Specs:
AMD 3.20GHz
16GB RAM
Windows 10

Problem Symptoms: When the machine is idle, i.e. when I walk away, and I'm not doing anything on it, it hangs and I get 'Not Responding' on browser windows and all programs windows. This only happens when the PC is idle. Most times if I leave a YouTube video running it won't hang, sometimes it does. I have replaced all RAM sticks, so it's not that. A 'technical' friend of mine tells me it's either bad sectors or motherboard dying. I have tried running programs to fix bad sectors but they either don't find errors or they don't complete. My 'technical' friend wants to take the PC to his workshop to run tests etc., but I don't want him to see what I have installed and all my files etc. I have backed-up all important files to a USB HDD. If I bought a new HDD, and I used a backup program like Ashampoo Backup Pro (or any other recommendable software), would I also be backing up the bad sectors to the backup or is that the way to go?

Any ideas would be helpful.
TIA.

 

spinrite by gibson research. It will recover the data in the bad sectors and relocate it to good sectors. Its rumored that apple uses it on warranty returns. shhhhhh. Lol, a pc running a free dos program to recover apple drives...too funny

Steve Gibson is a geek god. I subscribe to his security now podcast.
I have used this program to recover lost data many times. Once a dj friend dropped his external hd off of a 2nd story balcony into the parking lot. This program recovered it so we could move his music collection onto another drive. It takes a looooooong time but it always works. Ive read so many testimonials. Once about spec ops in south america whos laptop took gunfire, spinrite brought the corrupted "classified" data back.

This is drive maintenance that you should do on all your drives a couple/few times a year.

And no you wont copy the bad sectors if you clone it, only the corrupted data. Bad sectors are drive defects. Think scratches on a record. So spinrite it first, it will recover the data written in the bad sectors. And if it finds a lot of bad sectors, spinrite will make it so you will be able to clone the drive with the data intact without the errors.

 

Last edited: Jun 8, 2017

I use HDD Regenerator for all my bad sector fixes. It claims to be able to repair ANY hard drive that hasn't been physically damaged, for example by dropping it and stamping on it whilst hitting it with a sledge hammer (they don't say all of that, I'm just elaborating)

I cant post the link, but if you type this below:-

hdd regenerator the world of free

into google, it's the top one

 

CDi will TELL YOU how many bad sectors you have, http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

 

good stuff.. I have 3TB drive that shows up as unallocated... so would start with spinrite to copy?
or try to repair with Moose utilities etc.? none of the available commercial stuff could do anything with it... feh !

 

From the Start button menu search window, type 'Disk management'

on the new window that opens, look for the drive containing the 'unallocated space' under the 'volume' tab, and the corresponding space will show up in the bottom wondow.

R/click on that unallocated space and you'll see options to format it for use.

Select ' Primary partition' if that is available.

Once formatted it will show up for use in explorer (Oh you'll be given the option to select a letter to associate with it too)

Any probs m8, let me know and I'll talk you through it in the chat section!

Sorry, mate I meant to say earlier, yes I agree completely, he is, and that is good advice to people too! But you know what I'm like I'm always getting sidetra.... brb phone

 

Great suggestions guys.

@subGENRE, my HDD is partitioned: programming C drive is 149GB, D drive is 1.65TB and used for data only (incl. all those lovely Kontakt libraries.). Two questions, is the bad sector problem likely to be in the C drive where everything operational on the PC happens; could I do the Spinrite drive by drive; Spinrite the C drive and see how it goes after that? Also given how long this could take, is it possible to do it bit by bit, e.g. run it overnight, stop it, get some work done on the machine, the run it again the next night? Would it re-start at the point it stopped or is that not possible? How long do you think it would take to scan a 149GB drive?

 

Last edited: Jun 8, 2017

BAD Sectors ?? this usually means your hard drive is about to go failure-mode, so backup and best thing to do is to start looking out for new HDD purchase , SSD is good for OS and program files , for you backup and large Kontakt libraries get a couple of good cache 7200++ and 32mb++ good old plain HDD's like the Seagate IronWolf or Barracuda or anything Hitachi/HTGS is good quality also, have 2,3x backups of everything besides whats running in your pc . and occasionaly make full OS ImageFiles with Acronis BootCD if you like to keep things as they are on your system / or multi-os . SSD's eventually die out and there is no way absolutely to recover data in the same fashion as an old magnetic hdd, this is good because HDD prices have dropped dramatically, u can get a 6-10tb hdd pro-grade drive nowadays for the price you would get some years ago a 120gb fast-spinnin WesternDigital viper whats-its-name hdd

 

ohh don't think so Sir Moose.. it is unallocated. .but it has data on it... if I format then I am truly futched... right ?

I have a blank 4.5 TB.. I want to try to recover the data

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 8, 2017

hi man, check this tool http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

 

tried all those... nada...

 

theres gparted/parted on every ubuntu/debian live disk

 

I would...

Not automatically assume it's the hard drive. To rule it out you'd need a spare drive you could do fresh install, put some testing applications on it, let it go to sleep, and see if it wakes without problems. If it consistently wakes for you like that, then most likely something is corrupted on the original drive/install. If it continues to suffer from "wake lock" with the testing drive then you're likely looking at hardware.

Maybe check to see if there is a BIOS update for the motherboard that addresses the wake issues.

 

... nor the RAM.
I've had a broken USB Device (card reader) that made me a lot of problems. Not only making the computer freeze but resulted in BSODs and even not spinning up HDDs.
I'd suggest to unplug ALL peripherals and see, if one is making problems.

But, if it's really your HDD drive making problems and producing bad sectors, it will die in the near future: On a modern HDD or SSD there is a method in the microcode of the drives onboard electronics that interchanges bad with good sectors before problems even occur or even the OS will know it. If a utility (e.g. windows's chkdsk) finds bad sectors, the HDD is almost dead and it's a matter of hours. That's what I experienced with some 100 HDDs in the past (no experience about SSDs). I was able to rescue the data on some of those HDDs by putting them into a fridge to cool them down while I was making a backup. It's because most HDDs (mechanics/electronics) work better at lower temperatures.

 

I've been through many HDD failures and from my experience, two tools are quite helpful:
1. SpeedFan (Windows) and DriveDx (Mac) for analyzing S.M.A.R.T status
2. HDDScan (Windows) for measuring sector read response times.

1) is the first thing I would do. If the SMART value for "Reallocated Sector Count" is above zero, I would immediately backup the drive and replace it. Yes, replace, don't fix it.
Forget those repair tools, they may help you out for another few months if you're very lucky, until you lose data again...
2) Is better than scanning for bad sectors because the reading time will drop before you even get noticed of bad blocks. If scanning the HDD will show a diagram with "deep drops" in reading speed, that's a good indicator for potential failure. Of course you have to make sure the drive is not busy, preferable test it as an external drive (doesn't even need to be SMART capable).

Good luck!
And make sure your HDD does not get too hot.

 

Yes, and It's a good idea to monitor the SMART status of all disks because this way, one could be informed about disk degradation in the moment the first bad sector occurs.
I use a utility named HD sentinel Pro. I don't know if it's the best, but it suits me best, because it can be started as a system service in the background telling me when things go wrong.
I really don't understand, why a modern OS isn't able to monitor basic SMART infos by itself!

 

No, not necessarily, well yes, but, very important question. was it originally formatted to NTFS or GPT? (This could be your problem)

 

No it doesnt work like that. SpinRite boots into free dos from a bootable usb key or cd/dvd that you made from it. It does this not only for maximum compatibility and efficiency, but also so it can check the sectors where your MBR, os and system files are.
Because it operates on a "low level", it doesnt see partitions like the os does. It just sees physical drives, ex. drive 0, drive1 etc.
As for stopping and starting? You can pause the operations while its working, but if you end the program and boot back into your OS, there is no resume feature. Its running from a bootable media that you make.

 

Yes, I usually NTFS... for what reason.. I forget now.. consistency ? but that doesn't seem to really matter...
why would it matter if the external is NTFS or GPT ?

it cannot repair anything tho if I remember correctly, it's more of a raw data copy recovery?
then all you get is a numbered file with the correct extension?

I can't imagine how long it would take for 3TB... days.. weeks? ugh

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 8, 2017

I have used HDD regenerator on an almost dead hard drive.
Worked nicely.

Partition table was still dead, but i used Photorec. And it recovers a lot of files, not only pictures.
Options need to be set very carefully.

HDD regenerator AND Photorec : bulletproof solution :D