Vista reports HDD failure.

Recenlty installed Vista Business. Have a RAID-1 configuration. Ever since
Vista installed, I keep getting random alerts on startup about one of my
HDD's imminent failure and to do a system backup 'now'. I have been ignoring
this, (but I have done a backup!). Anyway, I am not sure which HDD is
supposed to be failing. I think it is rubbish because they are only about 6
months old. Any ideas? Should I swap drives and see what happens or
disconnect one drive at a time? I tried 'chkdsk' and don't get any errors,
but with Vista the "Chkdsk /F" variation doesn't seem to work.

David wrote:
> Recenlty installed Vista Business. Have a RAID-1 configuration. Ever since
> Vista installed, I keep getting random alerts on startup about one of my
> HDD's imminent failure and to do a system backup 'now'. I have been ignoring
> this, (but I have done a backup!). Anyway, I am not sure which HDD is
> supposed to be failing. I think it is rubbish because they are only about 6
> months old. Any ideas? Should I swap drives and see what happens or
> disconnect one drive at a time? I tried 'chkdsk' and don't get any errors,
> but with Vista the "Chkdsk /F" variation doesn't seem to work.

You should not assume it is "rubbish". If hardware is going to fail, it
will usually do so pretty quickly so the fact that the drives are new
means nothing.

Get a diagnostic utility from the drive mftr., make a bootable cd with
it, boot with it, and do a thorough test. If there are any physical
errors, replace the drives.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

David wrote:
> Recenlty installed Vista Business. Have a RAID-1 configuration. Ever since
> Vista installed, I keep getting random alerts on startup about one of my
> HDD's imminent failure and to do a system backup 'now'. I have been ignoring
> this, (but I have done a backup!). Anyway, I am not sure which HDD is
> supposed to be failing. I think it is rubbish because they are only about 6
> months old...

I agree that the age of the disks doesn't matter. Modern disks go bad
more often than old ones by far, even right out of the carton.

I'm busy telling everyone with hardware problems about this interesting
new tool: as administrator, open a command prompt and type 'perfmon'.
Click on Reliability Monitor and look around for anything interesting.

Okay, thanks, will do. I have also checked the 'system information' list
under "Storage" and the status is given as "OK". I also did manage to run
"Chkdsk /F". You have to set it to be done during the next re-boot. There
were no errors reported. Now back to the RAID config. If I get the
manufacturer's test utility,I wonder which drive it is going to check because
with RAID-1 you can only see dirve "C" as one drive. The other drive is
hidden. I'll report back if I can get the check utility to run. Thanks for
the help so far.

"Don" wrote:

> David wrote:
> > Recenlty installed Vista Business. Have a RAID-1 configuration. Ever since
> > Vista installed, I keep getting random alerts on startup about one of my
> > HDD's imminent failure and to do a system backup 'now'. I have been ignoring
> > this, (but I have done a backup!). Anyway, I am not sure which HDD is
> > supposed to be failing. I think it is rubbish because they are only about 6
> > months old...
>
> I agree that the age of the disks doesn't matter. Modern disks go bad
> more often than old ones by far, even right out of the carton.
>
> I'm busy telling everyone with hardware problems about this interesting
> new tool: as administrator, open a command prompt and type 'perfmon'.
> Click on Reliability Monitor and look around for anything interesting.
>

David

I had a new drive that failed after just three days.. there are no
guarantees in this life..


"David" <David@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2C67ABAC-4ED7-4701-A394-CE72346D2F51@microsoft.com...
> Recenlty installed Vista Business. Have a RAID-1 configuration. Ever since
> Vista installed, I keep getting random alerts on startup about one of my
> HDD's imminent failure and to do a system backup 'now'. I have been
> ignoring
> this, (but I have done a backup!). Anyway, I am not sure which HDD is
> supposed to be failing. I think it is rubbish because they are only about
> 6
> months old. Any ideas? Should I swap drives and see what happens or
> disconnect one drive at a time? I tried 'chkdsk' and don't get any errors,
> but with Vista the "Chkdsk /F" variation doesn't seem to work.

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

"Malke" <notreally@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:uNId6DDaHHA.5056@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> You should not assume it is "rubbish". If hardware is going to fail, it
> will usually do so pretty quickly so the fact that the drives are new
> means nothing.
>
> Get a diagnostic utility from the drive mftr., make a bootable cd with it,
> boot with it, and do a thorough test. If there are any physical errors,
> replace the drives.
>
>
> Malke
> --
> Elephant Boy Computers
> www.elephantboycomputers.com
> "Don't Panic!"
> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User


Depending on the hardware for you Raid array, it may be possible to get some
info on the "imminent" failure just by entering the RAID setup screen during
boot-up.

Crimliar