Asus X550J laptop
 

I've found this problem talked about online, but no
help. System claims to analyze disk at boot, then repair
starts, then screen goes blank. BIOS accessible.
Unable to boot from CD. Very few options in
the BIOS. I don't know where to start. Sometimes
I get a disk inaccessible error. Other times not.
Mybe the laptop has been dropped?

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
I've found this problem talked about online, but no
help. System claims to analyze disk at boot, then repair
starts, then screen goes blank. BIOS accessible.
Unable to boot from CD. Very few options in
the BIOS. I don't know where to start. Sometimes
I get a disk inaccessible error. Other times not.
Mybe the laptop has been dropped?



https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/X550JK/specifications/

Storage 1TB HDD 5400

You should be able to pull the drive, and work on it
in your technician machine. It's likely to be a 2.5"
SATA with standard SATA connectors.

Check the SMART stats on the hard drive.

See if the partitions that should be visible, have
files showing.

If the owner has valuable data on it, back up first,
before charting a course of action. The temptation
to run CHKDSK is probably overpowering, but see if
you can back it up first.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| You should be able to pull the drive, and work on it
| in your technician machine. It's likely to be a 2.5"
| SATA with standard SATA connectors.
|

It's been backed up. No problem there. I plugged
it in with a USB adaptor to my XP machine and disk
manager says it's healthy but it doesn't show up in
My Computer. I can't boot a CD in the laptop.
I'm guessing this is possibly encrypted and certainly
NTFS. What do I need to see the files on that?
I have WinXP and Win7-64. Should 7 see it if I just
plug it in as a data drive?

| Check the SMART stats on the hard drive.
|
| See if the partitions that should be visible, have
| files showing.
|

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| You should be able to pull the drive, and work on it
| in your technician machine. It's likely to be a 2.5"
| SATA with standard SATA connectors.
|

It's been backed up. No problem there. I plugged
it in with a USB adaptor to my XP machine and disk
manager says it's healthy but it doesn't show up in
My Computer. I can't boot a CD in the laptop.
I'm guessing this is possibly encrypted and certainly
NTFS. What do I need to see the files on that?
I have WinXP and Win7-64. Should 7 see it if I just
plug it in as a data drive?

| Check the SMART stats on the hard drive.
|
| See if the partitions that should be visible, have
| files showing.
|



Best practice, is for the encrypting party to have
a "password floppy" or equivalent. You can make a
kind of recovery media, that allows decrypting the
partition in question.

With full disk encryption, the tiny partition containing
/boot and the BCD file, is not encrypted. Therefore, enough
software must be present in there, to support decryption
before hand-off to C: . It's your job, to find the password
media the owner was supposed to use, for just such emergencies.
Presentation of the password disc, should enable you to convert
the disk back to plaintext.

Some of these schemes, there can be error multiplication.
A single error in storage, can cause a larger chunk of info
to be errored, by schemes such as encryption or compression.
In the case of BitLocker, there is the Elephant Diffuser
in earlier versions. Microsoft made the Win10 version less
secure by removing the Elephant Diffuser. As long as the
encryption scheme is file based, perhaps the most damage
a storage error could do, is severe damage to the file the
error is in. If the encryption scheme were to work at
the sector level (as if it was a large TAR file), then
one error in storage, could be spread all over the place.

The manual shows it has Secure Boot. You would think the
choices would be "Yes" or "No", but AptIO apparently
supports "Custom". The Key Management field populates
if you switch it to Custom. The reason I'm looking in
this area right now, is for signs the box has a TPM chip.
TPM can be used by BitLocker. Or as a root of trust for
Secure Boot or something.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/X550JD/0409.pdf

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/80...4.html?page=93

Platform Key (PK)
Key Exchange Key database (KEK)
Authorized Signature database (DB)
Forbidden Signature database (DBX)

That doesn't necessarily mention TPM.

If you set Secure Boot Control to [Disabled], as seen on page 81
of 0409.pdf, then maybe you can get your OS media to boot. For
whatever thing you have in mind. If it's a UEFI BIOS, then
perhaps you'd want to try OS media which is Hybrid and supports
both Legacy and UEFI. On your Win7 disc, you might want to try an
SP1 flavor of disk, as it might stand a better chance of working.
I don't know the status of Windows 7 when it comes to booting
on stuff like this.

I sure hope the owner read the "best practice" for whatever
crypto is in usage. It could be BitLocker. It could be
TrueCrypt for all I know. I don't really know what to look for,
when it becomes apparent crypto is involved. Would the method
print on the screen "I am BitLocker, and no you may not come in" ?
Or would it fail silently ?

You may have Win7 media, because you bought a retail disc with
license key. In which case there is a Microsoft web page to download
media (i.e. a more recent Win7 disc with SP1 on it). If you got the
Win7 non-SP1 media at a fire sale, with no key, then you can use
the Heidoc URL generator software, to make Microsoft cough up a
download for you. The reason it has "steep requirements", is it
uses Internet Explorer to carry out a transaction with TechBench,
which coughs up a download URL, without the presentation of your
license key. You use the "Copy to Clipboard" button in the panel,
them flip over to any browser (Firefox) and paste in the download
URL. The download URL is valid for 24 hours, so don't attempt a DVD
download over dialup, as it might stretch past 24 hours. Any sort of
broadband internet, should be able to complete the download
in less than 24 hours.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techno...-download-tool

You only need to download something, if you can't get your
existing media to work. With Secure Boot turned off.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| Best practice, is for the encrypting party to have
| a "password floppy" or equivalent. You can make a
| kind of recovery media, that allows decrypting the
| partition in question.
|

I don't have any reason to think it's encrypted. But
up until now I've managed to preety much avoid NTFS
and newer boot systems. If I hook up a FAT32 disk
to any computer I can read it. This disk is not showing up.
So I'm wondering what system/software I might use
just to check for valid partitions and test the drive.
It has to be on a system, since the DVD drive boot is
not working. What would the tech people who retrieved
personal files used?

| The manual shows it has Secure Boot. You would think the
| choices would be "Yes" or "No", but AptIO apparently
| supports "Custom".

I didn't notice such a field. I guess I need to get
up to date on these newer complications.

| If you set Secure Boot Control to [Disabled], as seen on page 81
| of 0409.pdf, then maybe you can get your OS media to boot. For
| whatever thing you have in mind. If it's a UEFI BIOS, then
| perhaps you'd want to try OS media which is Hybrid and supports
| both Legacy and UEFI. On your Win7 disc, you might want to try an
| SP1 flavor of disk, as it might stand a better chance of working.
| I don't know the status of Windows 7 when it comes to booting
| on stuff like this.
|

I have a Win7 disk. But I'm not clear how that might be
useful. Boot it in the DVD drive and then...?

I *don't* have a Win8 disk and so far the owner hasn't
found an activation key, so I'm not sure I could reinstall
that way, even if I get the DVD boot working. (I thought
the "genuine license" sticker was always on these things,
but this laptop doesn't have it.)

What about the phenomenon of gettting bumped? The
boot typically goes through checking for disk errors,
fixing errors, etc. but then either goes blank or goes to
BIOS. At that point the hard disk has, at least sometimes,
disappeared from the BIOS. Is it possible that's actually
a boot or software issue and not a faulty SATA connection?

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

..... Secure boot seems to be at least part of the problem.
With that turned off I'm getting either a login to reset
or error c000021a. Ophcrack can't find a password
needed for the reset. But it's progress. Thanks. I never
would have thought of secure boot acting like the hard
disk is loose!

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Best practice, is for the encrypting party to have
| a "password floppy" or equivalent. You can make a
| kind of recovery media, that allows decrypting the
| partition in question.
|

I don't have any reason to think it's encrypted. But
up until now I've managed to preety much avoid NTFS
and newer boot systems. If I hook up a FAT32 disk
to any computer I can read it. This disk is not showing up.
So I'm wondering what system/software I might use
just to check for valid partitions and test the drive.
It has to be on a system, since the DVD drive boot is
not working. What would the tech people who retrieved
personal files used?

| The manual shows it has Secure Boot. You would think the
| choices would be "Yes" or "No", but AptIO apparently
| supports "Custom".

I didn't notice such a field. I guess I need to get
up to date on these newer complications.

| If you set Secure Boot Control to [Disabled], as seen on page 81
| of 0409.pdf, then maybe you can get your OS media to boot. For
| whatever thing you have in mind. If it's a UEFI BIOS, then
| perhaps you'd want to try OS media which is Hybrid and supports
| both Legacy and UEFI. On your Win7 disc, you might want to try an
| SP1 flavor of disk, as it might stand a better chance of working.
| I don't know the status of Windows 7 when it comes to booting
| on stuff like this.
|

I have a Win7 disk. But I'm not clear how that might be
useful. Boot it in the DVD drive and then...?

I *don't* have a Win8 disk and so far the owner hasn't
found an activation key, so I'm not sure I could reinstall
that way, even if I get the DVD boot working. (I thought
the "genuine license" sticker was always on these things,
but this laptop doesn't have it.)

What about the phenomenon of gettting bumped? The
boot typically goes through checking for disk errors,
fixing errors, etc. but then either goes blank or goes to
BIOS. At that point the hard disk has, at least sometimes,
disappeared from the BIOS. Is it possible that's actually
a boot or software issue and not a faulty SATA connection?


About the only reason for booting the faulty computer with
an installer DVD, would be to get to Command Prompt so you
can run CHKDSK. At the moment, there's no reason to
be running offline DISM or offline SFC scannow. You can
also use BCDEDIT, and do repairs to the BCD table if
it is damaged. So far, none of your symptoms suggest
booting to a Command Prompt is going to help.

It almost sounds like it's hitting a bad spot, and
going crazy (or freezing). You can pull the drive
and put it in your technician machine - the machine
with the clean power and working interfaces. Then you
can test there, to see if the symptoms are machine-related.

A disk drive can go "insane" if the power requirements are
not met. On a 3.5" drive, if the 12V rail hits 11V, the drive
will spin down and spin up again. A bit of droop is enough
to cause the processor to stop responding on the disk
controller card.

If the drive attempts to update the Service Area (=SA or
Track -1), and is unable to write, then it might try a
few "seek to zero" style head resets (clicking/ticking
sound), then give up and stop responding.

*******

On a Windows 8 laptop, the key is stored in the BIOS.
Each BIOS chip has a unique key (which is unlike the
scheme used on previous generations). The key is stored
in the ACPI table "MSDM" (you can fetch this in Linux).
There's really no particular reason to extract it, as
a Win8 retail disk, if you install it, it will
automatically activate, using the MSDM key. No other
version of OS, will activate using that key (directly).
The "free upgrade" to Windows 10 would have worked.
But that's not a normal promotion.

Win8/Win10 use MSDM. Since the key is stored in the BIOS
chip, there is no reason to print a COA sticker for the
outside of the machine.

For Win7 or older, the SLIC table in the BIOS, contains
information to support activation of "royalty OEM" OSes.
The SLIC table says "I'm an Asus", and if the OS
is an Asus OEM OS, it can be activated. The SLIC table
would activate WinXP/Vista/Win7, so if Asus had three
OSes for download, you could multi-boot with them. On
SLIC machines, the license key used by the OS is "generic".
A COA sticker with an emergency license key on it,
allows the owner to install a retail OS later, if the
hard drive fails. So SLIC is not a key, but it aids
activation, and the SLIC needs a COA to complete
the package.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| Win8/Win10 use MSDM. Since the key is stored in the BIOS
| chip, there is no reason to print a COA sticker for the
| outside of the machine.
|
OK. I didn't know that. But if I want to download
an ISO for a Win8 install disk it seems that I'd have
to give MS a valid key as part of the operation --
at least that's what various online sources are saying.
I don't have a Win8 disk.

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Win8/Win10 use MSDM. Since the key is stored in the BIOS
| chip, there is no reason to print a COA sticker for the
| outside of the machine.
|
OK. I didn't know that. But if I want to download
an ISO for a Win8 install disk it seems that I'd have
to give MS a valid key as part of the operation --
at least that's what various online sources are saying.
I don't have a Win8 disk.



Use Heidoc URL generator. Click the "Copy to clipboard" buttons,
then flip over to your favorite browser, and paste the URL there.
The actual download URL will point to a Microsoft site.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techno...-download-tool

There used to be two versions of program, one for legacy systems
and one for "very modern" Windows OSes. The legacy one was
dropped, and now you need a higher minimum OS to run the
URL generator.

It uses IE to fake out the authentication requirements
at TechBench or something. Once it gets TechBench to cough
up a URL valid for 24 hours, you can download with some
other browser. The copy to clipboard means the
download will go on in a different place, than where
the Heidoc generator is working.

If you're worried about what the Heidoc generator is doing,
run it in a VM until you're comfortable with it. The VM can
have a bidirectional copy/paste buffer, so you can flip back
to the host and do the actual download there.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

.... Secure boot seems to be at least part of the problem.
With that turned off I'm getting either a login to reset
or error c000021a. Ophcrack can't find a password
needed for the reset. But it's progress. Thanks. I never
would have thought of secure boot acting like the hard
disk is loose!



http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

"0xC000021A: STATUS_SYSTEM_PROCESS_TERMINATED

This occurs when Windows switches into kernel mode and
a user-mode subsystem, such as Winlogon or the
Client Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS), is compromised.
"

If you're getting that far along, then maybe it's a
malware problem ? Or perhaps, an AV program has
quarantined a file (false positive), trashing
the machine. If you know an AV is present,
see if you can figure out where the quarantines go.

Alternately, if you know the AV used, check the news
and see if a recent update caused mayhem amongst
the user population. A false positive usually makes
a big stink when a critical system file is moved.

*******

You can use DISM and SFC, both in offline mode,
to try and shore up system files.

Normally, on a modern OS, DISM can chech on the Internet.
If your Win10 booted, these can verify the content of
WinSXS (for system stuff). The first checks a flag.
The second does a read only scan. The third is read/write.
You're supposed to try them in sequence for some reason.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Life is tougher of you're running DISM from a WinPE
boot disk and a Command Prompt window.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0a77fc1?auth=1

Bleckfield replied on November 11, 2015

mkdir c:\mount

DISM.exe /mount-Image /ImageFile:d:\sources\install.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C:\mount\ /readonly

# That would mount the WIM as a file system, within C:\mount
# as the mount point. The mount point is merely a reference for
# the beginning of the file tree mounted on top of it.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth /Source:c:\mount\windows /LimitAccess

# You can see that attempts to use the Windows folder on the
# mount point, as a "reference" for restoration. It should be
# able to restore any WinSXS files that happen to be on the
# installer DVD version. It would help (obviously) if you use
# a Win 8.1 disc of recent vintage - using a Win 8.0 DVD image
# on a Win 8.1 system, I bet it would complain.
#
# As for the LimitAccess option, this is what it does.
# I don't know if the network is even up, if you're running
# WinPE by booting the installer DVD to Command Prompt.

"You can use /LimitAccess to prevent the DISM tool
from using Windows Update as a repair source or
as a backup repair source for online images"

So that's a basic idea as to how you could repair WinSXS.
It may need some adjustments on your part, to get that
working properly.

If that finishes properly, the next thing is SFC, which
checks that the System32 files are OK. You would do this
in the same session. The trick here, is identifying which
drive letter is which. I hate that, in this environment.
Normally, X: is the Command Prompt OS partition. The C:
partition could actually be C:, or in some cases
it might be D: . I have to list disk contents until
I'm convinced I'm pointed at the right partition
to fix. The same issue arises, even with the previous
command sequence - you have to positively identify your
partitions, to pick "good" places to work :-)

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows

So those two, would be intended to fix corrupted system
files. This would be on a system that has already passed
CHKDSK. And we all know, that using CHKDSK is a double-edged
sword. It can fix stuff, or it can break stuff. It's nice
to have a backup of the target, just in case you're
not born lucky.

You will need to salt these commands to taste. The
above is merely some leads on what the commands
*might* look like.

Note - Eternal September has an incoming feed problem
right now, which is damping the responses you might
normally get.

Good luck,
Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

Paul wrote:
Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

.... Secure boot seems to be at least part of the problem.
With that turned off I'm getting either a login to reset
or error c000021a. Ophcrack can't find a password
needed for the reset. But it's progress. Thanks. I never
would have thought of secure boot acting like the hard
disk is loose!


I had a chance to try the dism and sfc commands.
While booted from the DVD and using the Command
Prompt window.

My first problem was, I had older media downloaded
from the MicrosoftStore. It uses install.esd instead
of install.wim. I tried to get dism to mount the .esd
and it refused.

So I ended up downloading fresh media, using the
Heidoc URL generator to generate links. That got
me some media with install.wim as the largest
file on the image.

If you mount the ISO file on your technician machine,
or if you use 7ZIP, you can copy the install.wim from
the \sources folder. The install.wim has multiple OSes
stored in it, indexed by an "index" number. Here, I'm checking
the first index of the WIM, to see if it's a copy of Pro.
This particular WIM has two OSes in it, Pro and Home,
and there is no "/index:3".

dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:f:\install.wim /index:1

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.16299.15

Details for image : f:\install.wim

Index : 1
Name : Windows 8.1 Pro
Description : Windows 8.1 Pro --- the one I need
...
The operation completed successfully.

I copied that install.wim file, to the root of C: on
my simulated "broken" drive. I did that so I would
be sure to be able to access it.

Next, was the actual dism run to repair the content.
The command syntax was slightly different, as booting
from the DVD is not the same as the example I found.

In my simulated environment, the C: drive becomes D:
when you boot to Command Prompt to do repair work. That's
why the following might be a bit difficult to understand
without a guide. It takes some time for the WIM to be
unpacked.

mkdir d:\mount

dism /mount-Image /ImageFile:d:\install.wim /index:1 /mountdir:d:\mount\ /readonly

Now, time to actually run a dism command. The d:\mount\windows
contains the "golden" set of files. And d: is the thing being
repaired.

dism /image:d:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:d:\mount\windows /limitaccess

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.3.9600.16384

Image Version: 6.3.9600.16384

The scratch directory size might be insufficient to perform this operation.
This can cause unexpected behavior.
Use the /ScratchDir option to point to a folder with sufficient scratch
space. The recommended size is at least 1024 MB.

[==========================100.0%================== ========]
The restore operation completed successfully.
The component store corruption was repaired.
The operation completed successfully.

Then I could try an SFC to finish the job.

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

In principle, I could then boot into the OS on the
hard drive, as all of its corrupted system files at
least, would be put back. You could still have registry
damage, home directory damage, a ton of other stuff.

That's it,
Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| "0xC000021A: STATUS_SYSTEM_PROCESS_TERMINATED
|
| This occurs when Windows switches into kernel mode and
| a user-mode subsystem, such as Winlogon or the
| Client Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS), is compromised.
| "
|
| If you're getting that far along, then maybe it's a
| malware problem ? Or perhaps, an AV program has
| quarantined a file (false positive), trashing
| the machine.

I'm beginning to wonder about malware. The symptoms
are so erratic. I was able to get a Win8.1 disk. (Heidoc
didn't work for some reason, but MS's Rube Goldbergian
download controller program did finally manage to produce
an ISO.... Why can't they just give me a link?....)
The other thing I wonder about is possible hardware
short circuit. Maybe even RAM? But I'm doing this as a
favor and I'm not prepared to start buying stuff to swap out.

The boot manager and DVD drive disappear off and
on, with no apparent pattern. I got the Win8.1 disk to
run. It didn't need a key. It went to work for maybe
30 minutes. Then it suddenly said files are missing and
quit. Then I tried a Refresh. That worked for a long
time and then said the disk is locked. Unlock it and
start again. In both cases there was a long period of
disk activity first. The Windows disk seemed to see the
whole thing OK. Something like 5 partitions. System,
Restore, C, D.... something like that. I had to return to
shutting off CSM because the install wouldn't touch
the GPT partitions otherwise. But the DVD drive
doesn't seem to like UEFI-mode. Or maybe it's just
cranky this morning. Hard to tell. :)

Question: If I bought a new hard disk and used the
8.1 DVD, can I make it install using the embedded
key in the BIOS? I think the computer is Win8, but
the 8.1 disk at least seemed like it meant to install
normally, without asking for a key, until it failed. I
don't know for sure about the BIOS, but aside from
intermittently losing drives it seems to be OK.

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/24/2017 06:12 PM, Mayayana wrote:
I've found this problem talked about online, but no
help. System claims to analyze disk at boot, then repair
starts, then screen goes blank. BIOS accessible.
Unable to boot from CD. Very few options in
the BIOS. I don't know where to start. Sometimes
I get a disk inaccessible error. Other times not.
Mybe the laptop has been dropped?





I assume it's running chkdsk /f which may take a long time to complete.
Just let it run. Walk away and come back an hour later.

Also a good idea to go the the website of the HD's mfg ...get and run
their diagnostic. If /any/ errors are found, replace the drive


Might as well run a RAM test too

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:


Question: If I bought a new hard disk and used the
8.1 DVD, can I make it install using the embedded
key in the BIOS? I think the computer is Win8, but
the 8.1 disk at least seemed like it meant to install
normally, without asking for a key, until it failed. I
don't know for sure about the BIOS, but aside from
intermittently losing drives it seems to be OK.

I would think so. I don't have a way to test that here.

I thought MSDM applied to both Win8 and Win10. And
the MSDM for 8 should work for Win8 and Win8.1.

If for some reason, the installer refuses to let you get
past the license key entry dialog, you can use one of these.

Windows 8.0 Pro: XKY4K-2NRWR-8F6P2-448RF-CRYQH
Windows 8.0 Co FB4WR-32NVD-4RW79-XQFWH-CYQG3

Windows 8.1 Pro: XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB
Windows 8.1 Co 334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT

Those are install-only keys, which give you a 30 day grace
period like on other OSes. And x32 versus x64 is not
an issue with those - works for either. Once the
install is done, you can use a command to change the
license key, and fully activate it.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"philo" wrote

| I assume it's running chkdsk /f

It's nowhere near that point. It won't boot to
Windows at all. Most of the time it won't see the
DVD to boot from that. No luck with USB. It starts
up with a message about starting repair. Then it
goes blank. Or it shows a bluescreen with C0000185,
which seems to be CD not found. I managed to boot
Memtest86, which ran fine, but then couldn't boot
a BootIt disk, which I though I might use to try
setting the restore partition active.

It's very erratic. Even the Win8 install disk failed to
do a fresh install. But I seem to be able to find all the
problems online. A lot of people have had repair loop
problems with Win8. The Win8 install disk error, that
"some files are missing", also seems to be a known error.

This is my first time dealing with GPT partitioning,
UEFI, etc, so it's dificult to figure out what error
means what.

Asus X550J laptop
 

"philo" wrote

| Also a good idea to go the the website of the HD's mfg ...get and run
| their diagnostic. If /any/ errors are found, replace the drive
| Might as well run a RAM test too

I was able to test RAM. That checked out. I ended
up installing it into a Win7 box and running Hiren's
boot disk. The WD diagnostic came out with error 7
and quit. BootIt sees all the partitions, but the data
on them seems to be limited. Chckdsk retrieved all sorts
of things on the Windows partition but couldn't access
any of the others.
At this point I'm thinking there must be a problem
with the hard disk.

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Mayayana" wrote

| The boot manager and DVD drive disappear off and
| on, with no apparent pattern. I got the Win8.1 disk to
| run. It didn't need a key.

Last night I was able to test the hard disk and it
seems to be faulty. This AM I was able to boot the
BootIt CD with no hard disk in place. But I needed
to enable CSM to do it. I'm still a bit confused
about the effect of IDE vs AHCI, CSM enabled/disabled,
fast boot, etc. I need CSM to boot from at least
some CDs/DVDs. On the other hand, the Win8
install DVD wouldn't touch the GPT partitions with
CSM enabled. Once I disabled CSM it seemed to
work, but then complained about missing files. From
looking online I'm guessing that might be a result
of not have SATA drivers and needing AHCI/IDE
set to IDE.
At this point I think the the hard disk must be kaput
and am trying to figure out whether the rest is OK.
Memeory tests file. I would think the motherboard
must, then, be OK. ?

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Mayayana" wrote

| The boot manager and DVD drive disappear off and
| on, with no apparent pattern. I got the Win8.1 disk to
| run. It didn't need a key.

Last night I was able to test the hard disk and it
seems to be faulty. This AM I was able to boot the
BootIt CD with no hard disk in place. But I needed
to enable CSM to do it. I'm still a bit confused
about the effect of IDE vs AHCI, CSM enabled/disabled,
fast boot, etc. I need CSM to boot from at least
some CDs/DVDs. On the other hand, the Win8
install DVD wouldn't touch the GPT partitions with
CSM enabled. Once I disabled CSM it seemed to
work, but then complained about missing files. From
looking online I'm guessing that might be a result
of not have SATA drivers and needing AHCI/IDE
set to IDE.
At this point I think the the hard disk must be kaput
and am trying to figure out whether the rest is OK.
Memeory tests file. I would think the motherboard
must, then, be OK. ?

Both Seagate and Western Digital, offer hard drive
test programs. You can run those, do the short or long
test, and get an analysis. Even using some utility to
review SMART parameters, might show the drive already
has too many re-allocations, indicating a "health"
problem. The HDD sector sparing system is automatic and
non-reversible, so you cannot ask the hard drive to
scan and re-evaluate the decisions it's made. When it
indicates, via SMART, that only X percent of spares
remain, the writing is on the wall with regard to
drive health.

The drive test program from one of the two companies,
will probably tell you how bad it is.

https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/suppor...oads/seatools/

"Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows"
https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

Then, you will be cloning the drive, with something.
Let's hope there are no CRC errors while you do so,
as then there's that book I have to write... :-)

I think something called R-studio can do cloning with
CRC errors (equiv. to ddrescue), and it turns into payware
if you "wanted your files back". I haven't tested it,
and just noticed it in passing.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| Both Seagate and Western Digital, offer hard drive
| test programs. You can run those, do the short or long
| test, and get an analysis. Even using some utility to
| review SMART parameters, might show the drive already
| has too many re-allocations, indicating a "health"
| problem. The HDD sector sparing system is automatic and
| non-reversible, so you cannot ask the hard drive to
| scan and re-evaluate the decisions it's made. When it
| indicates, via SMART, that only X percent of spares
| remain, the writing is on the wall with regard to
| drive health.
|
| The drive test program from one of the two companies,
| will probably tell you how bad it is.
|
| https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/suppor...oads/seatools/
|
| "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows"
| https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3
|

I mentioned in another post that I tried the WD
version last night. It stopped with errors.

| Then, you will be cloning the drive, with something.
| Let's hope there are no CRC errors while you do so,
| as then there's that book I have to write... :-)
|
| I think something called R-studio can do cloning with
| CRC errors (equiv. to ddrescue), and it turns into payware
| if you "wanted your files back". I haven't tested it,
| and just noticed it in passing.
|
Thanks. I'm guessing this disk may be too far
gone, given that the WD diagnostics can't even
finish diagnosing. It's a WD Blue. I feel movement
if I touch it while running. I guess it's a hybrid
rather than just SSD.

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"philo" wrote

| Also a good idea to go the the website of the HD's mfg ...get and run
| their diagnostic. If /any/ errors are found, replace the drive
| Might as well run a RAM test too

I was able to test RAM. That checked out. I ended
up installing it into a Win7 box and running Hiren's
boot disk. The WD diagnostic came out with error 7
and quit. BootIt sees all the partitions, but the data
on them seems to be limited. Chckdsk retrieved all sorts
of things on the Windows partition but couldn't access
any of the others.
At this point I'm thinking there must be a problem
with the hard disk.

Before you conclude that, remember that files have
attributes, and one of the malware tricks is to assert
"Hidden" on files, making a volume look empty.

Bleepingcomputer has a utility called unhide.exe that can
flip the attributes back. It's context sensitive, so is more
likely to flip stuff back in a home directory, than elsewhere
(where stuff may have been hidden by Microsoft). You don't
need that utility just yet.

You should be using a NTFS utility like nfi.exe from Win2K days.
As it lists all the filenumbers in the $MFT and gives
some basic characteristics. It doesn't list attributes.
It would allow you to determine roughly how many files
were actually on the disk, before it took a dump.

nfi.exe is inside this ZIP file.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150329...us/oem3sr2.zip

nfi C: nfi_c.txt

HTH,
Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/24/2017 8:47 PM, Paul wrote:

If the owner has valuable data on it, back up first,
before charting a course of action. The temptation
to run CHKDSK is probably overpowering, but see if
you can back it up first.

Â*Â* Paul

I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
eventually killed the drive's boot sectors with a similar experience as
Mayayana's. So, it may be that if the notebook drive is old enough that
SMART was relatively "new", it may not be 100% compatible with Win8.x,
either. I booted the computer from a Linux thumb drive to get what I
needed off of it and one of these days will install Linux on it, since
the drive appears to be otherwise OK.

--
best regards,

Neil

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Neil" wrote

| I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
| eventually killed the drive's boot sectors
|

Could you explain that? I thought SMART was just
a way to communicate diagnostic data from the drive.

It's been decided to get a new disk. The old one
is a WD10JPVX. I thought it was a hybrib but it
seems to be just a normal moving disk type. Do
you have any links to info that might be relevant?
I'm trying to talk my friend into an SSD, but they're
still very expensive.

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Neil" wrote

| So, it may be that if the notebook drive is old enough that
| SMART was relatively "new", it may not be 100% compatible with Win8.x,
| either.

A follow-up note: The disk is only 3 years old.
It's an Asus laptop that came with Win8. So I'm
assuming it was a lemon disk. But I also wonder
about frivolous disk activity. There seem to be
an increasing number of programs that will keep
accessing the disk as part of the always-on service
model. The average person has no way of knowing
that's happening.

Also, this is my first time with a UEFI BIOS and
I didn't know the details. An aspect that no one
else seems to have caught: It turns out that UEFI is
still transitional. BootIt and UBCD won't boot without
the CSM module loaded. Memtest86 will. Win8 install
DVD will boot with CSM but won't access GPT partitions
unless booted with UEFI. Then there's also the SATA
vs IDE emulation.

The different settings cause different versions
of drives -- or no drive at all -- to show up in the
BIOS boot order. And there's no helpful message
when things are incompatible. It would be nice if it
showed something like: "Disk in DVD drive is not UEFI
compatible." Instead, the drive just disappears
from the boot order or fails to respond. That's crazy
that the drive should disappear entirely from the
BIOS boot order.

It took me a long time to figure out that it all
depended on a combination of SATA/IDE and UEFI/CSM
variations, and the various disks I was trying to
use. That led me on a wild goose chase of suspecting
loose motherboard connections.

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| So, it may be that if the notebook drive is old enough that
| SMART was relatively "new", it may not be 100% compatible with Win8.x,
| either.

A follow-up note: The disk is only 3 years old.
It's an Asus laptop that came with Win8. So I'm
assuming it was a lemon disk. But I also wonder
about frivolous disk activity. There seem to be
an increasing number of programs that will keep
accessing the disk as part of the always-on service
model. The average person has no way of knowing
that's happening.

Also, this is my first time with a UEFI BIOS and
I didn't know the details. An aspect that no one
else seems to have caught: It turns out that UEFI is
still transitional. BootIt and UBCD won't boot without
the CSM module loaded. Memtest86 will. Win8 install
DVD will boot with CSM but won't access GPT partitions
unless booted with UEFI. Then there's also the SATA
vs IDE emulation.

The different settings cause different versions
of drives -- or no drive at all -- to show up in the
BIOS boot order. And there's no helpful message
when things are incompatible. It would be nice if it
showed something like: "Disk in DVD drive is not UEFI
compatible." Instead, the drive just disappears
from the boot order or fails to respond. That's crazy
that the drive should disappear entirely from the
BIOS boot order.

It took me a long time to figure out that it all
depended on a combination of SATA/IDE and UEFI/CSM
variations, and the various disks I was trying to
use. That led me on a wild goose chase of suspecting
loose motherboard connections.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

My newest motherboard, when in UEFI+CSM mode,
offers *both* legacy and UEFI boot devices in
the list. In fact, if media is hybrid and supports
both modes of booting, there are *two* entries
in the popup boot menu, one for the CSM instance,
one for the UEFI instance. If I wanted a UEFI/GPT
install of Windows 8, then in the BIOS, I would
select the UEFI instance of the DVD drive on the
first boot.

I can boot anything I want as a result. Both
ecosystems are supported simultaneously. If I
want a UEFI only environment, I can disable
CSM and only UEFI things happen. I've only
done that the one time, for a series of experiments,
because my attempts to do the same in VirtualBox,
revealed the UEFI BIOS in VirtualBox is terrible.

My BIOS is also smart enough to search the disks
and find the first bootable one. When I have
a data drive and an OS drive connected, I don't
even need to interfere with the machine, and it
just does the right thing.

A good BIOS makes a big difference.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/28/2017 9:40 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
| eventually killed the drive's boot sectors
|

Could you explain that? I thought SMART was just
a way to communicate diagnostic data from the drive.

It's more than just info. SMART is a disk management tool built-in to
the drive's firmware that performs the same kinds of functions as
CHKDSK; it notes bad sectors, uses a portion of the drive's track to
store that info, reassigns the data to sectors on a different track, and
so on.

The issue I ran into is that bad sectors that should have been isolated
by CHKDSK was disregarded by Win8.1 and kept writing to those sectors
until it exceeded the SMART's track allocation space.

Do
you have any links to info that might be relevant?

I'd suggest doing a search to find info that best fits your level of
understanding of the hardware.

--
best regards,

Neil

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| My newest motherboard, when in UEFI+CSM mode,
| offers *both* legacy and UEFI boot devices in
| the list. In fact, if media is hybrid and supports
| both modes of booting, there are *two* entries
| in the popup boot menu

I have something lik that. The DVD drive can have
up to 3 prepends in the boot menu: UEFI:, P2:, SATA:,
and there can be up to 2 instances, depending on
settings. But there are also instances where it
disappears.
In any case, I didn't know about UEFI/CSM and
no one told me. It took awhile to figure out that
there can be many variations. Many boot disks
won't boot to UEFI. But if it's already UEFI, with
GPT partitioning, then Windows can't install with
it set to CSM. Lots of details. I mention it here
because I expect there are a lot of people who
are not aware of just how quirky the system is.
I'm inclined to re-install to MBR. It's limited
to 2 TB, but I don't expect to be worrying about
that anytime soon. In the meantime it's got much
better general compatibility.

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Neil" wrote

| | I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
| | eventually killed the drive's boot sectors
| |

I don't understand. I very, very rarely run CHKDSK, so
I don't see why it should have a big effect.

| The issue I ran into is that bad sectors that should have been isolated
| by CHKDSK was disregarded by Win8.1 and kept writing to those sectors
| until it exceeded the SMART's track allocation space.
|
| Do
| you have any links to info that might be relevant?
|
| I'd suggest doing a search to find info that best fits your level of
| understanding of the hardware.

You have no corroborating docs for your
theory? Then how do you know that's what
happened?

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| | I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
| | eventually killed the drive's boot sectors
| |

I don't understand. I very, very rarely run CHKDSK, so
I don't see why it should have a big effect.

| The issue I ran into is that bad sectors that should have been isolated
| by CHKDSK was disregarded by Win8.1 and kept writing to those sectors
| until it exceeded the SMART's track allocation space.
|
| Do
| you have any links to info that might be relevant?
|
| I'd suggest doing a search to find info that best fits your level of
| understanding of the hardware.

You have no corroborating docs for your
theory? Then how do you know that's what
happened?

There are two levels of activity.

1) If the disk detects trouble, it queues a sector for "evaluation"
on the next write. If the write is bad, the sector is spared out.
In neither the read nor the write case, is the drive throwing
a CRC error. Wither it's error correction on a read, or sparing
on a write, the code returned is "success". Only the time delay
until it says "success", hints at the trouble it's having.

On a write, if the drive runs out of spares, it could report an
error (failure) on the write. Or, on a read, it can report a CRC
error, if it tries for 15 seconds to read the sector (times 120
tries per second). If you have a drive with TLER, the time
it's willing to retry is cut by more than 50% (that's so the
RAID controller won't force a rebuild, because the RAID driver
timed out before the 15 seconds is up).

2) If the OS gets a fatal report, only then does $BADCLUS get involved.
NTFS has the ability to disable all the sectors in a single cluster
at one time, by marking a cluster as bad. $BADCLUS is a "sparse" file,
whose size covers the entire disk surface. The $BADCLUS file consists
of the clusters that are bad. So the bad clusters are marked as
unusable. But that only happens, if the hard drive "gives up"
on its little dance routine. If all the clusters on the partition
were bad, the $BADCLUS file would be full (fully populated), and
the drive would be "empty of usable clusters".

The sparing in (1) is automatic and non-reversible. Even if
you do an Enhanced Secure Erase, it shouldn't change the
status of which sectors got mapped out. An Enhanced Secure Erase
will try to zero out *all* sectors, both the working sectors
and the ones that are no longer accessible. The drive doesn't
wait around to find out how those writes went. Enhanced Secure
Erase is a "best effort" command in that sense. Only if the heads
fell off, would the Enhanced Secure Erase stop.

The old SCSI drives on the other hand, you could reverse the
sparing process on those, and copy the factory list over top
of the grown list, and allow the drive to (in the fullness of
time) reevaluate any dodgy sectors. SATA/IDE on the other hand,
doesn't allow such interference.

In terms of SMART, there are two parameters of interest, with
regard to (1).

Current Pending Sector is supposed to be a count of sectors
waiting for "write evaluation" the next time the drive goes
to write those sectors. A sector could wait for a couple
years, before a chance comes up, or it could get evaluated
a second from now - it all depends on when and where the
disk gets written. If you wanted to drop the CPS to zero
in a hurry, simply re-writing the entire drive with the
info you read off it, should be enough.

Now, what's wrong with that "theory". Well, on the Seagate
drives I've got, I've *never* seen Current Pending Sector
go non-zero. Even when other activity indicates the drive
is sick, and Current Pending should be growing. Some brand
of drive, probably is using Current Pending Sector, but
not in the case of the Seagates I've owned.

Current Pending returns to zero, if an opportunity comes
along to write the entire drive.

Reallocated Sector Count is a measure of how many spares
have been used up. It's thresholded, so only after a large
number of sectors were spared, does the count value go non-zero.
The result is, the user is unaware exactly how large the
spared sector count is. Generally, a spare sector should be
in the same track or cylinder, because you don't want to
"pay a seek time" to change cylinders to get a spare.
A head switch still costs around 1 millisecond and is
expensive. If a spare was staged in the same track, the
track cache could make it available almost immediately.

On IBM drives, one eighth of the cache RAM chip was
used for the spare sector map. That meant that no extra
accesses were needed, to figure out where the spare is.
If you read 5, and the table says 5 is now at 12, then
the controller can immediately transfer 12 in place of
5 on a read. For other brands of drive, they don't offer
public info like that. First it was IBM, then when IBM
research moved to HGST, the HGST web site had tech info
on how drives work. No other manufacturer really goes
into the level of detail that HGST did. Now that HGST
has been sold again, AFAIK the info has gone underground.
So no more tidbits on how drives work... Or what kinda
Carnauba wax they're using on the platters this week
(I'm making fun of their choice of platter lubricants).
The lubricant is bonded to the platter, so it won't
get away. One or two molecules are bonded, and a
"movable" molecule sits on top. You won't need a greasy
rag to wipe your hands, if you touch one.

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/28/2017 6:35 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote

| | I discovered the hard way that Win8.x disregards CHKDSK (!), and SMART
| | eventually killed the drive's boot sectors
| |

I don't understand. I very, very rarely run CHKDSK, so
I don't see why it should have a big effect.

Then, you have a few things to learn about.

| The issue I ran into is that bad sectors that should have been isolated
| by CHKDSK was disregarded by Win8.1 and kept writing to those sectors
| until it exceeded the SMART's track allocation space.
|
| Do
| you have any links to info that might be relevant?
|
| I'd suggest doing a search to find info that best fits your level of
| understanding of the hardware.

You have no corroborating docs for your
theory? Then how do you know that's what
happened?

I know what happened because it is not my "theory", and the "docs" I
used are not entry-level intros for those who haven't moved beyond XP.
I'm referring to something that happened to me over two years ago, so I
think it's best for you to do a search and pick the material that you
understand best, dependent on what it is that you really want to know,
because I am not even sure what that might be at this point.

--
best regards,

Neil

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Neil" wrote

| the "docs" I used are not entry-level intros
| for those who haven't moved beyond XP.

We're talking about Win8 here, not XP. Do you
suppose I'm too stupid to understand because I
prefer XP? What about everyone else who reads
this thread? Are we all too dumb to understand?

| I'm referring to something that happened to me over two years ago, so I
| think it's best for you to do a search

I did do a search, of course. If I'd turned up anything
relevant I wouldn't be asking. Saying that Win8 ruins
hard disks is a dramatic statement. There's no reason
to either doubt or believe what you say on only your
say-so. Naturally I went looking. I've been unable to
find even one report of a fishy early disk death. If what
you say is true I'd expect to see all sorts of complaints
and articles about the disaster of Win8. I only asked for
one reputable article so that I can assess the issue for
myself.

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| Now, what's wrong with that "theory". Well, on the Seagate
| drives I've got, I've *never* seen Current Pending Sector
| go non-zero. Even when other activity indicates the drive
| is sick, and Current Pending should be growing. Some brand
| of drive, probably is using Current Pending Sector, but
| not in the case of the Seagates I've owned.
|
| Current Pending returns to zero, if an opportunity comes
| along to write the entire drive.
|
| Reallocated Sector Count is a measure of how many spares
| have been used up. It's thresholded, so only after a large
| number of sectors were spared, does the count value go non-zero.
| The result is, the user is unaware exactly how large the
| spared sector count is.

And that's with all drives? All SMART drives? I'm
not clear about the context here. It sounds like
you're saying that with recent vintage drives the
health reports can't be trusted. That isn't really news,
is it? Does that have any connection to the
OS/Windows version?

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Now, what's wrong with that "theory". Well, on the Seagate
| drives I've got, I've *never* seen Current Pending Sector
| go non-zero. Even when other activity indicates the drive
| is sick, and Current Pending should be growing. Some brand
| of drive, probably is using Current Pending Sector, but
| not in the case of the Seagates I've owned.
|
| Current Pending returns to zero, if an opportunity comes
| along to write the entire drive.
|
| Reallocated Sector Count is a measure of how many spares
| have been used up. It's thresholded, so only after a large
| number of sectors were spared, does the count value go non-zero.
| The result is, the user is unaware exactly how large the
| spared sector count is.

And that's with all drives? All SMART drives? I'm
not clear about the context here. It sounds like
you're saying that with recent vintage drives the
health reports can't be trusted. That isn't really news,
is it? Does that have any connection to the
OS/Windows version?

All IDE/SATA drives now have SMART.

It provides statistics.

The drive tests itself occasionally, though I've never had
a drive wobble enough to fail on a self test and trigger
the BIOS-level warning. The BIOS on quite a few motherboards,
reads SMART at startup, and is supposed to be able to stop the
boot and warn you that the hard drive is sick. You don't absolutely
need to keep HDTune loaded, if you have a BIOS setting to warn
you that a drive is unhealthy. Naturally, the health calculation
leaves something to be desired (see picture below for why that
can be - not everyone agrees on how to interpret that screen).

The behavior of Reallocated Sector Count is necessary because
of human nature.

If the Reallocated statistic reported the actual count, people
buying new hard drives would be ****ed, that the counter is
always non-zero from the factory. The platters always have
tiny defects. And sectors are spared out when the drive leaves
the factory.

The factory has an "acceptance" criterion. Say the acceptance
is 100,000 sectors spared before it leaves the factory. Then
the statistic will read 0 until the actual number of spared
out sectors surpasses 100,000. Then, the "lifetime" percentage
in that field, will drop from 100% life to 0% life, as the
number of reallocations changes from 100,000 to 105,500.

That's what I mean by thresholded. They don't want you cherry
picking drives, and sending them back to Newegg if the statistic
is 2000 from the factory. If it's only 2000, then it leaves
the factory reading zero. If 98,000 more happen while you're
using it, it will finally have a non-zero count. It has a
further capacity of around maybe 5500 or so. In a relatively
short time, you could see the percentage value dropping and
realize "hey, I'd better do something".

This is all supposition on my part, as the manufacturer is not
going to admit to this. It doesn't take too many grain defects
in the platters of a 4TB drive, to create a need to spare out
a sector. And they don't sit there tossing platters into
a huge pile in the corner, because the drive won't read zero.
They allow the drive to have a certain number of reallocations
before it leaves the factory. Drives were leaving the factory
with 100,000 defects in the 9GB drive era.

I've had some drives, that were flaky enough, that they needed
to be "written from end to end" at least one, just to make
their transfer rate performance consistent. All the drives I've
bought in the last four years or so, don't have that behavior.
The only egregious stuff now, is FDB motors making funny sounds
at shutdown (lubrication starvation on the shaft). And the excessive
spindowns that even the expensive drives are doing (that I'm not
able to turn off!). I hate that spindown crap, and that's why I
was buying more expensive drives - not because they last longer,
but because of their "less-compromising" behaviors.

This is an example of the way drives should be built. It has
37000+ hours of power-on life on it. It spins constantly and
*never* spins down or parks the heads. It's always ready when
I search against it. It shows zero for the two indicators I
use for health. I will not get another like this, for as long
as I live. It just keeps going and going. It holds a copy of Win2K,
to give some idea how crusty the content is :-) Keeping it
spinning is a Smithsonian experiment of mine... I'm really
curious how long it can continue like this. And yes, I do occasionally
backup and restore, just to make sure the drive isn't "cheating"
in any way (as a check for latent faults).

https://s1.postimg.org/4l2b9u5eb3/golden_HDD.gif

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

"Paul" wrote

| All IDE/SATA drives now have SMART.
|
| It provides statistics.
|

I understand that much. When I researched it in the past
it never seemed to be very useful. The experts seem to
say that the numbers require careful interpretation, and
even then are misleading. So what's the point if it can't
be depended on?

You seem to have looked into the details far more than
I would ever think to. I don't think I've ever actually had
a drive die. And I've repaired many cheap PCs for friends,
with drives 10-12 years old and still going. Typically I'll
replace those and save the old for backup.

Now I have a 3-year-old WD Blue that the diagnostic
software says is kaput. I'm wondering if there's any
validity to Neil's belief that Win8 may have somehow killed
it, and if so, how that might be possible.
I also wonder if it may currently be typical to have
software installed that never stops accessing the disk.

In other words, my concern is not with the efficiency
of SMART in predicting a dying drive. I wouldn't want
to depend on that anyway. I'm just wondering whether
there may be special considerations with the "Metro
Series" of Windows.

Three years is the typical low-end prediction of
a drive's life, but I've never actually seen one die
so soon.

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| All IDE/SATA drives now have SMART.
|
| It provides statistics.
|

I understand that much. When I researched it in the past
it never seemed to be very useful. The experts seem to
say that the numbers require careful interpretation, and
even then are misleading. So what's the point if it can't
be depended on?

You seem to have looked into the details far more than
I would ever think to. I don't think I've ever actually had
a drive die. And I've repaired many cheap PCs for friends,
with drives 10-12 years old and still going. Typically I'll
replace those and save the old for backup.

Now I have a 3-year-old WD Blue that the diagnostic
software says is kaput. I'm wondering if there's any
validity to Neil's belief that Win8 may have somehow killed
it, and if so, how that might be possible.
I also wonder if it may currently be typical to have
software installed that never stops accessing the disk.

In other words, my concern is not with the efficiency
of SMART in predicting a dying drive. I wouldn't want
to depend on that anyway. I'm just wondering whether
there may be special considerations with the "Metro
Series" of Windows.

Three years is the typical low-end prediction of
a drive's life, but I've never actually seen one die
so soon.

If you apply a pathological load to a regular
hard drive, it lasts around 1 year. This is a number
reported by people running web servers, where the disk
never stops moving the heads.

For example, if you wanted to try that at home, you might
store a million test files on the disk, such that they
span the entire surface, then use your random number
generator and ask the disk to read files at random.
That will throw the head around from inner to outer
ring. It flexes and un-flexes the actuator cable. And
wears the bearing the actuator rests on. That bearing
is not "frictionless" like the bearing inside the FDB
(fluid dynamic bearing) motor.

The flex cable is actually specifically designed for
each drive. On drives that short-stroke (such as perhaps
a 15K drive providing 300MB/sec transfer rates), the cable
will have different design requirements than your 7200RPM
drive where the arm moves the full distance over the
surface. You can't even interchange internal flex cables
between drives, because they're optimized for how the
drive works. Maybe the mass of the actuator arm, is
part of the equations.

Now, what is the drive in your laptop doing ? Well, it
doesn't have the pathological condition applied to it.
On drives that spin down, you might even notice on
occasion, that the heads park. And that's an indicator
that there isn't constant access. The drive is rated
for 300,000 head parks.

I have had a constant access situation. The optimizer
that moves prefetch files around or something, got
"stuck" one day, and using ProcMon, I could see constant
read and write to the same sector (basically rewriting
the sector with its current contents) over and over again,
at max speed. I could hear a high pitched "singing" sound,
even though the heads don't need to be moved around
when doing that. Just doing a little bit of regular
defrag, caused the prefetch optimizer to stop doing that :-)
Now, that's custom code in WinXP era, and entirely
different ("written from scratch") code is used in
Windows 8.

There is unlikely to be that kind of activity on
Windows 8, but between perfmon.msc and ProcMon.exe
(Sysinternals) you could probably figure it out.

And always remember, that the instrumentation on the OS
is incomplete. The OS is not fully transparent when it
comes to logging hardware activity. Many times, I'll
instrument a situation, and a graph will read zero,
when I know for a fact, there is activity. Like just
yesterday, I couldn't see some pagefile activity...

Paul

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/28/2017 9:10 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote
| I'm referring to something that happened to me over two years ago, so I
| think it's best for you to do a search

I did do a search, of course. If I'd turned up anything
relevant I wouldn't be asking.
Saying that Win8 ruins
hard disks is a dramatic statement. There's no reason
to either doubt or believe what you say on only your
say-so. Naturally I went looking. I've been unable to
find even one report of a fishy early disk death.


There is a *lot* of information on-line about the issues related to
SMART drive failures. I don't know why you aren't finding any that help
you to understand some of the possible reasons for your experience.

But, let me be clear about a few things:
These problems are not generalized to the point where one could say
something like "...Win8 ruins discs...", and I did not state anything
remotely like that. There are many functional variables that were
introduced with the Win8 OS, and those familiar with it understand this
such that I doubt they would arrive at your conclusion.

In my particular case, which resulted in some similarities with your
experience, I was able to track the problem to Win8.1 disregarding
CHKDSK /f and continuing to write into the same bad sectors until the
boot sector was trashed. There are many possible reasons for that, so IT
DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE IS DUE TO THE SAME ISSUE, which is
why I didn't suggest that it was at any point.

If what
you say is true I'd expect to see all sorts of complaints
and articles about the disaster of Win8.

If you even remotely understood what I wrote, you would know that I do
not consider Win8 to be a disaster. Finding articles that feeds your
misconceptions is not my responsibility.

--
best regards,

Neil

Asus X550J laptop
 

I have windows 8.1 on my hp lap top and i like it alot have had no problems
so far with it.
I love windows 7 as well windows 10 was on the lap top from it's old owner
when i got it tried it for a week removed and and did a factory restore to
windows 8.1 that it came with did all the updates and patches and all is
well :)


--
AL'S COMPUTERS
"Neil" wrote in message
...
On 10/28/2017 9:10 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Neil" wrote
| I'm referring to something that happened to me over two years ago, so I
| think it's best for you to do a search

I did do a search, of course. If I'd turned up anything
relevant I wouldn't be asking.
Saying that Win8 ruins
hard disks is a dramatic statement. There's no reason
to either doubt or believe what you say on only your
say-so. Naturally I went looking. I've been unable to
find even one report of a fishy early disk death.


There is a *lot* of information on-line about the issues related to SMART
drive failures. I don't know why you aren't finding any that help you to
understand some of the possible reasons for your experience.

But, let me be clear about a few things:
These problems are not generalized to the point where one could say
something like "...Win8 ruins discs...", and I did not state anything
remotely like that. There are many functional variables that were
introduced with the Win8 OS, and those familiar with it understand this
such that I doubt they would arrive at your conclusion.

In my particular case, which resulted in some similarities with your
experience, I was able to track the problem to Win8.1 disregarding CHKDSK
/f and continuing to write into the same bad sectors until the boot sector
was trashed. There are many possible reasons for that, so IT DOES NOT MEAN
THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE IS DUE TO THE SAME ISSUE, which is why I didn't
suggest that it was at any point.

If what
you say is true I'd expect to see all sorts of complaints
and articles about the disaster of Win8.

If you even remotely understood what I wrote, you would know that I do not
consider Win8 to be a disaster. Finding articles that feeds your
misconceptions is not my responsibility.

--
best regards,

Neil

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/26/2017 09:34 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"philo" wrote

| Also a good idea to go the the website of the HD's mfg ...get and run
| their diagnostic. If /any/ errors are found, replace the drive
| Might as well run a RAM test too

I was able to test RAM. That checked out. I ended
up installing it into a Win7 box and running Hiren's
boot disk. The WD diagnostic came out with error 7
and quit. BootIt sees all the partitions, but the data
on them seems to be limited. Chckdsk retrieved all sorts
of things on the Windows partition but couldn't access
any of the others.
At this point I'm thinking there must be a problem
with the hard disk.





Yes, indeed it does sound like a HD issue

Asus X550J laptop
 

"philo" wrote

| I was able to test RAM. That checked out. I ended
| up installing it into a Win7 box and running Hiren's
| boot disk. The WD diagnostic came out with error 7
| and quit. BootIt sees all the partitions, but the data
| on them seems to be limited. Chckdsk retrieved all sorts
| of things on the Windows partition but couldn't access
| any of the others.
| At this point I'm thinking there must be a problem
| with the hard disk.
|
| Yes, indeed it does sound like a HD issue

On 2 separate runs from a boot disk the WD utility
came up with error 7 and then while doing a "media
scan", in preparation for a thorough check, it stopped
with error 225. Their error page says that means,
"Too many errors to continue" and advises getting
a new disk.

Meanwhile various tools said that it passed a
SMART scan.

This whole thing has got me to check out SMART for
perhaps the third time, and I've come away with the
same impressions I've had in the past: It seems to be
of little value and I've yet to find a clear explanation
of how to interpret it. People recommend a Wikipedia
page, but that's not very helpful. Even the categories
reported vary between tools.

" the research showed that a large proportion (56%)
of the failed drives failed without recording any count
in the "four strong S.M.A.R.T. warnings" identified as
scan errors"
"36% of drives failed without recording any S.M.A.R.T.
error at all, except the temperature, meaning that
S.M.A.R.T. data alone was of limited usefulness in
anticipating failures."

I'm still very curious about how the disk could die in
3 years, but statistically that's not unheard of. And
I don't know how it was used. I guess the only thing
I can do is to reinstall and try to minimize unnecessary
background junk when I do the setup. That's the one
aspect that's got me suspicious. When I search for
links about hard disk trouble I seem to find a lot of
complaints from people about ceaseless activity, which
they eventually trace to some unnecessary 3rd-party
applet.

Asus X550J laptop
 

On 10/31/2017 08:41 AM, Mayayana wrote:


" the research showed that a large proportion (56%)
of the failed drives failed without recording any count
in the "four strong S.M.A.R.T. warnings" identified as
scan errors"
"36% of drives failed without recording any S.M.A.R.T.
error at all, except the temperature, meaning that
S.M.A.R.T. data alone was of limited usefulness in
anticipating failures."

I'm still very curious about how the disk could die in
3 years, but statistically that's not unheard of. And
I don't know how it was used. I guess the only thing
I can do is to reinstall and try to minimize unnecessary
background junk when I do the setup. That's the one
aspect that's got me suspicious. When I search for
links about hard disk trouble I seem to find a lot of
complaints from people about ceaseless activity, which
they eventually trace to some unnecessary 3rd-party
applet.





I have seen a drive die in six weeks and I have some drives here in my
junkbox that are 20 years old and still good

Asus X550J laptop
 

Mayayana wrote:
"philo" wrote

| I was able to test RAM. That checked out. I ended
| up installing it into a Win7 box and running Hiren's
| boot disk. The WD diagnostic came out with error 7
| and quit. BootIt sees all the partitions, but the data
| on them seems to be limited. Chckdsk retrieved all sorts
| of things on the Windows partition but couldn't access
| any of the others.
| At this point I'm thinking there must be a problem
| with the hard disk.
|
| Yes, indeed it does sound like a HD issue

On 2 separate runs from a boot disk the WD utility
came up with error 7 and then while doing a "media
scan", in preparation for a thorough check, it stopped
with error 225. Their error page says that means,
"Too many errors to continue" and advises getting
a new disk.

Meanwhile various tools said that it passed a
SMART scan.

This whole thing has got me to check out SMART for
perhaps the third time, and I've come away with the
same impressions I've had in the past: It seems to be
of little value and I've yet to find a clear explanation
of how to interpret it. People recommend a Wikipedia
page, but that's not very helpful. Even the categories
reported vary between tools.

" the research showed that a large proportion (56%)
of the failed drives failed without recording any count
in the "four strong S.M.A.R.T. warnings" identified as
scan errors"
"36% of drives failed without recording any S.M.A.R.T.
error at all, except the temperature, meaning that
S.M.A.R.T. data alone was of limited usefulness in
anticipating failures."

I'm still very curious about how the disk could die in
3 years, but statistically that's not unheard of. And
I don't know how it was used. I guess the only thing
I can do is to reinstall and try to minimize unnecessary
background junk when I do the setup. That's the one
aspect that's got me suspicious. When I search for
links about hard disk trouble I seem to find a lot of
complaints from people about ceaseless activity, which
they eventually trace to some unnecessary 3rd-party
applet.

The "reallocated" metric works best for error patterns
spread uniformly over the disk surface.

However, that's not the only failure pattern. I had
a disk here, with an obvious "slow patch" which means
read errors and re-allocated galore. And the thresholded
reallocated data field still said "zero", implying 100%
health. If I had been using automated surveillance,
it would have missed the warning signs. However, all
the OS files were slow to load, so a human could sure
tell something was wrong. (That was for a 60GB OS
partition, slow as molasses, on a 500GB drive with
440GB of "good" sectors. An HDTune benchmark showed
the problem for what it was. A wide bad spot.)

I use SMART, in combination with common sense. If
I see, hear, or smell trouble, I get out the SMART
panel and have a look, for confirmation. I won't
always get an "indicator" from SMART, but it's better
than nothing. And if something is registering,
I can take note of the degradation rate. The
growth rate of the reallocated, on a day-by-day
basis. That tells me how much trouble I'm in,
and how fast I should run to the store for
a spare drive.

SSDs are slightly different, and because of the evil
end-of-life policy of some brands, maintenance
should be taken more seriously. (An SSD drive can simply
stop responding to your queries, read or write,
as a "service" to you!) A HDD won't do that.
When you buy an SSD, *always* check the web for
info on end-of-life behavior.

Paul