3rd Master hard disk error

[Jedi]

Hey all.
So my harddrive is messing about, been iffy a lot lately that it has done alot of chkdsk when rebooting and today i got the "3rd Master Hard Disk Error"

It slows down alot after autodetecting Sata 4,then it comes back with the error.

I can put Win7 disk in to reinstall windows but not sure if it would work.
Any suggestions?

PS: The harddrive is this: Western Digital Caviar® Green 1,5TB
SATA 3Gb/sec, RPM = IntelliPower, 64MB, Product name : WD15EARS

[Tommer]

Shouldn't the non-windows drives be set to slaves?

You won't need to reinstall windows if just that drive is failing, it indicates a problem with that specific drive not your windows installation.

My suspicion is the hard drive is faulty since you reported it doing chkdsk's before.

Does it make any unusual noises? Scratching sounds.. odd beeps.. No sound at all..?(when there was sound before)

Is it a solid state or an actual hard disk? You may be able to recover the data on your own if it has been partitioned and the data you want is on a undamaged partition, but if it's a problem with the driver head (ie the part that reads it) you'd need to get some professional service to recover the data since you won't have the tools for it at home.

[Jedi]

I think they should, those are my external drives also showing up there, the WD My passport is one.

This is the harddrive itself.
I haven't heard any sound from it that shouldnt be there. Its quite quiet.

Hmmm this is strange, now it has booted up as well but it works quite slow.

Im still considering getting a new harddrive and maybe having this checked on by someone, 1.5 TB id like keep.

[[TC]»Elmo«]

(2012-09-30 14:50)Jedi Wrote:  PS: The harddrive is this: Western Digital Caviar® Green 1,5TB
SATA 3Gb/sec, RPM = IntelliPower, 64MB, Product name : WD15EARS

I had one of those fail, although I suspect mine was broken when I got it - there were LOADS of bad sectors after about 1.1TB, it showed up the first time I wrote that far in the drive. It was a data drive, so I could back up all but 2 files and get they sent me a new one.

(2012-09-30 14:59)Tommer Wrote:  Shouldn't the non-windows drives be set to slaves?

No. Master/Slave is purely to do with 2 plug IDE cables as 1 drive has to be set to master and the other to slave. The windows drive should probably be master (not vital afaik) but the really important thing is to have the fastest drive set to master.

I dunno what it means by "3rd Master Hard Disk Error" though - either it's a throwback to IDE terminology or its some crazy SATA controller (which is entirely possible as it's an Intel chipset). SATA doesn't normally have master/slave, because each cable & connector is a dedicated lane.

(2012-09-30 14:59)Tommer Wrote:  Is it a solid state or an actual hard disk?

It's 1.5TB, so it's a HDD.



I'm guessing the failing drive is a data drive plugged into SATA3 (with Windows on SATA1 and optical on SATA4)? If so, you won't need to reinstall windows, just get a replacement drive.

Unfortunately, if the motherboard is refusing to add the errored drive, there's nothing you can do to get the data off it afaik, without paying a lot of money for professional data recovery. If you haven't backed it up, you should have as soon as you started having problems with it.

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(2012-09-30 15:15)Jedi Wrote:  Hmmm this is strange, now it has booted up as well but it works quite slow.

Back it up now.

Once your data is backed up, download and run Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic - that will tell you what's wrong with it and WD will want to use the output from that for a warranty return (assuming it's still in warranty)

[Jedi]

Way ahead of you Elmo
And yes it has still at least 1year left on warranty

[Jedi]

Just did a test with the LifeGuad Diagnostic,here's the message:
Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete!
Status code =07 (Failed read test element),Failure Checkpoint= 102 (Uknown test)
Smart self-test did not complete on drive 1.

[[TC]»Elmo«]

A couple of things to make sure that it is the drive:
Plug it into a different SATA port on the motherboard
Try a different SATA cable.

If you still have the same problem, the drive is definitely broken.

[Jedi]

Im gonna do a sata port change test tomorrow when i get home, been trying today and it actually played a round of BF3 before it froze and i had to go through a long restart to get back into Windows.
If its broken im gonna send an email to the company that i bought it through and get a new one.

[[TC]»Elmo«]

It depends on the policy of the retailer and how long you've had it, but you might be better off going straight to WD. They were pretty good when I returned mine.

[Jedi]

Well i think ive decided to get a new harddrive, will get a new one in a store here.
What would be best for me to look for?
Will also email the company that sold me the pc to see if i can get a replacement but for now ill focus on getting a new in a store here.
Not gonna get SSD as they're too expensive for too little space at the moment for me so it'll be normal Sata 3,5" .
Also would it be smart to get a smaller one for W7/programs and another for games/music etc?

[[TC]»Elmo«]

SSDs that are big enough for Windows are actually getting quite reasonable now (£55 for 120GB) especially when you consider how much faster they are.

If you must use an HDD for windows, make sure it's a 7200rpm and a decent size (bigger = faster). Last I checked, 2TB was the best price per GB, but you'll want to shop around to make sure.
Don't buy a Hitachi.

If you get a large drive you'll probably want to split it up into partitions - the first one for windows + programs, the second for documents & data (and maybe programs that don't need to be installed, like LFS). That way it's much easier to just nuke the windows install if you need to and it will keep your data.

[Jedi]

I know the SSD's are much faster but over here the prices are abit higher for SSD's.

The harddrives im looking at are either Seagate or Western Digital (same as my current one)
Ive never done partitions and ive never installed Windows on a brand new empty harddrive so that'll be interesting

[Johan.]

It isn't that hard to do, Windows 7 is easypeasy to install. Just make sure the partitions are big enough. (65gb for just windows7 and programs isn't big enough)

[Jedi]

I know its easy to install, ive installed Windows a few times but its making Partitions im not used to, i guess it'll show me how