So.. My Hard Drive Messed Up. Tech Help?

Mullen · Jul 7, 2008

About a week ago we were having electrical problems (A donkey ran into the ground wire, for those of you that have to know). The electricity began flashing on and off and my computer would only boot in safe mode. I ran a test with PC-Doctor and my hard drive failed the short self test, error code HD521-2W.

Today the hard drive that HP sent me arrived and I was seeing what I could do before installing the other hard drive. I used system recovery to reset the computer back to before the electrical problems. System recovery completed and the computer started up just fine. I ran a test on the hard drive in PC-Doctor and it still failed the short self test.

Is there any way to fix this or do I need to go ahead and switch over to the other hard drive?

monkeykoder · Jul 7, 2008

I'd transfer the files over to the new drive and keep the old one in there for storage of things you don't care about.

Rhys · Jul 7, 2008

Transfer the files and chuck the old drive. Drive a nail through it before it hits the dustbin though for security.

Overread · Jul 7, 2008

I agree - its a dead drive - set it to a slave drive and connect it up the the computer and copy over all your stuff.
a Blowtorch and hammer work well for ensuring effective encryption after that

monkeykoder · Jul 7, 2008

I prefer stealing the magnets out of it... You could run them over the platters if you're concerned about security.

Tyjax · Jul 7, 2008

Check, check and check all of the above. Get the files quicker rather than later. SMART technology isnt great but when it does report issues better grab yer gunk and scrat.

Mullen · Jul 9, 2008

Thanks for the help guys. I gave up on the hard drive in a cardboard box that HP sent me and bought a 500GB Seagate kit. Best Buy forgot to take their sale price down so I got it for $89.99. I installed it and transfered everything without any problems.

I'm glad I got that over with. Wondering if you can save 2+ years of unbacked pictures and music is rather stressful..

Rhys · Jul 9, 2008

My wife's laptop finally went kerplunk a week or two back. The laptop still works but the hard drive is probably toast.

Fortunately I bullied her into allowing me to make a backup of her documents and settings folder about 3 months ago so not much is lost.

clarinetJWD · Jul 9, 2008

Tyjax said:
Check, check and check all of the above. Get the files quicker rather than later. SMART technology isnt great but when it does report issues better grab yer gunk and scrat.

Q.F.E.

I have never lost any data due to failed hard drives, but that isn't because I haven't had failed drives. I've had several, but as soon as I notice abnormalities or SMART reports a failing drive, I back eveything up without hesitation. Sometimes SMART is wrong (a brand new SATA drive used in an esata enclosure claimed to be failing, so I backed up, and left it connected...it's not reported anything since, and it's been 5 or so months), but it's better to be safe.

Senor Hound · Jul 10, 2008

Mullen said:
I'm glad I got that over with. Wondering if you can save 2+ years of unbacked pictures and music is rather stressful..

I think we can all learn something from this. We should all BACK UP anything we wouldn't be okay with losing tomorrow. I never back anything up even after losing all of my photos once already. And optical storage is dirt cheap and supposedly longer-lasting than magnetic storage.

Okay, I'm done being the TPF nagging mother.

Rhys · Jul 10, 2008

an update - the wife's laptop's hard drive is dead.

I put my Hyperdrive HD80 drive (a Toshiba) into it instead, found an XP Pro disk from somewhere and installed XP Pro. I put the data and some of her software on. I could not put Outlook back nor Word as these were on the recovery partition of the dead drive.

I can access the files on the dead drive using trial softare. At $70 for the software so that I can really duplicate the drive, we feel it's not worth the expense. I'm currently trying to get a warez copy of Outlook to unzip. As she has Microsoft Publisher we feel word is really now un-necessary.

lockwood81 · Jul 10, 2008

Mullen said:
(A donkey ran into the ground wire, for those of you that have to know).

What? :lmao:

Mullen · Jul 10, 2008

Rhys said:
I can access the files on the dead drive using trial softare. At $70 for the software so that I can really duplicate the drive, we feel it's not worth the expense.

You may be able to use Seagate's DiscWizard, it's a free download from their site (Download Page). It came with my hard drive and worked fine.