Help for my Seagate Sata Hard Drive, Hard drive stops working randomly, please help

[Edgar-Arular]

6 months ago, I bought a Seagate SATA 500GB Hard drive and I am using windows XP. But, now I found that it stops working randomly. And it results in the whole system to become dead. The program stops at the half of the process and that is not all, I am not able to do even a full format also, so I do quick format. I tried using seatool, which was provided by Seagate, to scan and repair the errors. Now I don’t have any idea of what to do. I don’t want to lose my 500GB hard disk. So, please suggest any solution for this.

[Yitzchak909]

I am not able to understand what’s your problem exactly? Now your hard disk is working or not? Another thing is that, before running seatool, did you try running chkdsk? As, it is possible that your Hard drive is OK and the real problem is with any corrupt file or directory structure.

[pddaugusto]

I agree with the above post. Trying to run chkdsk may solve this issue and if not then try to find some lower level tools which are able to address the disk in binary mode. Using that, at least you can create back up disk image, so that if the hard drive condition worsens, you can do retrieval of your data. So, before doing anything else, it is good to back your data.

[Edgar-Arular]

Thanks, for taking interest in my problem. My hard drive is working but it stops in between, you can say it is not stable. I tried running chkdsk many time, but the process stops in between unexpectedly. Same problem was with running seatool also, even in pure DOS mode.

[Yitzchak909]

As your Hard disk is of 500GB, that’s why to analyze for bad sectors, it might be taking long time cause, it does a deep scan. I can say it, because I have only 80GB Hard disk and then also it takes around 5 hrs to analyze for bad sectors. But, as your hard drive is SATA, it might take less time. But, 500GB is will at least consume 5 hrs of your time. And as your Hard disk stops in between the process, I would like to suggest you to get your disk replaced as it is under warranty and don’t forget to take a back up of your data. The problem can also be with the MBR, as you must have partitioned your Hard drive. Therefore, before giving it for replacement, I will also suggest you to run the command FIXMBR using the Windows boot disk’s recovery option. It may solve your problem

[MACuser]

If all tests that you carry out halts at some place then I think your hard drive got damaged in some way or due to bad sectors. But, you do not need to worry. As you said, you bought it 6 months before, your hard drive is still under warranty and you can get your hard drive replaced for free.