Topic: Need HDD help

[Steve]

So last night I had the laptop on the HDMI watching the walking dead with Ashley. VLC froze (well the show did) and after a few minutes spit out a device read error and windows locked up. I rebooted it and windows was loading, and loading, and then the computer rebooted and Windows tried recovery mode, which just sat there for hours like it was thinking.

So a few reboots later I still could not get beyond this point. I popped in the Windows CD and hit setup, another stalled point. Seems pretty clear the HDD is dying on me or did die. I need to run some kind of scan on it (SATA). I need a suggestion on a utility to help me out that I can put on a USB stick.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Steve]

also the drive is Hitatchi, but their "fitness test" is CD only.

[Perspective]

linux usb stick? If it stalled booting off the Windows CD I don't know if its necessarily the hard drive though.

[Steve]

I'm thinking the install is having trouble communicating with the drive because setup wont even start and I know the disk works.

I'm downloading ultimatebootcd now and unetbootin to try and get it on my usb stick. Reason being is one of the tools it includes is the hitatchi fitness test

[Steve]

I tried to run a bunch of hdd diagnostics as well as a few smart inquiry tools and none of them would run, period.

Now running MEMTEST

[Steve]

Memtest passed perfect, as did every other component. Unable to test the HDD i decided if its shot its shot and i have backups so i am using killdisk to write zeros. At 48% and not one error so I guess we will see what happens.

[Steve]

Zero write no errors. After that Windoes installed without a hitch....that is WEIRD. Not sure i will set everything back up for a few days.

[KnuckleBuckett]

What does Win do?

[Steve]

Right now it is running perfectly normal and everything is passing the tests and scans. Never had anything like that happen before. Safe to say my confidence in my system is a little low right now.