Troubleshooting Errors and Warnings

Problem hard drives often announce their displeasure in the form of on-screen errors and warnings or through error codes you find when running your manufacturer’s drive diagnostic utility. Let’s look at the major drive-related error messages and learn how to use them to figure out what’s wrong.

Note 

For troubleshooting purposes, turn off Power Management in Windows or in your BIOS, as first discussed in Chapter 6, “Transforming Yourself into a Smart Troubleshooter.”

Responding to On-Screen Errors and Warnings

Hard drive error messages and warnings usually appear when you first try to start the PC and after a brief wait (while the system tries in vain to access the drive), an error appears on the screen before Windows would load normally. Sometimes such messages appear as you work in Windows itself and usually, when you’re trying to read from or write to the affected drive.

Errors Indicating a Problem with the Data or Drive

The following messages often indicate either physical damage to the drive or corruption of the data or file system on the drive:

Data Error Reading Drive <drive-letter> Error Reading Drive <drive-letter> I/O Error Seek Error/Sector Not Found Serious Disk Error Writing Drive <drive-letter>

With these errors, try to check the disk for errors if you can keep the PC working. For this, use ScanDisk or CHKDSK. If either ScanDisk or CHKDSK reports errors they can’t fix or mentions possible physical damage to the drive, immediately make your best attempt to back up the data on the drive. Then contact your hard drive manufacturer, try data-recovery software, or consult a data-recovery specialist. In any event, replacement of the hard drive will probably be necessary.

You should be aware that it’s possible to see some or most of these errors and warnings without actual damage to the drive or its data. Certain temporary or easily fixed situations like a loose or failing data cable or short-term overheating can generate errors. For example, if I’m operating a hot-running PC in a very warm room without good PC cooling practices, I might see a seek or reading drive error message. If I’m smart, I’ll shut down my PC properly and let it cool down before I attempt to do more work; this temporary problem could turn to drive or data damage if I don’t. Of course, if I’m very smart, I’ll consider buying a drive-cooling fan as discussed in Chapter 11.

Overclocking, a practice where you modify BIOS settings past their recommended operating levels to achieve better speed and performance, can produce these errors, too. Errors can be the direct result of excessive settings and the overheating that accompanies pushing hardware to its limits. If you overclock and then begin to see drive errors, consider this a distinct possibility and reverse the changes you made to see if the errors stop.

Note 

You may hear the term head crash referred to in relation to hard drive failures. A head crash is a specific type of hardware failure where the read/write heads of the drive, normally positioned carefully to move over but not touch the drive’s platters, instead come into contact with the surface, damaging the platter and the data it contains. The result may leave you temporarily able to open files (or not), but you’ll notice a great deal of noise coming from the drive (clicking, grinding, or strain). This is something you cannot repair.

Working with a Drive Stuck in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode

In pre-Windows XP versions (95/98/Me), you’ll sometimes see hard drives running in what is called MS-DOS Compatibility Mode. This means that the drives have failed to clear the Windows’ startup evaluation for whether such drives can load and run properly.

Unfortunately, you won’t always see an on-screen error message about this, and you may not even discover it until you go looking. Instead, what you may notice is a deadly slow system, particularly with any operation that involves the hard drive.

However, when you choose Start Ø Settings Ø Control Panel Ø System Ø Performance tab, you’ll find the message

Compatibility Mode Paging reduces overall system performance

This problem may occur due to

• Failure of the hard drive’s on-board controller. This requires drive replacement because today’s hard disk controllers are typically built into IDE/ATA hard drives.

• A virus. Use anti-virus software to perform a full scan.

• A hardware conflict between the hard drive controller and another piece of hardware, for example, both devices trying to use the same IRQ. Check Device Manager for a yellow exclamation mark (!) indicating a conflict, find what else it’s conflicting with, and rearrange them based on information described in Chapter 6.

• Something (you or software) has disabled the hard drive controller in Device Manager, where it appears as a red x. Click the x, try to enable the controller again, and investigate what you may have installed that caused this problem.

  Note 

  I’ve seen Compatibility Mode crop up frequently with older laptops where you have to swap in and out different drives such as a CD-ROM and floppy drive. In this case, shutting the laptop down and restarting it often makes Compatibility Mode disappear.

Manufacturer-Specific Error Codes

In addition to the kinds of error messages your BIOS at bootup and Windows during your session produce related to hard drive problems, you may find that your drive manufacturer has a list of error codes their drives might report. Such messages are either generated by or only seen within the drive-management software that comes with some hard drives.

For example, Western Digital hard drives typically come with Data Lifeguard software that can report various errors, many of which mean “replace the drive if you get this error.” There is even an online version of the Data Lifeguard software to test your drive through your Internet connection and browser while connected to their site (http://support.wdc.com/dlg/onlinedlg.asp).

Many hard drive manufacturers do not accept a hard drive for a return or repair without first running their diagnostics. Call the manufacturer first and ask for a return authorization. At this point, they usually ask for the error code. If they ask for the error code, they expect you to run the diagnostics. If you send in a drive without the error code, they’ll simply return the drive to you without testing.