is my NAS

Dude. That sucks. Here's one way to fix the problem (most likely): Run ChkDsk on the Hard Drive by either right-clicking on the Hard Drive, go to properties, click on tools and click on Check Now under Error Checker. Tick both of the boxes: Automatically fix file system errors, Scan for and attempt recovery of Bad Sectors. If it asks you to forcefully dismount, click Yes, and under scan scheduling after a reboot, click Yes; reset the system, or use the Windows Installation CD (Windows XP/Vista/7) and run the recovery console (Vista/7 DVDs, click on repair my computer, click Command Prompt and type in ChkDsk X: /F /R where X is the drive letter. Flags /F means to automatically fix errors where as /R scans and attempts to recover bad sectors (implements /F).

Note: it will generally take a while to scan the entire hard drive (the bigger the size, the longer it takes to scan the hard drive under Stages 4 & 5.)
My laptop, dad's laptop, and my old desktop's hard drives had errors; got fixed, but my old desktop had a crapload of errors (under the Surface Scan with ScanDisk. File System, Directory, Free Space, and whatever else also had errors.)

Another solution is to try to backup or copy the files onto the external Hard Drive; delete and reformat the problematic hard drive. I have a TB Hard Drive, a Seagate Barracuta SATA Hard Drive, had it for almost 3 years, and so far, no problems. I got it at Microcenter (Computer Superstore) for $80 back in October of 2009.

I got 4 of these exact drives ages ago for around £50 a drive from aria. Wish I'd bought 8 or 10 at the time though. The post is on Hypnos some where.

Win7User: I appreciate your help but the drive is completely gone.

I put it back in the desktop and the second I powered it up it started grinding like a bitch, so I pulled the power lol.

I got my data off, save the OS files, but screw the OS, at least I got my server backups and netshare stuff off. Still sucks a lot though. Now my server still doesn't have a hard drive and my nice desktop's screwed as well. I'm scared to try to spinup the drive again, for fear of an explosion or equivalent disaster.

Well, semi good news so far, I removed and replaced the drive in the desktop yet again and it spun up fine with just power connected. So then I cautiously, with fire extinguisher in hand (lol, jk), attached the SATA cable. Spun up fine and loaded the OS. The Disk Utility still showed read failures and the 6 "pending" sectors, however.

So I booted to an UBCD, and ran DBAN from there. It's been going for a *long* time, but the progress has been steady and it's gone through 3 passes of random data and is now on the final zeroing step and there have been no errors so far. Maybe I could've saved my drive. (The data's off it by now, and it's since been destroyed (on the drive itself), but I would rather not have to RMA if I don't have to, as that would take a while and I'm too lazy to find a box and tape.)

I'd still say it's better to RMA. This drive has failed once, even if you save it, there's always a reason something failed.. It could just up and die again. A new one would be much less likely to do that.

Yeah that would make sense to RMA it now... considering I did get actual evidence of failure in the form of I/O errors copying files.

Though actually, crap, i wonder if I even can - the pending sectors were "erased" from the SMART tables, and the drive appears fine from there, only "evidence" left is two failed READ tests on the log, one of which may have gotten shoved off the last5 list because of the latest test... hm...