My 1TB EHD is acting up (symptoms inside); Can you help identify the problem/solution?

September 3, 2009

Hi, TLDR below.

Hard drive took a little spill off the desk the other day. I plugged it in, a few beep noises came FROM the HD, not the computer, and now it isn’t loading up when I try going into it. I hear the disc(s) inside running smoothly and there isn’t any abnormal sounds (other than the beeping when I first plugged it in).

Every once in awhile, it will boot up very, very slowly. Other times, it will show the make shift directories I made inside the Terabyte but nothing inside them. And as of now, it will say it is unable to find or load up the HD.

So what sort of problems am I looking at here? Is there any way I can back up some of the criteria on the HD? Is there a type of diagnostic software I can use, buy, download to scan for problem and solutions?

It is under warranty, but I would hate for me to ship it out and lose all my files without at least doing my best to fix it myself. I plan on reformatting it if I can get an unfortunate solid answer of not being able to salvage my stuff. If that doesn’t work, then I suppose I’ll just send it in.

TLDR version: HD is beeping, discs sounds like they’re running fine. HD not booting up. Has weird nature to it, sometimes it loads (very slowly) sometimes directory doesn’t exist. Need help

+10 to best answer

What is wrong with my Western Digital external hard drive? ?

September 2, 2009

I’ve had a 750gb Western Digital external HD for nearly 4 months. I’ve only used this drive for housing photographs for my business. Currently, there are approx. 60 GB of photos on the drive.

A week ago, I noticed that the drive didn’t seem to be functioning properly. It was really slow (more than normal) and sometimes would freeze up.

I tried to get a particular photograph off of the drive yesterday and it was a complete failure. I have approx. 35 different folders of photographs (each for a different client) on the drive. When I open the folders, 1 of 3 things happen:

-Everything is completely normal. Some of the folders are totally fine.
-I can see all of the photographs as thumbnails, but when I try to open them, they freeze. I can’t even copy them to my desktop.
-Some of the folders will open and half of the thumbnails will show up as the actual photographs and half will constantly remain the default blue sky.

Needless to say, I’m a little panicked. There has been no physical damage to the drive. I’m not really sure what changed.

After doing my homework, I downloaded the drive diagnostic software from WD. These tests "failed" claiming that there were "too many damaged sectors." If I restart my computer with the drive attached, it attemps a chkdsk but freezes up halfway through.

Now, I’m manually checking the disk. Though, it has been going for nearly 20 minutes and I can really tell if anything is happening.

Of course, my main concern is getting these photographs off of the drive. It is especially frustrating when I can see them as thumbnails but not access the actual files.

What can/should I do? I really appreciate the help.
Nope. Completely quiet.

memory causing windows to freeze?

September 1, 2009

I recently built a new computer from scratch with high end components and installed Windows Vista 64-bit.
I was having major issues with the system freezing permanently and randomly during use.
I would run windows memory diagnostic software and it did not find any hardware errors.

I had a 4 gig dual channel memory kit installed in the first 2 dimm slots on my motherboard.
I tried changing the memory to the last two dimm slots and the computer then seemed to work for a while but ultimately started freezing again.
Windows would also occasionally crash fatally to a blue error screen.

I then switched the memory to the 1st and 3rd dimm slots(both blue colored slots) and now Windows hasn’t froze or crashed in days.

Can anyone tell me why this last solution might have worked?
I have an Asus Maximus Extreme motherboard:
http://www.dvhardware.net/news/asus_maximus_extreme_xf.jpg

And 4g of OCZ Platinum Enhanced DDR3 memory

Thanks

Constant CRC errors in rar files?

August 31, 2009

As of two months ago nearly all the rar files (r01,r02,r03,etc) I download that are between 40mb-100mb never extract properly.
These are the error messages I get

With 7z – "CRC failed in ‘name of file’. File is broken"
With Winrar – "Packed data CRC failed in ‘name of file’. The volume is corrupt" with WinRAR (tried several versions)

Now I know you can set winrar to ignore the message and continue. But I need to know, is this due to some sort of hardware failure?
I ran memtest 86+ for 14 hours with no errors. Possibly my harddrive is going? (despite not finding any errors with hd diagnostic software)

So then I decided to move the exact same files over to my old computer. They extract perfectly. So its obviously not caused by the download source.

The strange thing is I can extract 1gig rar files perfectly. But if the 1 gig extracts into smaller rar files I cannot extract those.

I already replaced the RAM with new memory. To no avail.

If this helps my specs are :
Windows 7 operating system (tried it on my dual-boot Windows XP SP3 as well)
ASUS Striker Extreme motherboard
8 Gigs Crucial Ballistix DDR2
500gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drive
1tb Western Digital external drive
ATI Radeon 2900xt graphics card

Oh, and i’ve formatted my harddrive twice since these errors. I’m hoping its something as cheap as replacing the CMOS battery. 😛
—–
Solidus – I know the files aren’t corrupt due to the download itself because the exact same files extract perfect when I move them to a different computer.
Oh and i’ve tried re-downloading. No luck.

Where can i get FREE software to fix my computer on the internet?

August 31, 2009

I know there are tons of websites with free software, but I am not very computer savvy and was looking for the best website online that gives software to make your computer faster and better. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.