Replacing ailing hard drive

[milanuk]

Hello,

Well, it seems I've been out of the 'flow' long enough (couple years?) with regards to mainstream M$ Windows PCs that I'm in need of advice/confirmation as to how to proceed.

Scenario: ~3yr old Gateway desktop mini-tower PC, 1.6GHz, 160GB hd, CD/DVDRW, DVD, etc. Nothing fancy. Started making tell-tale 'grinding' noises a week or so ago. Firm rap on the front of the case usually shut it up at first, but not anymore. Correspondingly the 'puter has been getting slower and more prone to locking up. Based on past experience, I'm guessing the hard drive is about done for.

Going off of past experience, I was considering buying a replacement drive, prying open the case and hooking the drive up as secondary master on the IDE cable, formatting it appropriately, copying the original hard drive across to the new one, then swapping the HDs on the cable so the new one would be primary master and the second would be still accessible for the time being on secondary master. As I said, it's been a few years since I've done this sort of shennigans, and even then it was 99% on Linux/BSD, not M$ Windows - the basic hardware cabling was the same, but the partition table stuff was noticeably different. Biggest thing I'm worrying about is getting all the boot sector info transferred correctly. From what I recall, there used to be a program called 'Norton Ghost' for this sort of thing, but it wasn't real cheap and would be somewhat unpractical for what should be a one-shot affair. Used to be I was current enough that I could probably have pulled it off using a bootable Linux floppy or CD and CLI tools, but I'm not quite that confident at the moment.

Any other suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,

Monte

[LCHIEN]

a lot of the drive manufacturers provide a disk cloning software with their retail drive packages. This will copy boot sectors and data from Drive A to drive B provided drive B is big enough to handle the data. For IDE to IDE this should be readily available, you might try searching with google, copies might even be available in thes upport sections of the various drive Mfrs websites.

[milanuk]

Forgot to mention... the original hard drive has some sort of 'background' backup-recovery features, mainly I think it split up the 250gb and used one part as a back up for the other part, sort of a software RAID sort of gimmick. Not sure how it would work for restoration to a new drive. Something else to look into, but I've never fiddled with it since turning the thing on.

Loring,

I'll do a little looking around for that stuff.

Thanks,

Monte

[LarryG]

I never copy an existing OS; instead, I FDISK and format the new hard disk, and start from scratch. It's a PITA, it takes longer, it usually requires tracking down drivers for all your hardware, and you have to reinstall and re-upgrade all your software (including Windows itself).

BUT ... it also means you're not moving any existing problems on the existing HD to the new one, and it's a good opportunity to make sure you have the latest versions of drivers, are up-to-date on patches, etc. Software that you have stopped using (i.e., older stuff, or failed experiments that seemed like a good idea at the time) simply do not get reinstalled. You end up with a leaner, cleaner installation, and a smaller, less-cluttered registry. I usually find that this approach generally makes the same machine feel at least half again as fast.

The old hard disk can still be temporarily installed as the slave, of course, so you can move your data across.

[DaveS]

Hello,
Scenario: ~3yr old Gateway desktop mini-tower PC, 1.6GHz, 160GB hd, CD/DVDRW, DVD, etc. Nothing fancy. Started making tell-tale 'grinding' noises a week or so ago. Firm rap on the front of the case usually shut it up at first, but not anymore. Correspondingly the 'puter has been getting slower and more prone to locking up. Based on past experience, I'm guessing the hard drive is about done for.

Not so fast...

Generally speaking... (with modern drives) if a drive is making noise - a rap to the tower won't stop it. Usually, this is a cooling fan going bad. If it is the one on the processor, lock ups will be frequent.

Of course, it is possible that your drive is failing.

It goes without saying that you should have a back up of your data - regardless of whether your drive is failing or not.

I have found that systems slow down over the years due to the operating system mismanaging itself, spyware, application installations putting hidden background tasks in memory, disk fragmentation, etc.

If that is the case, making a copy of the drive and replacing it won't necessarily speed up the system or stop the lock ups.

My advice:

(1) get a backup drive NOW and make a backup of your important data
(2) crack the case open and find the noise source and replace it

now... to fix your slow down issue...
(3) get a new drive and put it as the boot drive - reinstall Windows and other applications you use
(4) install old drive as secondary drive, and copy the important data to the new drive - remove old drive, put on shelf (on top of the stack of old drives ) - for this, I don't even bother putting the old drive in - I got one of those SATA/PATA to USB adapters at geeks.com for $10, and I just copy the data off that way.

[milanuk]

Dave,

Point taken. The grinding noise seemed to coincide w/ the HDD activity light, but it could be the fan. I might be jumping to (incorrect) conclusions here.

I recently punted Norton Internet Security off my system as it was bogging things down terribly, and replaced it w/ ZoneAlarm and AVG - combined w/ a thorough house cleaning using CCleaner and Ausdisk Defrag. A couple weeks later, things started slowing down again and I got the funky noises and the whole 'puter locking up. I suppose its possible that maybe a fan failure could lead to overheating and locking up of the system?

You're right about needing a system backup of some sort... I kind of wanted to get this part taken care of, then to start looking for some sort of attached storage - either a USB drive of 500gb-1TB, or one that could attach to the ethernet port on my wireless access point.

Monte

[LinuxRandal]

Forgot to mention... the original hard drive has some sort of 'background' backup-recovery features, mainly I think it split up the 250gb and used one part as a back up for the other part, sort of a software RAID sort of gimmick. Not sure how it would work for restoration to a new drive. Something else to look into, but I've never fiddled with it since turning the thing on.

Loring,

I'll do a little looking around for that stuff.

Thanks,

Monte

WARNING!! WARNING!! Danger Will Robinson!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is PROBABLY NOT a raid gimmick. Your pc is new enough and I am assuming Window's here, that it DIDN'T come with a OS reinstall disk, but a section of the hard drive, that is a recovery partition. One of the first things you are told to do in a new pc is build your recovery disc's. Here is the rub('s)
Several of the pc's I have seen are shipped with a disc, that is only a pointer to that section of the hard drive. People who replace a dead hard drive are screwed (buy a new OS copy please)
I have one family member who rebuilds/tests/restores pc's all day (freight recovery), you can sucessfully burn a copy, verify it, and it still won't read (Frequent problem for him).
There are/were a few companies, that you could buy a pc, WITH a true os, or pressed recovery disc, but pretty much ONLY when you purchased the PC (my father tried to obtain one for a 2 year old pc, you don't want to know the price).

That said, Years ago, The company that made Partition magic, also had a Ghost program. I found a freeware version and sent it to a friend whose company didn't have the proper Ghost for network installs (XP was 1 year old and they started installing it). I believe I found it by googling freeware ghost, but you can tell it was a few years ago.

If you think there is ANY chance that it is the drive, make sure you backup your critical files first (can use on a new pc), then if you haven't, make your recovery disc's!

[cgallery]

Download HDDScan.exe from here:

http://hddguru.com/download/software...DDScan_v28.zip

Open/run it. Make sure your primary HDD is selected and click on the "Smart" button. The "Reallocation Sector Count" RAW value should be all zeroes. All the other attribute values should be green.

If not, then you likely need a new drive.

Now, make sure the "Command" control in upper right-hand corner is set to VERIFIY. Click on the "Start" button and it will check the read times for each sector. We're looking for green or better, and no "Bads".

If you get no "Bads" and everything is green or better, then your hard drive is fine. If you see speeds above green, that can indicate your machine is doing other stuff and slowing down disk I/O. But lots of slow sectors can also indicate a failing drive.

[milanuk]

okay... I ran that utility, as well as another one I found, and they both say the same thing... the HDD temps are getting really high. They start out @ 50-51°C at startup and go up from there. AVG seems really fond of thrashing the crap out of my 250gb HD (just like Norton did), which just makes the temps skyrocket. Even w/ AVG turned off, the temps gone up 5°C just in the time it took to type this... and I ain't a slow typer!

As far as the grinding noise... there's only two things w/ moving parts at that end of the mini-tower - the HDD, and the CPU fan. Seeing as how the HDD has the rising temps, I'm guessing it was/is the HDD that is making the intermittent noises.

Sounding more and more like I need to replace the HDD... but I wonder what would make the drive temp go up like this? Copying things over is going to put a strain on it for sure; hope it holds together long enough to git'r done!

[crokett]

A broken fan would also cause HDD temps to rise. But if you are worried, replace the HDD sooner rather than later.

Easiest way I know of is download Gparted (free) cd image
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

burn the CD and boot it. A partition editor that among other things will let you copy the entire drive layout from one drive to another.

[milanuk]

Aw, nuts. Got the case cracked open and apparently the HDD has a SATA cable running to the MB... and no other ports on the cable to plug a secondary HDD into. This could be fun...

[cgallery]

Aw, nuts. Got the case cracked open and apparently the HDD has a SATA cable running to the MB... and no other ports on the cable to plug a secondary HDD into. This could be fun...

Aren't there free (unconnected) SATA ports on the motherboard?

[milanuk]

There are; it was just a bit of a surprise as I never messed w/ SATA before - I was used to IDE cables w/ multiple plugs on each ribbon.

Got a new Seagate 500GB SATA drive hooked up, about ready to commence cloning... it's running at about 32-33°C @ start-up as compared to 52°C for the old drive. Crossin' my fingers and hoping it holds together long enough to get thru the clone process...

[milanuk]

Well it worked. At least it seems so

Put in a new Seagate 500GB SATA disk, which came w/ what looks like a Seagate-branded version of Acronis True-Image software for disk backup, recovery, and most importantly (for me), cloning. Took a long dang time (several hours), but it did a sector-for-sector clone of the ailing WD 250gb HDD to the new one. Everything seems pretty much the same... with the exception of no grinding noises, and a couple hundred extra GB of free space!

Thanks for the moral support, folks

[gerti]

As far as the grinding noise... there's only two things w/ moving parts at that end of the mini-tower - the HDD, and the CPU fan. Seeing as how the HDD has the rising temps, I'm guessing it was/is the HDD that is making the intermittent noises.

Easy way to check if a fan is grinding: use a paintbrush or similar to slow it down. If the grinding noise changes you found the problem. Don't forget the fan in the power supply, and sometimes there is a chassis fan hiding in the front between the metal case and the outer plastic cover.

The HD might be getting to hot because there is insufficient airflow. Though many types get pretty hot as a matter of fact,