Hard drive failing?

[coltwow]

Hey all,

A few months ago I received help to build my first pc here and it worked great! Regrettably I am having an issue that I hope someone will understand. My first thought is the hard drive is beginning to fail. About a week ago I got a white or grey screen while playing a game with codes and such. Had to restart the pc and everything seemed to work fine. Yesterday I downloaded a patch to the same game and get a message that it is corrupt. I use the games repair utility and it works successfully but the game was still corrupt. I use Windows 7 and ran a scan disk. Yesterday it found little to no packet or sectors, don't remember the term, to repair. Today it found items to repair in ITunes, SC2, picture files, windows install, and some others I dont remember. I reinstalled the game twice and get the same corrupt message each time.

Am I jumping the gun by assuming it might be the hard drive? Could the corrupt files be driver or Windows based?

My knowledge is pretty limited, so any and all suggestions would be great.

Thanks in advance!!!

Hard drive is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Western_Digital_Caviar-_-22-136-073-_-Product

 

[johnb35]

Download and run this utility to check the disk for errors, run the long test.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&lang=en

Download either the dos cd version or the windows version. For the dos cd version you would have to download the file and then use burning software to burn the image to a cd and then boot to the cd and run the test.

 

[coltwow]

John - thx! Just started the check...eta 20 hours and still going up...ouch!

Edit: Too many bad sectors detected...Failed!

Any tips on getting my a new one under warrenty?

 

[johnb35]

a 500 gb drive should only take about 4 hours max.

 

[johnb35]

If its been more than 30 days you have to process your return through Western Digital.

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en

Click on warranty check to verify its still in warrantee and then do the product replacement on that page.

 

[coltwow]

Warranty still in effect! Have a replacement coming.

Thanks for the help! I wish that I could buy you lunch or something to say thank you!!!

 

[johnb35]

No need to buy me lunch. Always glad to help out when I can.

 

[coltwow]

Back for a little help. I just received my replacement hard drive. I would love to do a system image restore on the new hard drive. My old hard drive is still working but I am looking for directions on how to complete this.

I have found instructions but it seems this is for a pc with Windows already installed. Do I install Windows on my new hard drive and then follow these instructions: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Restore-your-computer-from-a-system-image-backup

If I have bad sectors on my current hard drive do I just use the repair feature to be sure everything is fixed after I do the system restore?

Any assistance would be great!

 

[johnb35]

If your old drive has bad sectors then I do not recommend cloning your old drive to the new. It always recommended to do a fresh install on a new drive when you have errors or issues with an old drive.