Hard drive Problem

[Hectic Glenn]

I have a secondary HDD which I use for media and all Steam games.

Since yesterday the drive has started working quite slow, Steam games crash and when I get back to desktop everything slowly starts to freeze up requiring a restart.

Today after this happened, I went to check Steam but my D: drive had disappeared. It appears in the BIOS, I can't access it by D: in run. I've restarted again just now and it's back again but loading very slowly...

It's a 500gb Samsung spinpoint...about 5 months old'ish. Not sure what to do, any advice?

 

[15357]

I've had that kind of problem a few months ago.

For me it was because (at least, I think)

a) I put the wrong power supply cable to the HDD, somehow (I'm not sure how, though. Changing the cable worked)

b) The HDD power cable became loose

 

[giant384]

Have you tried removing it from windows, restarting, then letting it reinstall?

 

[Asus]

Back up asap what you need JUST IN CASE the drive does not work soon. Don't give it any work to do (loading files, browsing all the folders) before you copy the data.

Once you have what you really need backed up then mess with the drive if you feel like doing tests or whatever. Check cables or whatever.
Do you have SMART enabled in bios? It can detect a bad drive (but don't rely on it). Do a Check Disk from windows. Can recover files from bad sectors. To keep your PC from using those sectors you'd have to do a zero-fill format (not a normal format) with disk utilities (samsung should have some) that can also tell the drive not to use those sectors.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Cheers, I'm pretty much done backing up all my data from it now. It seems to be acting normally right now but I don't trust it!

SMART is enabled, the cables look fine. I did a check disk through Windows and when I came back after an hour or so it had booted normally (and drive has been fine, does chdsk fix errors?)

I found this tool from samsung - http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/support_in_es.html
Is that something like what you meant? Is the zero-fill format a utility available through Windows (running Win7 64bit).

Really glad I don't have my OS on that drive. Phew.

 

[Asus]

I don't know if it fixes sectors. I'm thinking it just recovers the data and moves it.
I know to update the sector map and tell your drive not to use B(ad) sectors you have to do it with utilities often that can also do zero-fill format or low level formats.
That tool you linked to probably does it.
This one does as well but probably is for older drives (why i don't know).

Drive companies do that when they sell drives. So many sectors are not in working order and the drive made has extra to accommodate for this. They just tell the drive to use the good sectors and then sell the drive.