Question about a bad sector in your hdd and windows hard freezing

So the hdd that came with my envy 14 has one bad/unstable/damaged sector. For whatever reason I think this sector is also causing windows to hard freeze.

I already tested the ram with memtest86+ and it checked out fine.


Is it possible for a hdd to cause windows to hard freeze if..say somehow windows was installed onto a part of that sector before anything realized that sector was bad?


Also, the hard freezes seem to happen either when I start to download or am downloading something, however it's also happened a couple times when streaming something with ps3 media server from my hdd to the ps3 (it was transcoding as well) and has happened a few times just when browsing firefox. It's getting more frequent though.

I've run hdtune pro's error scan and it found a bad sector. the hdd test bios utility says the harddrive has an error as well (nothing extra like what sort of error) so yeah..it's got a problem.

Still I've never heard of one bad sector causing windows to hard freeze.

edit: hdd is a toshiba mk3256gsy

http://storage.toshiba.eu/export/sites/toshiba-sdd/lib/library/mk3256gsy_datasheet.pdf

 

It`s unlikely that one bad block is causing you problems, most of my storage drives have 5+ bad blocks and they work fine, the harddrive knows where the bad blocks are and will not use them.

You could try the trial version of hdd regenerator the trial version will fix one bad block if it can.

Dmitriy Primochenko Online

Most hdd`s after a few years start to show bad blocks, actually most hdd`s contain bad block when they are made, they just map out the bad blocks so the system does not see them.

 

alright.

I mean the only other time I've seen it hard freeze like this is from trying to use amd gpu clock tool (which everyone on the envy forum quickly found out doesn't work with the envy 14. at all.)

edit: and I'm definitely not running that when this happens. (also uninstalled it)

 

well I tried hdd regenerator. When it gets to the bad sector it hangs for about 20 seconds then says "Hard drive not ready, if on ACHPI mode (or ACPI or something like that) please swap to IDE mode in the bios."


HP Bioses dun let you do that so...that's not an option.

I don't really wanna try to reinstall windows but I may just have to and see if it still hard freezes every once in awhile.

 

Ive had drives with 5 or so bad sectors and there did not feel like there was any problems. However, on a drive with 200 sectors I could definitely feel it randomly hanging or lagging.

 

yeah it's weird.


I think I'll try running memtest+ again and just let it run overnight (instead of letting it go through 2 or 3 passes, let it go through a lot of passes) see if it finds something wrong with the ram if it doesn't...I'll just have to assume it's one of two things.

one: hdd issue is one sector but somehow, someway it's the most important sector on the drive and/or the hdd is stupid and tries to read the sector forever instead of moving on...for some really stupid reason..or the sector has some important windows stuff written onto it that isn't always used or some other thing that would somehow, someway cause one sector to make windows hard freeze.

two: somehow, someway amd gpu clock tool is broken and triggering itself randomly. I just noticed that it's not actually uninstalling itself from my computer. ...which is weird.

 

Instead of memtest, I would right click on the drive, and click properties and on the Tools tab select the error checking option and select both checkboxes.

It will need a reboot - go to bed (how big is this HD... oh, 320GB - it will take a while).

Hopefully, this will allow Windows to mark the bad block(s) and move any data stored there to a good block.

Windows does not do this by itself - you have to initiate it yourself.

If your freezing issues continue after this, then a re-install is inevitable (Windows is damaged beyond repair). However, if you do use the same drive, I highly recommend you do a full format on the drive (and not a quick or 'normal' install). The full format should also mark any bad blocks as not usable to the O/S.

Good luck.

 

alright. I'll run that tonight and see if it keeps freezing.

Thanks.

 

hdd regenerator runs in dos from a boot disk, the program you download is just a boot disk creator.

 

yeah I know. wasn't talking about hdd regenerator, was talking about windows crashing and a possible reason being the drivers left over by amd gpu clock tool triggering through some weird glitch.



and then those drivers would crash the computer (since the program itself crashes the computer when it tries to access the voltage settings of the gpu...which the gpu's bios doesn't let happen or something. Also the gpu can't be messed with much at all since you can't see the bios, much less dump it)

edit: also waiting to see if it'll crash again (did that full chkdsk scan overnight). So we'll see.

 

*Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*



It hard froze again. Guess I'll have to try reinstalling windows.



Though damn I'm still not sold on it being the hard-drive.


I did a test or two after it hard froze. The hdd light is silent (not blinking at all, hdd isn't doing anything). Mouse and stuff are frozen. Keyboard is partially frozen. I could (for a few seconds) turn the backlight on and off before that didn't work.

Hard shutdown (hold power button) is the only way to turn it off. Unplugging/replugging doesn't dim the screen or anything.

Upon reboot (and saying to just load windows normally, not to go into safe mode 'cause it didn't shut down right) and reopening firefox it went to two webpages before the one I crashed on. Usually firefox remembers what page you crash on and goes back to it. Since it went to two pages beforehand whatever happened caused firefox to jump back a bit in it's memory (or something)


It crashed halfway through loading a big image on the webpage. Said image was being downloaded (or well otherwise it would have loaded much quicker) so that's what makes me believe it's the hard-drive.

I mean it's possible it could still be the ram but memtest checked out for a few run throughs (didn't let it run overnight or nothing but *shrugs*)