Is my hard disk defective?

Ok, there are 3 issues that I'm experiencing which lead me to this assumption, and I want the community's opinion on this.
I have the clevo p150hm (that's interesting - according to HWINFO64 the "Computer Brand Name" is CLEVO P150HMx, but recently I discovered that at the bottom of the laptop it states p151hm1), and I did a clean install of genuine Windows 7 professional.



The issues:

First, after it wakes up from sleep I occasionally get messages that "the instruction referenced blah blah". Because I was always in a hurry these times it happened, I didn't take the time to check if I could login without problems, although I'm pretty sure it would be unresponsive. Also I didn't write down what exactly it said, so I could look it up in google, or mention it here. I will definitely do that the next time it happens though.

Secondly, when restarting sometimes, it takes more than usual time to get past the shutting down screen, and then when it boots up it shows a black screen with JMicron something. Obviously it doesn't boot from hdd but from the JMicron adapter (?) for some reason. This has happened even when I just shutdown, and the next day I booted up.

And thirdly, I get frequent CHKDSK, which complete with some errors. (bad attribute or sth, unindexed files, etc.)


So, what's the deal? Is it bad? Can I solve some of these issues, or I should just replace my hdd? (I want to avoid that.)
Thanks in advance for any answer.



PS: I have tested the hdd with Seagate tools in the past, and it didn't show any errors.
The hdd is a SAMSUNG HN-M500MBB, btw.

 

This once happened to me but not on a laptop but a desktop PC, funny as it may seem it was my RAM that was faulty and not the HDD. If you have some spare RAM or if you are on two or more sticks of RAM try taking them all out and slot them in one by one, testing the PC after you slot one at a time, if you hit an error with one try testing it in another slot to make sure it's not your RAM slots. memtest will help a lot to check any leaks and such.

I usually never suspect a HDD as being faulty until after I have done these basic tests of my RAM.

 

Whatever the case may be, make a backup before proceeding. If it is your hard drive about to fail, you'll be glad you saved the data while you still had a chance. There are two types of people using computers, those who have backups, and those who WILL have backups. Don't let a failure cause data loss.

The JMicron screen at boot is your LAN looking for a bootable network source over Ethernet. You can change the priority of your boot devices in the BIOS to make your HDD the first priority and you'll boot straight to windows without the JMicron delay.

See if CHKDSK can repair the errors, sometimes they're related to the Windows filesystem and not representative of a physical hard drive issue.

After CHKDSK has run and attempted a fix, test it again with SeaTools.

Good luck!

-Dan

 

You can also test the RAM with Memtest86 to see if they have errors. It could be the drive just needs a new Windows install which happens from time to time. As mentioned back up any data you dont want to lose first. A tell tale sign the drive is about to fail is when its making audible strange noises. Otherwise it could just need a clean install of Windows.

 

But the fact is that I did a clean install of Windows, and it's still doing these things. It was doing these things with the OEM Windows, that's why I decided to do a clean install.
I have also run memtest a couple of times in the past - no errors whatsoever.

Yeah, I'm in the first category.
I have backed up all my data, since I had to clean install, and now it's only the basic programs in the hdd, all the rest reside in an external hdd.
It's just that I've done some customization in Windows (registry tweaks, cleartype, shortcuts) which is hard to remember the next time, that's why I don't want to format again.

That happens only once in a while and after a reset of the machine it gets fixed. It's not like somehow the boot order gets messed up permanently, it feels more like the hdd disappears for a few seconds (or more) when it needs to boot, so it automatically chooses the next options available (JMicron in this case).
I don't know if it's just the MBR that can't be read [correctly], or the whole disk.

 

All 3 issues are related to Hard Drive Disk bad sector.

You can try Windows==>All Programs==>Accessories==>System Tools==>Disk Defragmenter

By the way, you shall backup your hard drive data now.

 

also try HD Tune which will scan each sector. you can find it in my signature below.

 

Update:
Tried HD Tune Pro, scanned every sector --> no errors.
Is it safe now to say that the hdd is not the problem, but rather some bad driver or maybe the motherboard (have I gone too far?)? Could it be the AHCI mode? I'm at a loss here.

About the disk defragmenter.
To my surprise, I saw that it has been performing weekly defragmentations to the C: disk, and as a result it was 0% fragmented. I'm not sure if the issues have something to do with this. I mean, do all computers have this weekly routine enabled by default?
Anyway, I tried to change the schedule, but apparently I wasn't able to do so, because "Transaction support within the specified resource manager is not started or was shut down due to an error. (0x80071A91)".
Looked up the error in google, found some fix, nothing. Run as administrator, still nothing. Apparently it has only happened to very few people using Windows 7.
Now I don't know what else to try, and whether it's worth to find some fix to make disk defrag stop doing these weekly defragmentations. (if this is causing the issues.)


Any help would be appreciated.

 

to be honest i have no idea.
if HD Monitor didnt find anything then next thing to try is this > Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring
h d sentinal found 1 bad sector on my 4 year old western digital which shouldnt have made any difference but it did. i was getting slow start ups and the odd black screen as well.
i only bought the pro version a few months back. it was the free version that found the bad sector so its defo worth a go. dont need it now as i have an ssd.
run the full scan which will take a good few hours as the quick scan didnt find anything.
also watch out for the temperatures if it goes above 60c

 

Ahem, I forgot to mention that the calibration retry count showed 423 on the data column. And from the little research I did, it's not looking very good.

Can I call the reseller and tell them to replace it with a new one? But I guess I have to pay for it, since it has to actually die for them to replace it under warranty, right?
I'll run the hd sentinel as well, but I doubt it will find anything. I'm now pretty sure it's that calibration retry thing that's causing the problems.

 

if you are covered by warranty the if its faulty it should be replaced. it doesnt have to be dead. they will do tests on it as well.
even if you was out of warranty hard drives are normally covered by the manufacturer for between 3-5 years anyway.

as you have a P150 im guessing its not that old so i would defo get onto your support and rma the hard drive. depending who it is they might send you a new one out first so you are not without a hard drive (as i said it depends who your reseller is)

 

I ran the hd sentinel short test, everything was ok. How can I now run a more thorough test without registering the product?

 

i thought the trial let you run full test. let me check.

edit: private message sent

 

Well, I guess I have to try some other tools (some I have run in the past, but I'll run them again anyways), and see if something comes up. Hopefully it does, so I can send it back for a replacement.

Thanks for your help MrDj. Added rep.
Now I just have to start another thread about the disk defragmenter problem.

 

you could always try one of the many free defraggers out there >
Free Hard Drive Defrag

 

No no, the problem with diskdefrag is that it won't allow me to change the schedule, just in case the frequent defragmentations cause something.

 

I have to bump the thread, because having switched to arch linux the problem has arised again.

In a nutshell, the system gets randomly unresponsive for a bit, and then it seems to operate only on ram.
The dmesg is always like this:

Code:

FileThre: Cannot read block bitmap - block_group = 1, block_bitmap = 1026
[15996.539714] EXT4-fs (sda3): previous I/O error to superblock detected
[15996.539725] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[15996.539726] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]  
[15996.539727] Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
[15996.539729] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: 
[15996.539730] cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 22 2e 08 00 00 00 08 00
[15996.539735] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 573442048
[15996.539742] EXT4-fs error (device sda3): ext4_discard_preallocations:3838: comm Chrome_FileThre: Error reading block bitmap for 1
[15996.539743] EXT4-fs (sda3): previous I/O error to superblock detected
[15996.539749] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[15996.539750] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]  
[15996.539751] Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
[15996.539752] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: 
[15996.539752] cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 22 2e 08 00 00 00 08 00
[15996.539756] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 573442048
[15999.423147] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[15999.423151] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]  
[15999.423152] Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
[15999.423154] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: 
[15999.423156] cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 2d 72 13 40 00 00 08 00
[15999.423162] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 762450752
[15999.423190] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[15999.423192] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]  
[15999.423193] Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
[15999.423194] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: 
[15999.423195] cdb[0]=0x28: 28 00 2d 72 13 40 00 00 08 00
[15999.423200] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 762450752

I have considered the following actions:
1. Change the hdd. Simple, plain, but includes so much hassle reinstalling everything.
2. Check for proper wiring inside the laptop, in the hdd location specifically.
3. Send it to the seller to have it checked. Thing is I don't really trust them, they might break it even worse, and then I have to wait for a month or so to fix it.
4. Change to IDE mode in the bios. I don't know, it seems worth the try.


Can anyone who is tech-savvy help me with 2? Could it be faulty wiring that is causing the lockup in the first place?
I have also considered being a wrong firmware/bios setting the cause, but it's difficult to know if it's actually it.