[TransMayernik751]

I'm having an odd problem with the hard drive in my home computer and was wondering if anyone out there on the interwebs is/has ever experienced this before.

First off, the drive is a 2.5 year old Western Digital 250gb PATA drive (slave) in a WinXP Pro desktop. I use it to store all of my media: Pics, music, and video. About three months ago, I noticed when I would save new music or pics to the drive, sometimes the files would be corrupted. Not corrupted in the normal "it won't open" way; The would be garbled. Pics would have lines running through them or be cut off half way through. Music would play like it was on a scratched CD. Also, file/folder seek time was really slow. Also to note: The drive wasn't making any funny sounds.
At first, I though this was due to the files being corrupt before I downloaded them. But, if I downloaded the same exact file off of the same site onto my system drive, it would be fine. So, I did what any intelligent person would do: I ran Windows ScanDisk and Defrag. After that was finished, almost all of the files were gone! I immediately rebooted the machine, and on start up, scandisk found a ton of "orphaned" files, which led me to believe that the FAT tables had been corrupt. When the machine started back up, all of my old files were back. The drive seek times greatly improved. New pics and music downloaded didn't have the aforementioned issues.
I thought something might still be amiss, so I downloaded a utility called DiskCheckup which analyzes the SMART information. In my experience, SMART isn't always the best at determining imminent failure, but gives a good baseline for drive health. When I ran the scan, though, all parameters came up as good. In fact, such important variables as "bad sectors" and "overheat" all came up as zero. This perplexed me even more.
About a week ago, the original problem began happening again. In my eyes, this drive is no longer reliable. Could this be an I/O error?

I'm an IT professional and I've dealt with many hard drive errors, both at home and at work, in the past, but I've never ever heard of this happening before. I've already chalked this drive up as bad and I'm going to backup and replace it, but I'd like to understand what exactly is happening here. Any ideas?

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It does sound like the drive is dieing. Have you checked it with western digitals disk program?

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

[123Runner]

It does sound like the drive is dieing. Have you checked it with western digitals disk program?

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

[TransMayernik751]

WD disk program (DataLifeguard) doesn't have any diagnostics.

[123Runner]

Description

The Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools are used primarily for determining the physical condition of your hard drive. If you are having computer problems which you suspect are hard drive related, you can test your drive with this tool. This diagnostic utility is designed for hard drives larger than 8.4 GB with the model number starting with WDxxx.
Supported Operating Systems

* Windows Vista
* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows ME
* Windows 98SE
* Windows 98

Instructions

1. Diagnostics Bootable CD: Download the Diag504fCD.zip or Diag504fCD.iso file to your desktop.
2. Extract the Diag504fCD.zip file to your desktop with a file extraction utility. (Alternately you have the option to download the iso version of the file which does not require extraction with a zip utility).
3. You will see a new file named Diag504fCD.iso on your desktop.
4. You must use a CD burning program (such as Nero Burning Rom or EZ-CD Creator) to burn a CD from the .ISO image.
5. You can now boot the computer to the diagnostics CD. Make sure your boot order in your BIOS is set to boot to the CD-ROM drive first.
6. You will see the following options:
* SELECT DRIVE - Always choose this option first, as it determines which drive you will be working on.
* QUICK TEST - This option tests your drive quickly for any major physical problems. (Please note: Although this option is safe and does not alter the data on your hard drive, Western Digital recommends that you have a current backup of your data).
* EXTENDED TEST - This option checks your drive thoroughly and it can repair any correctable errors. (Please note: Although this option is safe and does not alter the data on your hard drive, some data loss may occur, depending on the errors found and the errors corrected. Western Digital recommends that you have a current backup of your data).
* WRITE ZEROS TO DRIVE - The Write Zeros option, wipes any and all data off your drive. This option used when your data is no longer usable or recoverable. If you no longer need any data from your drive and would like to start over, run this option to set your drive to an as new condition. NOTE: Please make sure that you have selected the correct drive to perform this function on as once ran, no data will be recoverable.
* VIEW TEST RESULTS - You can see the results of the test you just performed
* PRINT TEST RESULTS - Test results can be printed with this option. USB printers are not supported
* LOG FILE OPEN/CLOSE - You can access the log file which is generated automatically
* ENTER AND PRINT RMA INFORMATION - Information pertaining to each drive tested can be customized and printed with this option.
* HELP - Brief descriptions of each option in addition to explanations of error codes are available in this option.
* QUIT - Reboot your system once you have completed the selected tasks
7. Select the task you wish to perform.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en