[Lhoyd1]

Hi everyone.

The 500gb Hitachi Drive in my Samsung Ultrabook started making an odd noise last week - not a click, more like a "twonk" noise...at least I assumed it was the HD

I chose to ignore it - to my peril as the laptop crashed in the middle of my DJ set at a local club and got stuck in a loop at the "startup repair" screen on Win 7

I assumed it was an HD failure, so went along the my local repair shop. The guy (normally excellent with my laptop issues)there has managed to get the computer working though by simply removing a stick of crucial ram and reinstalling windows from the recovery partition...Now, its now longer making the "twonking" noise.

I have now put back an image made with Reflect and every would appear to be fine....

However I was sceptical about his diagnosis, so I ran HDTune and, sure enough, a number of damaged blocks were detected as well as some warnings on the health screen.

The simplest option would appear to be to replace the HD - however, it an UltraBook and so takes a 7mm HD, rather than the standard 9mm - something that is proving to be difficult to source in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I live!

I'm posting up 2 screenshots from HD tune as well as the Health log and wondering if someone can
1.confirm my suspicions about the HD
2.confirm it was a faulty ram stick or
3. Is the issue something to do with "Interface CRC Error Count"?

thank you!

Lhoyd

HD Tune Pro: Hitachi HTS545050A7E Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 84 84 62 23068672 ok
(02) Throughput Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 218 218 33 60129542145 ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 100 100 0 1383 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 5 0 ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 100 67 0 ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 97 97 0 1384 ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 60 0 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 738 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 100 100 0 0 ok
(C0) Unsafe Shutdown Count 100 100 0 43 ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 100 100 0 5761 ok
(C2) Temperature 157 157 0 193274314790 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 100 0 29 warning
(C5) Current Pending Sector 40 40 0 1592 warning
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 100 0 0 ok
(C7) Interface CRC Error Count 200 200 0 6 attention
(DF) Load/Unload Retry Count 100 100 0 0 ok

Health Status : warning

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by Lhoyd1, 09 March 2014 - 05:35 AM.

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Hello Lhoyd1

You are right to worry about a total HDD failure as where there is one bad sector more will follow and sooner rather than later, check the failing/failed Hard drive sounds here, any of the sounds familiar.

Have you thought about fitting an SSD instead of a mechanical HDD, you could then if you do not do so already use an external USB HDD or HDD and USB HDD enclosure to store your music files on, an SSD travels better than a HDD as it does not have the same mechanical, a typical 7mm SSD example only here

[phillpower2]

Hello Lhoyd1

You are right to worry about a total HDD failure as where there is one bad sector more will follow and sooner rather than later, check the failing/failed Hard drive sounds here, any of the sounds familiar.

Have you thought about fitting an SSD instead of a mechanical HDD, you could then if you do not do so already use an external USB HDD or HDD and USB HDD enclosure to store your music files on, an SSD travels better than a HDD as it does not have the same mechanical, a typical 7mm SSD example only here

[Lhoyd1]

What an amazing HD noise site!

Unfortunatley, the "twonk" noise is not like any of them - which is why I ignored it initially - I've had HDs fail before and this sound was very different from the norm.

Also, it's not making the sound anymore. I wonder if the sound came from something other than the HD?

I'm assuming then that SSDs are 7mm normally?

I feel caught between 2 stools here - wanting to replace a "failing" HD and the difficulty of getting replacement HDs in the wilds of SE Asia!

thanks for your help - much appreciated

Edited by Lhoyd1, 09 March 2014 - 06:11 AM.

[phillpower2]

Things on a notebook that can make a noise of any description include a cooling fan, an optical drive or the HDD, the only noise you will hear from a memory stick would be a crackle if it shorted out, which is clearly not the case here.

As the sectors have been marked as being bad on the HDD they will no longer be read from or written to and so you will not hear any noise from that area of the disk.

Typical dimensions of a 2.5" SSD are H 6.8 or 7mm W 69.85 or 70mm D 100mm SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA III

Make a back up image of the HDD asap and then run the Hitachi diagnostic tool on the drive, details here

I recommend Macrium Reflect (free) for making a back up of the present HDD, details here

You are most welcome btw

[Lhoyd1]

When I try and run Hitachi DFT it does not see the drive (which I assume is because its the C drive)

So I'm downloading UBCD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) which has a dos bootable version of DFT on it, which I can then put onto a USB drive (My ultrabook does not have a CD drive or floppy and I can't work out how to make a bootable usb version of the DFT iso)

Will let you know in a bit what happens - thank you again and greetings from a very hot Phnom Penh evening!

Lhoyd

[phillpower2]

Thank you and you are most welcome Lhoyd1


It is a chilly afternoon here in the UK so I will be around for a good few hours yet and will look out for your next update.

[Lhoyd1]

Ok, so I've managed to run the DFT utility from DOS and ran the short test which came up with picture1



I selected option 2 but it came up with this (pic 2)



Which I dont think is a great sign!

regards

Lhoyd

[Lhoyd1]

As a postscript, the bad values on HDtune have gone up again....

HD Tune Pro: Hitachi HTS545050A7E Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 86 86 62 8650763 ok
(02) Throughput Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(03) Spin Up Time 229 229 33 60129542145 ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 100 100 0 1391 ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 95 95 5 0 ok
(07) Seek Error Rate 100 100 67 0 ok
(08) Seek Time Performance 100 100 40 0 ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 97 97 0 1389 ok
(0A) Spin Retry Count 100 100 60 0 ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 741 ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 100 100 0 0 ok
(C0) Unsafe Shutdown Count 100 100 0 45 ok
(C1) Load Cycle Count 100 100 0 5769 ok
(C2) Temperature 157 157 0 193274314790 ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 100 0 56 warning
(C5) Current Pending Sector 13 13 0 2184 warning
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 100 0 0 ok
(C7) Interface CRC Error Count 200 200 0 6 attention
(DF) Load/Unload Retry Count 100 100 0 0 ok

Health Status : warning

[phillpower2]

Both suggest that the HDD should be replaced I`m afraid

[Lhoyd1]

I agree!
As another postscript, windows has slowed down massively after the DFT - its hanging etc so I think its time to say farewell to the HD and spend a no doubt amusing day trying to find a 7mm HD (or ssd if I can find one!)

Thank you for all your help - much appreciated!

regards

Lhoyd

[phillpower2]

Have you backed up all important data to a USB device, if not I would hold off using the computer until you have done, HDD adapters are a good way of transfering/backing up a HDD etc, an example here which can be used for both size and types of device

Let us know what type of drive you decide upon or if you have any further questions along the way.

[Lhoyd1]

I back up on a regular basis, so have a Reflect image from Thursday and all my data (music/photos/image) are backed up to external HDD every 2 days!

My repair guy restored the original image from the restore partition on Saturday and I then put my Reflect image onto that, so hopefully all should be ok - even with a different HD?

[phillpower2]

[Lhoyd1]

Ok...off to bed now (its now monday morning here!)
thanks again for your help and I'll post a quick note up tomorrow when (fingers crossed) I should have a new HD in!

[phillpower2]

You are welcome, good luck with finding the correct drive