Yeah...... This isn't looking good for your drive.
It's not reporting temperature, SMART status, flags, the serial number, or the cache size.
I am going to go with the theory that either the board is dead/dying, or the disk platters themselves have bad sectors.
However it could also be a bad SATA cable/controller although this is less likely since SMART should still report at least something.
I'd try another cable/port and if it still is like this I'd get started on a backup and a new drive.
Well.. damn.
I just got this drive in January because my other drive wasn't doing good, sucks that it's going bad so soon cause I don't have the cash to dish out for a new HDD.
Is there anyway to just fix the HDD rather than getting a new one, whether it be via sending it in or doing it manually? I really want to avoid having to get a third harddrive when this one's barely gotten it's money worth.
Oh and one last thing - when the board dies, is this just caused by faulty parts or is there fault on the end of the user (too much strain, etc.)?
(If there's no better solutions, can you suggest me to a new cheap HDD with at least 1TB of storage? I see some good deals on amazon right now but I'm unsure if I'll make the same mistake of getting a garbage drive.)
Is there anyway to just fix the HDD rather than getting a new one, whether it be via sending it in or doing it manually?
Yes, you send the drive and a check for $40,000 to a data recovery service if it's the platter.
If it's the board, you need to find a donor drive with the exact same board and exact same firmware to transfer. The drive you have is not one of the ones that gives leeway it looks like, it need an exact match.
It's hard to really tell though honestly, it could be a lot of things but with these symptoms I would first rule out the SATA cable/controller and if it isn't them just replace the drive.
Oh and one last thing - when the board dies, is this just caused by faulty parts or is there fault on the end of the user (too much strain, etc.)?
It'd fall under DOA but I am unsure if the warranty covers it this late. You can ring WD and ask.
(If there's no better solutions, can you suggest me to a new cheap HDD with at least 1TB of storage? I see some good deals on amazon right now but I'm unsure if I'll make the same mistake of getting a garbage drive.)
Any of them right now tbh, there are no bad/lesser quality models on the market and haven't been since around March.
Yes, you send the drive and a check for $40,000 to a data recovery service if it's the platter.
If it's the board, you need to find a donor drive with the exact same board and exact same firmware to transfer. The drive you have is not one of the ones that gives leeway it looks like, it need an exact match.
It's hard to really tell though honestly, it could be a lot of things but with these symptoms I would first rule out the SATA cable/controller and if it isn't them just replace the drive.
Well that sucks, haha. But I will check the SATA cables first and see if that does the trick.
It'd fall under DOA but I am unsure if the warranty covers it this late. You can ring WD and ask.
Well it's not necessarily about the warranty, I was just wondering if I was maybe doing something to overwork it.. cause I don't know what would cause this drive to turn to so fast.
Any of them right now tbh, there are no bad/lesser quality models on the market and haven't been since around March.
Alright sounds good. Hopefully those HDDs stay on sale for $66 until I figure out once and for all whether I need them or not.
On a side note, 512 sector size? Isn't the default 4096? Having such a small sector size sure as hell means you'll have to 'fix' a lot more sectors and potentially have a lot more fragmentation. Doubt that is the issue, but I can't see it helping either.
Given the size of the drive I am going to go with that being a read error as well, just like the SMART status, temp and everything else.
On a side note, 512 sector size? Isn't the default 4096? Having such a small sector size sure as hell means you'll have to 'fix' a lot more sectors and potentially have a lot more fragmentation. Doubt that is the issue, but I can't see it helping either.
HDDs are designed to be run 24/7/365 with semi-constant read/writes. You shouldn't be doing anything to "burn it out" in only 6 months.
Factory/manufacturing defects mainly.
Interesting... seems like I just had some bad luck then.
Just curious though, what does it mean to have a dead board?
The reason I ask this is because you said
I am going to go with the theory that either the board is dead/dying, or the disk platters themselves have bad sectors.
as in the board could very well be dead right now, even though I'm using the HDD as we speak. I always figured a dead board basically implies the HDD is beyond return and unusable.
On a side note, 512 sector size? Isn't the default 4096? Having such a small sector size sure as hell means you'll have to 'fix' a lot more sectors and potentially have a lot more fragmentation. Doubt that is the issue, but I can't see it helping either.
512 sized sectors are standard. 4096 is for "Advanced Format" Drives that started to come out around ~2010. the WD Green is pretty much WD's "value" Drive so they probably haven't changed the drive to use the use AF style.
File data is not allocated per-sector but rather per-cluster. NTFS defaults to 4K Clusters (this may have influenced what AF ended up going with too).
The S.M.A.R.T data could be unavailable if it is disabled in the BIOS for some reason.
The S.M.A.R.T data could be unavailable if it is disabled in the BIOS for some reason.
Completely forgot about that, it's rather unusual for people to disable it or for it to be disabled by default.
Check this first OP, but given the other circumstances I'd go with the drive being on it's way out.
It also doesn't really explain why the drive features and other attributes aren't showing, those usually show even if SMART is disabled.
Just curious though, what does it mean to have a dead board?
as in the board could very well be dead right now, even though I'm using the HDD as we speak. I always figured a dead board basically implies the HDD is beyond return and unusable.
The board can still work when "dead" depending on what exactly is "dead/dying" with it. If the CPU and most of the core electronics are fine, it might still work somewhat.
Completely forgot about that, it's rather unusual for people to disable it or for it to be disabled by default.
Check this first OP, but given the other circumstances I'd go with the drive being on it's way out.
It also doesn't really explain why the drive features and other attributes aren't showing, those usually show even if SMART is disabled.
Welp, I went into the BIOS and changed it to "Enabled" (it was previously set to Auto), didn't seem to change a thing. I guess I'll give another SATA cable a go tomorrow morning, but this isn't looking too promising.
The board can still work when "dead" depending on what exactly is "dead/dying" with it. If the CPU and most of the core electronics are fine, it might still work somewhat.
Gotcha. Is there anyway to be able to make it last as long as possible before it becomes unusable? Like if I avoid playing intensive games, will it presumably not die as quickly? Or does it not really matter?
Cause if it doesn't matter, I might as well just play it out to the end of it's life and squeeze as much out of it as I can, I don't really have many other options. Though I am going to back up games and other important content onto my second HDD for sure... which who knows how long that will last, I was told my other HDD was potentially failing which is why I got a new one.. so far it's still alive though. Could have to do with the fact that it's only a secondary drive and isn't really being used much, though. I'm thinking about backing everything up onto it and then unplugging it that way it hopefully won't die. I might be without a computer for a bit if my current drive dies, but at least all my stuff will be 100% safe on the second drive until I get a replacement.
Gotcha. Is there anyway to be able to make it last as long as possible before it becomes unusable?
You can try praying.
But if you mean something that will actually work, no.
Or does it not really matter?
It doesn't matter at all if it's the electronics. If it's the platter, chances are the bad sectors have already spread beyond any slim, miniscule chance of repair or recovery.
FWIW, my Secondary drive is failing. It still shows up in various informational tools but for a while there I couldn't access specific files or the drive would vanish from the system and I would have to reboot. I had to walk on eggshells with my file access. I figured a chkdsk /r would identify the bad sectors at the file system level if the drive has run out of reallocation sectors, but all I managed to do was have it hang for four days at 45% on the surface scan.
I ended up "solving" the problem by disabling all indexing on that secondary drive and simply not storing new data on it, and it hasn't given me issues since.
Even still though- that drive is identified as 0% fragmented by Disk Defragmenter.
(I also seem to have lied, since it also reports that I defragmented my C: and D: drives 9/11/2011 and 1/19/2011, though I don't remember doing so.
To my understanding win Vista/7 do automatic disk optimization/defragmenting while processing idle tasks. Not sure what would be causing it not to, that % seems awfully high.
One other thing you could try before defragmenting is to schedule/run a chkdsk /r on the drive.
FWIW, my Secondary drive is failing. It still shows up in various informational tools but for a while there I couldn't access specific files or the drive would vanish from the system and I would have to reboot. I had to walk on eggshells with my file access. I figured a chkdsk /r would identify the bad sectors at the file system level if the drive has run out of reallocation sectors, but all I managed to do was have it hang for four days at 45% on the surface scan.
I ended up "solving" the problem by disabling all indexing on that secondary drive and simply not storing new data on it, and it hasn't given me issues since.
Even still though- that drive is identified as 0% fragmented by Disk Defragmenter.
(I also seem to have lied, since it also reports that I defragmented my C: and D: drives 9/11/2011 and 1/19/2011, though I don't remember doing so.
To my understanding win Vista/7 do automatic disk optimization/defragmenting while processing idle tasks. Not sure what would be causing it not to, that % seems awfully high.
One other thing you could try before defragmenting is to schedule/run a chkdsk /r on the drive.
I will give chkdsk /r a try in the morning and report back. (Everything's always in the morning cause I tend to notice things in this thread late at night haha.)
On another somewhat unrelated note, (I figured another thread wouldn't be worth it) could anyone explain why Civilization 5 runs so much hotter than most games? I can play games like Just Cause 2 and it will get moderately hot - but i run Civ 5 for a little bit and the damn CPU fan is about to lift my computer off the desk its spinning so fast.
Because JC2 is a console port and does not utilize a lot of CPU, while civ5 is running tons of code and math in the background and is designed for a PC with excess processing power.
Because JC2 is a console port and does not utilize a lot of CPU, while civ5 is running tons of code and math in the background and is designed for a PC with excess processing power.
Well I suppose JC2 was a bad example. Most somewhat graphically intensive games that I own don't run nearly as hot as Civ 5. Civ 5 is pretty much running at temps you'd expect out of BF3 or Witcher 2. I suppose it could be because it's designed for PC like you said, but I don't recall it ever running at such high temps previously. I wouldn't guess that a strategy game, even with all it's math and code, would be as demanding as high-end games. I'm not an expert though, so I can't really be the judge on how it should and shouldn't be, haha. But it's particularly unsettling because I tend to play Civ for several hours at a time and I don't know if I'm burning out my PC by doing so. (I'll run speccy while playing and see some actual temps.)
I also noticed that when my brother plays Civ 5 (on his far worse computer) it doesn't even make a sound. Then I play it and it practically sounds like an airplane taking off. Could have to do with the overall high temperatures in my area lately, but I dunno.
I'm assuming I'll just have to wait till I restart before I can do anything with it?
Yes.
Well I suppose JC2 was a bad example. Most somewhat graphically intensive games that I own don't run nearly as hot as Civ 5. Civ 5 is pretty much running at temps you'd expect out of BF3 or Witcher 2. I suppose it could be because it's designed for PC like you said, but I don't recall it ever running at such high temps previously. I wouldn't guess that a strategy game, even with all it's math and code, would be as demanding as high-end games. I'm not an expert though, so I can't really be the judge on how it should and shouldn't be, haha. But it's particularly unsettling because I tend to play Civ for several hours at a time and I don't know if I'm burning out my PC by doing so. (I'll run speccy while playing and see some actual temps.)
I also noticed that when my brother plays Civ 5 (on his far worse computer) it doesn't even make a sound. Then I play it and it practically sounds like an airplane taking off. Could have to do with the overall high temperatures in my area lately, but I dunno.
Again, those examples do not use anywhere near as much CPU power as civ 5 does.
You're comparing a moderately graphically intense game that chugs CPU power as if it were beer, to moderately CPU intensive games that chug GPU power as if it were beer.
Again, those examples do not use anywhere near as much CPU power as civ 5 does.
You're comparing a moderately graphically intense game that chugs CPU power as if it were beer, to moderately CPU intensive games that chug GPU power as if it were beer.
Yeah that makes sense. I would like to note though, I just ran speccy while playing for ~5 minutes and it appears that the GPU was having more trouble with temps than the CPU by the looks of it.
Then again, it does appear that my idle temps (or at least my GPU) are a little too high for my liking... might have to do with running two monitors though.
Civ 5 apparently has a bug that keeps CPU usage up even when not calculating CPU player turns and actions. Otherwise, since the data being dealt with is internal to the game it's likely that it is being processed using multiple threads, which means higher CPU usage. Most other games use one or two threads, so you get maybe 50% CPU Usage. This is because other games are heavily "input dependent" in that you give input and it has to respond quickly by changing the game world; you move your character around, shoot, etc. This means that the game needs t obe heavily synchronized between the game information and the renderer, and limits the capabilities of having multiple threads since it increases the chances of deadlocking as well as having threads wait. For example rendering a frame will usually lock the game data and prevent it from being changed; so in the meantime while that scene render is being performed, the game logic that wants to work with the game state information has to twiddle it's thumbs. In contrast, Civilization is probably performing various AI tasks on separate threads; since there is no contention for state information between it and the renderer (or at least not as much), it is both able to use more threads as well as have higher utilization on those threads since there isn't as much contention.
It's not reporting temperature, SMART status, flags, the serial number, or the cache size.
I am going to go with the theory that either the board is dead/dying, or the disk platters themselves have bad sectors.
However it could also be a bad SATA cable/controller although this is less likely since SMART should still report at least something.
I'd try another cable/port and if it still is like this I'd get started on a backup and a new drive.
Well.. damn.
I just got this drive in January because my other drive wasn't doing good, sucks that it's going bad so soon cause I don't have the cash to dish out for a new HDD.
Is there anyway to just fix the HDD rather than getting a new one, whether it be via sending it in or doing it manually? I really want to avoid having to get a third harddrive when this one's barely gotten it's money worth.
Oh and one last thing - when the board dies, is this just caused by faulty parts or is there fault on the end of the user (too much strain, etc.)?
(If there's no better solutions, can you suggest me to a new cheap HDD with at least 1TB of storage? I see some good deals on amazon right now but I'm unsure if I'll make the same mistake of getting a garbage drive.)
If it's the board, you need to find a donor drive with the exact same board and exact same firmware to transfer. The drive you have is not one of the ones that gives leeway it looks like, it need an exact match.
It's hard to really tell though honestly, it could be a lot of things but with these symptoms I would first rule out the SATA cable/controller and if it isn't them just replace the drive.
It'd fall under DOA but I am unsure if the warranty covers it this late. You can ring WD and ask.
Any of them right now tbh, there are no bad/lesser quality models on the market and haven't been since around March.
Well that sucks, haha. But I will check the SATA cables first and see if that does the trick.
Well it's not necessarily about the warranty, I was just wondering if I was maybe doing something to overwork it.. cause I don't know what would cause this drive to turn to so fast.
Alright sounds good. Hopefully those HDDs stay on sale for $66 until I figure out once and for all whether I need them or not.
Factory/manufacturing defects mainly.
Thing's broke y'all.
How could you go about "fixing" sectors?
Interesting... seems like I just had some bad luck then.
Just curious though, what does it mean to have a dead board?
The reason I ask this is because you said
as in the board could very well be dead right now, even though I'm using the HDD as we speak. I always figured a dead board basically implies the HDD is beyond return and unusable.
512 sized sectors are standard. 4096 is for "Advanced Format" Drives that started to come out around ~2010. the WD Green is pretty much WD's "value" Drive so they probably haven't changed the drive to use the use AF style.
File data is not allocated per-sector but rather per-cluster. NTFS defaults to 4K Clusters (this may have influenced what AF ended up going with too).
The S.M.A.R.T data could be unavailable if it is disabled in the BIOS for some reason.
Check this first OP, but given the other circumstances I'd go with the drive being on it's way out.
It also doesn't really explain why the drive features and other attributes aren't showing, those usually show even if SMART is disabled.
The board can still work when "dead" depending on what exactly is "dead/dying" with it. If the CPU and most of the core electronics are fine, it might still work somewhat.
Welp, I went into the BIOS and changed it to "Enabled" (it was previously set to Auto), didn't seem to change a thing. I guess I'll give another SATA cable a go tomorrow morning, but this isn't looking too promising.
Gotcha. Is there anyway to be able to make it last as long as possible before it becomes unusable? Like if I avoid playing intensive games, will it presumably not die as quickly? Or does it not really matter?
Cause if it doesn't matter, I might as well just play it out to the end of it's life and squeeze as much out of it as I can, I don't really have many other options. Though I am going to back up games and other important content onto my second HDD for sure... which who knows how long that will last, I was told my other HDD was potentially failing which is why I got a new one.. so far it's still alive though. Could have to do with the fact that it's only a secondary drive and isn't really being used much, though. I'm thinking about backing everything up onto it and then unplugging it that way it hopefully won't die. I might be without a computer for a bit if my current drive dies, but at least all my stuff will be 100% safe on the second drive until I get a replacement.
But if you mean something that will actually work, no.
It doesn't matter at all if it's the electronics. If it's the platter, chances are the bad sectors have already spread beyond any slim, miniscule chance of repair or recovery.
I ended up "solving" the problem by disabling all indexing on that secondary drive and simply not storing new data on it, and it hasn't given me issues since.
Even still though- that drive is identified as 0% fragmented by Disk Defragmenter.
(I also seem to have lied, since it also reports that I defragmented my C: and D: drives 9/11/2011 and 1/19/2011, though I don't remember doing so.
To my understanding win Vista/7 do automatic disk optimization/defragmenting while processing idle tasks. Not sure what would be causing it not to, that % seems awfully high.
One other thing you could try before defragmenting is to schedule/run a chkdsk /r on the drive.
I will give chkdsk /r a try in the morning and report back. (Everything's always in the morning cause I tend to notice things in this thread late at night haha.)
On another somewhat unrelated note, (I figured another thread wouldn't be worth it) could anyone explain why Civilization 5 runs so much hotter than most games? I can play games like Just Cause 2 and it will get moderately hot - but i run Civ 5 for a little bit and the damn CPU fan is about to lift my computer off the desk its spinning so fast.
and I got this
I'm assuming I'll just have to wait till I restart before I can do anything with it?
Well I suppose JC2 was a bad example. Most somewhat graphically intensive games that I own don't run nearly as hot as Civ 5. Civ 5 is pretty much running at temps you'd expect out of BF3 or Witcher 2. I suppose it could be because it's designed for PC like you said, but I don't recall it ever running at such high temps previously. I wouldn't guess that a strategy game, even with all it's math and code, would be as demanding as high-end games. I'm not an expert though, so I can't really be the judge on how it should and shouldn't be, haha. But it's particularly unsettling because I tend to play Civ for several hours at a time and I don't know if I'm burning out my PC by doing so. (I'll run speccy while playing and see some actual temps.)
I also noticed that when my brother plays Civ 5 (on his far worse computer) it doesn't even make a sound. Then I play it and it practically sounds like an airplane taking off. Could have to do with the overall high temperatures in my area lately, but I dunno.
Again, those examples do not use anywhere near as much CPU power as civ 5 does.
You're comparing a moderately graphically intense game that chugs CPU power as if it were beer, to moderately CPU intensive games that chug GPU power as if it were beer.
Yeah that makes sense. I would like to note though, I just ran speccy while playing for ~5 minutes and it appears that the GPU was having more trouble with temps than the CPU by the looks of it.
Then again, it does appear that my idle temps (or at least my GPU) are a little too high for my liking... might have to do with running two monitors though.
Average GPU load temp for most rigs is 80C, average CPU load is around the same.
Idle temps really don't matter much unless they're insanely high.
This might also be applicable.