Re: Hard drive error One more follow up

On 5/23/2022 9:15 PM, Paul wrote:
> On 5/23/2022 9:00 PM, philo wrote:
>> On 5/19/22 3:47 PM, philo wrote:
>>> I'm working on a Win10 machine that occasionally crashes on startup 
>>> with the message: Windows has encountered an error.
>>>
>>> If I run CHKDSK /F I see that CHKDSK on
>>> Win10 givers no annunciation as it did with previous Windows 
>>> versions...all it does is say that the drive was repaired, then in 
>>> reboots, but it did not actually fix anything.
>>>
>>>
>>> As a precaution I ran both a memory test and the mfg's full HD
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>
>> Popped the drive into another machine and the performance is 
>> terrible...so I'm not going to put it back into service.
>>
>>
>> Also: it was from a Lenovo laptop and the disk label said Windows SSD 
>> even though it was a mechanical drive. My opinion of Lenovo is a bit 
>> diminished now
> 
> My experience is, an HDTune abnormal read benchmark may make
> an appearance, before the Reallocated raw data field goes off 0.
> 
> Things like SmartMonTools rely on the SMART for their determination
> of "Healthy". And you as the user, can use things like HDTune
> to determine "it is not Healthy".
> 
> In my case, it was a drive with an obvious 50GB-wide "bad spot" on
> the disk, which was likely wear-related. (An OS used to sit there.)
> HDTune would measure 5MB/sec to 10MB/sec or so, through that
> region. The rest of the disk formed part of a more normal-looking
> curve.
> 
> It's especially hard to get a "noise-free" environment for HDTune.
> Win2K was my favorite for "noise-free" benching. It didn't have a
> lot of scanning going on, in the background.
> 
> Gnome-disks can do a read-bench as an option, but you have to be
> careful to not select the "write" option by accident. And the results
> don't appear to be "smoothed" quite like HDTune. The thing is, the
> caching on Linux is pretty hard to defeat, and there have been
> programs that claim to defeat the cache while measuring, where
> the cache schemes were still evident in the results.
> 
> If you want, you can use the Command Prompt in the Troubleshooting
> section of a Windows installer DVD, and call HDTune from there.
> As long as it's sitting on some storage you have access to. Typically,
> 32-bit installer DVDs have 32-bit install environments and are good
> for running a 32-bit application like HDTune 255. Not every thing
> you would like to run, works that way. But a few things do. And the
> 32-bit DVD is the place to test them. Since Windows 11 has no 32-bit
> option, you won't be using a Windows 11 DVD for this purpose. But
> earlier versions would be fine.
> 
> The theory being, a WinPE environment is less likely to have
> background noise while it is running. The OS is loaded into X:
> and X: is a RAMDrive provided by Microsoft. This also implies
> the DVD can be popped out, once the Command Prompt window is open
> (in theory at least, YMMV...).
> 
>     Paul



What I finally did was pop the drive in a spare computer I had in my 
workshop, format it and perform a fresh install of Win10.

The machine is a single core 3ghz cpu with 4 megs of ram.

It's actually running ok.

Sooner or later a friend will need a free machine, so I'll have one all 
ready. I used to keep at least six spares