Help testing a Hard Disk

[Andy]

We had some power outages that seem to have damaged my son's hard disk. It gradually got worse requiring re-installs of XP. Now the hard disk seems dead.

We can only boot up a CD.

I have feather Linux on a CD or I can burn other utilities to a CD. Is there some way to test or low-level format the disk? We are planning to return the PC to the dealer for repairs, but for convenience maybe we can run some tools on it to maybe fix things ourselves via software?

I can't touch the hardware since it's covered by warranty.

The disk is a 250GB SATA hard disk. It is detected in the bios but windows installation bombs out with the fatal error blue screen of death when it tries to write to the disk.

[carpmad]

im not verry clued up on half of this as youl know but ive wiped my drives plenty of times now

you could try this prog out for wiping sections of your drive its what i used last time i think ive got about 2+ gig of dead drive space but it cleared everything else that i wanted it to , just select the partition and style of wipe and it does what it says on the tin 
i used the stable version on win98 but no doubt the beta version will work too
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

im guessing youv run scandisk in command prompt in dos?

heres a site i found that does boot disks in floppy and iso images if your floppy drive is dead
http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=42

[Andy]

We can't boot the hard disk. So we need to run something off a CD. I don't even own a floppy disk anymore. That's so annoying, I had a floppy disk with some  hard disk wiping tool on it. I guess I need to stock up on these essential items next time I fly back to the uk for stuff like beans, crisps and software on floppy disk 

[carpmad]

the drive wiper is available as a iso image thats what i used , doesnt it write it to ram instead of the drive?

[Andy]

It's OK mate. We will probably send the PC back to get a new hard disk since it appears to be damaged. I think the modern hard disks either work or they are totally nackered. I will maybe download the tool you suggested and try it our. But don't lose sleep over it. He has a server to play with and back-ups so it's not the end of the world.

[carpmad]

cool glad its all backed up safe
the boot & nuke prog isnt as it says, it has menu`s and options before it wipes anything i was half expecting to just boot the pc and it wipes it imediately but that wasnt the case but it does recomend unplugging any external media like usb cards

[SensoVision]

Sorry to hear about problems, Andy!
It's hard to tell what could be done in your case as if electronic was burnt it couldn't be fixed by software...
Anyway you can still try perform diagnostic of your harddrive using this free MHDD utility. It could fix logical problems with hard drives and gives you access to SMART and other data.

If you need to retrive something from HDD there are utils in Linux which may help you but if your disk is in NTFS formtat, Linux probably would be not much of help.

Let me know if MHDD is what you're looking for or you have different tasks?

BTW is it same brand of HDD which was went broken last time?

[Andy]

Thanks for the suggestions. The hard disk that failed before was dead from birth, it was the one we used for the server. This new problem one is in the game dev pc so was probably damaged by the drive heads crashing down to the surface of the media as the power was tripped. We have a 15 amp 110V supply to the "data center" and it's too easy to trip this loop out 

Since it's evening now, I will hold on any tech stuff now. Thanks for the tips anyway 

[Andy]

We got my son's PC back after a warranty replacement of the hard disks. One of them melted.

At first power on the video didn't seem to work so I had a look inside the system unit to see if anything had come loose in transit. All was well and we realised we just needed to install the drivers for the digital monitor output. It worked ok with an old-style monitor.

But, on looking inside, I noticed the hard disks were mounted upside down i.e. the side where the chips are exposed was facing up. This may be a method to keep hard disks cooler which I never heard of or a mistake. I don't think this is right because they will gather dust on the circuitry, but it may well be protected by a layer a laquer on the circuit board.

So, do you think it's ok to run hard disks upside down? I think they are Hitachi/IBM 200GB SATA's. Everything seems fine so far 1-day in.

[Matt999]

   I have seen drives mounted vertically, but never upside down.  The ones that are mounted vertically, though, seem to have problems later with becoming noisy, (so I've noticed).  I suspect it was a mistake. Firstly, if heat was an issue with hard drives, you would think that manufactures would make the drives with some kind of cooling, such as vents or a special fan or something.
    Just guessing, but cannot see the advantage of the upside down mounting.  Would probably look at the manual for that machine and see which way it is mounted...
The melted drive was possibly due to an electrical problem of somekind.
   Here is an brief artical regarding positioning, however, will look into this further.  http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/packOrientation-c.html
Like I mentioned, just guessing.

[Andy]

I found this info from a Hitachi Deskstar install guide:

Hitachi Deskstar
drive can be mounted with any side or end vertical or horizontal.
Do not mount the drive in a tilted position.

So I guess it's ok.

[SensoVision]

I think it's all depend from mechanism used in drive, although I wouldn't mount drive upside down.
BTW I've had a bit higher temperature when I wanted in my HDD and I've manage to solve it by improving air flow and this passive cooler: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=zm-2hc2.html
it's really manage to lower temperature for few degrees(5-7 degrees if I'm not wrong) and also make drive run even more quiet.