Need to determine if hard drive really needs replacement

[mastermind93]

Hi, I Need to find out if my existing hard drive really needs replacement. Its about 2 years old. In the past year, I have had boot problems w/ it three times.

The first time with Windows ME as my OS, it would automatically come up to the screen that had you choose from Safe Mode or Regular Boot Up. After making my selection, it would restart again rather than booting with my selection. I ended up reformatting.

The second time with Windows 2000 Pro. as my OS(few months later), it kept giving me a boot error(a blue screen which I think said "Inaccessible boot device" but im not sure if that was the error as i dont remember properly). I couldn't boot so i had to reformat again.

The third time with Windows 2000 Pro. again as my OS a few months late, it would boot up to the login in screen and freeze or stall before being prompted to type in my username and password.In addition, when I was doing a clean install of windows 2000 after this problem, I was unable to create partitions because it said my hard drive had some errors. In the past, the computer also said that the hard drive had about 8MB in bad sectors when i was doing a clean install.

Currently though, it is working properly after reformatting. I am afraid that it will start giving me boot errors again in a few months.

My main question is:
- Is there a definite hard drive problem? Should I replace it?
- Could it be some thing else (for ex., motherboard)

Your help would be grealty appreciated. Thanks

 

[mastermind93]

By the way, I have A Samsung SV3063H 30 GB 5400 RPM drive.

 

[wolluf]

I'd suspect it is another hardware problem (could be anything, but I'd start with memory).

You could try running chkdsk on it (although if other hardware problem, that would be best done in another machine, if you have access to one), or the drive manufacturer's checking utility (should be available from their website) to try to establish if drive is bad or not.

 

[alvin79]

I agree. Try to get the support from the hard drive manufactorer, you may download the disk management utilities from the manufatorer site. Try to do low level format and then run a normal har drive installation step. Before you install your OS, try to do the scandisk with provided in MS Windows boot disk.

 

[hotfusion]

Unusual (in my experience) for a drive as young as yours to start loosing clusters, but if this is the case, you need to identify all dodgy areas and mark them as unusable.
First to try is scandisk from DOS (type scandisk). After it runs the standard scan, elect for a full surface scan - it will take a while - this does a read test of the whole drive, and can identify most bad areas.
If you want to spend money, you could try Spinrite (

http://www.grc.com).

This is a far more thorough write/read test, and will identify areas still usable, but going weak, and mark them out as bad to avoid future problems. It has solved many a problem for me.
Good luck. Andy.