Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Computer hard disk crashing?

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-01-2006, 12:00 AM:

Some questions for you computer experts.

When I boot up my computer I'm getting a message, "The Dell Disk Monitoring System detected that drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside normal specifications."

I then press F2 to proceed, and the thing still works but it's slower than it's supposed to be. I'm running Win XP Pro.

Is this something I can fix, or should I just replace the drive, or should I just replace the whole f$%&ing computer? It's about 4 years old.

And, should I replace it with a EIDE drive or should I use an SATA drive, or does it matter? Opinions would be apprciated.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-01-2006, 01:52 AM:

Dells are good units. I would just do a erase, re-partition and then reinstall WinXP-PRO .. but if the drive will not do all of this, then I would say that the HDD is reaching its limits - especially if you hear clicking noise during the boot sequence meaning that things inside the HDD are saying "good-bye, so long.." If so, then get all of your files off of that HDD before doing this. For you can replace programs, but not files.

Also, being 4yrs old, I'd stick with EIDE 7200spin HDD's (costwise being the big factor) for I don't know if your momboard is capable of doing SATA drives or not. The newer momboards (some of them) have that capability.

good luck - Monte

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-01-2006, 04:12 AM:

Firstly, is the BIOS saying this or the operating system? If it's the BIOS, I'd try noting all the settings, resetting it to factory defaults, putting back the ones you need and trying to reboot. It could be some sort of diagnostic program in the BIOS which is getting confused. I find that this sort of thing tends to happen as the battery which maintains the BIOS settings when the PC is disconnected from mains power starts to run down. If this does the trick, I'd change the battery.

If it doesn't, it does look like there's an HDD problem. In that case, the first thing I'd do is to backup all your vital data now, before doing anything else. In fact, I'd probably do that before investigating the BIOS. Then, if you don't want the hassle of reinstalling everything manually, I'd use an imaging utility such as Norton Ghost or (my preferred choice) Drive Image, and make a backup image of the system partition onto a set of DVDs.

You're now ready to replace the HDD. As Monte said, whether you can use a SATA drive or not depends on whether your motherboard has a SATA controller on it. If it does, a SATA drive probably will work a bit quicker. I'd kind of doubt it, though: my present motherboard is just over three years old, and at the time I got it, SATA controllers weren't a 'normal' feature: they were only found on the high end boards costing £70 plus.

If you do get a SATA drive, you'll have to install a special driver to get Windows to use it, which might give you problems reinstalling your image. On mine, it was a case of downloading the driver on another PC, saving it to a floppy and then pressing F2 (I think it was F2!) to install an additional driver during the initial blue screen version of the XP installation process. I'm not sure if there's any way round this when trying to recover an image that worked from an IDE drive. In that scenario, it might just be best to replace like for like and go for IDE; on a four year-old PC, the speed advantage from SATA probably won't be massive, even if you have the controller.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-01-2006, 10:40 AM:

Thanks guys.

I'm pretty sure the message is coming from the BIOS because it appears immediately on startup before Windows begins to load.

I'll work on your suggestions. I already have backups of my most important stuff, so it shouldn't be too hard to get it fixed.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 09-01-2006, 12:55 PM:

That's the SMART (self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology) system telling you your drive is in trouble.

Here is some information SMART article here (at bottom of page).

quote:
The Problem: A WinXP Professional user has received the following error message ever since his system had a hard drive crash six months ago.

Error Message: "WARNING: Dell's Disk Monitoring System has detected that drive 1 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back up your data and replace your hard drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corporation."

This error message says exactly what the solution to this problem is: Simply back up the hard drive and replace it immediately. But our reader hesitates to undertake this rather significant step because the computer continues to work just fine in his estimation.

But the error message's suggested course of action is what the reader must do, says Anne Camden, a spokesperson for Dell. The message is linked to SMART (self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology), a technology that continuously monitors the health of a hard drive in search of symptoms that may indicate a major problem looming in the distance. Such symptoms include a sudden fluctuation in the distance between the drive head and the platter (suggests an impending head crash) and a gradual increase in the length of time it takes for the drive to spin up (a sign of a malfunctioning motor). SMART's purpose is to alert you while you still have time to save important data files.

"It gives you as much of a runway as possible so you can replace the drive before you lose any data," Camden says.

Under these circumstances, we must advise the reader to replace his hard drive as soon as possible. Replacing a hard drive is a relatively pain-free process these days and, if the drive or PC is still under warranty, the reader may even get a free replacement drive.

If you have this same problem, you might be tempted to disregard the message and continue using the drive. But if you do so, we recommend backing up all important data to a removable storage device, marking the backup with the date, and storing the media in a safe location. You also should perform an incremental backup (a type of backup that consists only of files that have changed since your most recent full backup) once each day, as well as a full backup to another removable storage device once each week. The backups will help minimize data loss when—not if—the drive eventually fails

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-01-2006, 12:59 PM:

I had an idea it was something like that.....new hard drive is on the way. Thanks again for all the help....Film-techers are the best, as I've known for about 8 years.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-01-2006, 01:17 PM:

One thing I learned at the Dolby D-Cinema Seminar is that not all EIDE hard drives are created equal... Hard drives are selected at the factory and graded with the lower grade drives going to discount stores and build it yourself computer stores and the better drives going to manufacturers that build servers. Now I know why I have lost so many EIDE hard drives over the years.... I have a stack thats 9 drives high in a parts junk box! Since I went SCSI I've not had a single drive failure in over two years... my SCSI drives are pulls from servers that were never sold and scrapped out.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-01-2006, 02:28 PM:

Yep, just got my new hard drive for my lap top earlier this week. Similer situations as described here. My wife handled the replacement. Computers are becoming too complicated for me to bother with them anymore.

Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 09-01-2006, 08:50 PM:

Try googling problems, too. Anytime I see a computer error that I don't know, I type the entire thing in on google, character for character. I have yet to have this fail me.

Doing so for this error brings up Dell's support site, which indicates an unreliable or defective drive.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 09-06-2006, 03:25 AM:

Today, performacewise IDE based drives keep up with SCSI and even exceed it in most areas where the home user would see benefiet from. IDE reliability is also better. SCSI, however, is still the best on quality, and in server apps, esp in RAIDs still out performs IDE bades tech. I have a built in SCSI controller on my compuer and have been tempted to get one, but they are so much more expensive, and for less space, I've stayed EIDE. When I upgrade, I'm getting a PCI-X SATA controller and a pair of SATA drives to data stripe. PCI-X (not PCI-E) and SCSI, my motherboard is a server board, in the truest sense. And I use ECC/Registered ram, and dual Xeons (2 processors). SATA is becoming cheaper, and EIDE more expensive, slowly. They will flip-flop before too long.