re-image your PC from back-up everyday ? Help

[ignis]

Difficult without PC in front of you, but maybe someone has or had same problem.

Since Monday PC will not start.. well it starts then comes up with ‘unable to find boot image’

Rebuilt PC about 1 years ago, FX8350 CPU, shows 16 GB Ram, genuine Win 7 64 bit. Without any problems until now.

Pop in CD ‘start up repair’ = message ‘Drive need to be re-formatted’

Fiddle about and can get re-image your PC from back-up……… yes

This takes 3 hours… !! restart = fine but always every day does CHKDSK is verifying files, this takes another 1 hours.. !

Any advice or help please ?

My Anti –Virus updates often, I do know that Microsoft did a auto update the day before the problem + Glary Utilities PRO also updated the same day… have also ran CC Cleaner, all shows no problems

[NeverSure]

I've read that about ten times and each time I think I learn something, LOL.

It crashed or wouldn't start, you inserted the repair media, rebooted to that media and reimaged the hard disk??

It took 3 hours to image?

Now it wants to run chkdsk all by itself?

My first thought is the hard disk has failed.

If your computer will run, read and do THIS. Scandisk is a very good hard disk diagnostic and repair tool which you already have onboard.

Good luck

Edited March 13, 2015 by NeverSure

[ignis]

I've read that about ten times and each time I think I learn something, LOL.

It crashed or wouldn't start, you inserted the repair media, rebooted to that media and reimaged the hard disk??

It took 3 hours to image?

Now it wants to run chkdsk all by itself?

My first thought is the hard disk has failed.

If your computer will run, read and do THIS. Scandisk is a very good hard disk diagnostic and repair tool which you already have onboard.

Good luck

Thanks, the problem is 'C' drive..

So doing this 'If your computer will run, read and do THIS. Scandisk is a very good hard disk diagnostic and repair tool which you already have onboard.'

I get the message that the disk is in use so can only scan on next start up.........

do not want to do the re start now, as will run fine all day, but have set to do the disk scan on next start up so will see tomorrow,

[Crossy]

+1 on a dead or dying hard drive.

Time to go shopping

[ignis]

+1 on a dead or dying hard drive.

Time to go shopping

that 1TB hard drive is less than 1 year old........

the 1 TB used as 'back up' is around 6 years old, + have smaller one much older than that

[Chicog]

+1 on a dead or dying hard drive.

Time to go shopping

that 1TB hard drive is less than 1 year old........

Is it under warranty?

They do send bad ones out of the factory you know.

[Pib]

Sounds like a dying hard drive whenever a reformat/reimage gets it going again "briefly" and then chkdisk or booting problems reappear soon afterwards.

[ignis]

er hard drives looks not so easy anymore..

always bought W.D 1st 320 GB, then 640GB, but have 2 1TB, the old one is W.D the less then a year old is Seagate

Just been looking, now appear many more between 1.7 - 3,000 baht.. but what is the difference, Black, Blue, Red. Purple, Green, as different prices must be something different ?

what is with these 1 TB Hybrid ?? little difference in price SSHDs are now available for your desktop computer. Get the speed and kick of an integrated solid state drive (SSD) with the massive capacity of a desktop hard drive – all at a surprisingly low price!

any good ?

[Pib]

If you don't have Solid State Drive (SSD) in your system, do yourself a favor and get one...you will really see a speed improvement. At least put your operating system and main programs on it since large SSDs can get pricey in Thailand.

A SSHD is part SSD and regular hard drive (i.e., spinning platters). The SSHD has a small amount of SSD type RAM to speed up certain programs, but SSHD don't even come close to the performance improvement provided by a SSD. It's kinda like getting a small SSD integrated with a large HD.

I think this Link also partially quoted below gives a good overview of the different color designated WD drives.

WD Blue
These are your baseline drives; typical power consumption, solid performance, good price. If none of the specific features of the other types stand out then these are the ones you want, they're ideal as capacity drives for a desktop for example.

WD Green
These are all about saving energy; they're not actually all that slow in practice for things like streaming, but for more random read/write they lag behind a bit, again not by all that much. The main benefit is that they save power and wear by spinning down when they can, this means they're basically best for things like backup drives which are only in use periodically (e.g - once an hour), if they're made to spin up too often then you obliterate any potential savings you could make, at which point you've got a slightly slower Blue.

WD Black
These are pure performance drives, all about speed. Their top speed for streaming isn't that much further ahead than a blue drive, but the main difference comes from it being generally more responsive. Basically if all you want is speed, but you can't afford an SSD with the capacity you need, then WD Blacks are for you. A good value gaming system can do well with an affordable SSD for OS and a few other bits and pieces you can fit, with a WD Black as your main drive for your games, for example by moving your Steam folder onto it, giving you good all round performance and capacity.
They also now have generous warranties (5 years), they're basically WD Red+, if you can take advantage of the extra performance that is.

WD Red
I think of these as a hybrid between Greens and Blacks; their power consumption is really good, but unlike the Green which is designed to save power between uses, the Reds are designed to just spin constantly for continual use/availability. They're quiet, responsive, and have good speeds, but most importantly they have an extended (3 year) warranty.
You could use them as system drives and they'd perform just fine, but you probably wouldn't be getting the most of their cost; they're ideal for often used NAS devices, I also like them for RAID setups, particular RAID-5 and RAID-6 since a bunch of them doesn't use tons of power, but they're responsive enough to handle the distributed blocks of data, parity writes etc.


So to summarise:
WD Black = Speed/high end use, extended warranty.
WD Blue = General use.
WD Green = Energy saving for backups or other less frequent use.
WD Red = Some energy saving, continual use, extended warranty, ideal for RAID.

[Xircal]

Get rid of the Glary crap. It's probably what caused the problem in the first place: http://botcrawl.com/how-to-remove-the-glarysoft-redirection-virus-and-uninstall-the-isearch-glarysoft-com-browser-hijacker/

[NeverSure]

I've read that about ten times and each time I think I learn something, LOL.

It crashed or wouldn't start, you inserted the repair media, rebooted to that media and reimaged the hard disk??

It took 3 hours to image?

Now it wants to run chkdsk all by itself?

My first thought is the hard disk has failed.

If your computer will run, read and do THIS. Scandisk is a very good hard disk diagnostic and repair tool which you already have onboard.

Good luck

Thanks, the problem is 'C' drive..

So doing this 'If your computer will run, read and do THIS. Scandisk is a very good hard disk diagnostic and repair tool which you already have onboard.'

I get the message that the disk is in use so can only scan on next start up.........

do not want to do the re start now, as will run fine all day, but have set to do the disk scan on next start up so will see tomorrow,

Yes, for sure tell it to run scandisk on next startup. What it's saying is that it needs to run scandisk outside of the Windows environment, before Windows fully loads. I should have told you. scandisk can't do everything it needs to do while files including Windows files are in use.

This is the same Windows file protection system that tells you that you can't move/delete/etc. a file because it's in use.

Be prepared for scandisk to run "forever" because your hard disk has failed. It might even not be worth the trouble if you have:

A replacement hard disk

Have an image

Have a recovery disk as I just explained in "Another boring thread about backups."

[NeverSure]

I'm going to start yet another thread on the difference between a hard disk and a hard drive.

[ignis]

Yes, for sure tell it to run scandisk on next startup. What it's saying is that it needs to run scandisk outside of the Windows environment, before Windows fully loads. I should have told you. scandisk can't do everything it needs to do while files including Windows files are in use.

This is the same Windows file protection system that tells you that you can't move/delete/etc. a file because it's in use.

Be prepared for scandisk to run "forever" because your hard disk has failed. It might even not be worth the trouble if you have:

A replacement hard disk

Have an image

Have a recovery disk as I just explained in "Another boring thread about backups."

Well it is now tomorrow.... last night when switching off got a message that 25 Microsoft updates were being downloaded..

This morning 25 undates being installed, and then went through the Scandisk, and opened no problem...

No idea if all is know OK, or what was wrong for 5 days

[Pib]

The hard drive is probably just lulling you into a sense of everything is OK now; then when the hard drive senses you need to use it for something really important and time critical it will fail to boot. Hard drives can be such A-Holes sometimes.

[ignis]

If you don't have Solid State Drive (SSD) in your system, do yourself a favor and get one...you will really see a speed improvement. At least put your operating system and main programs on it since large SSDs can get pricey in Thailand.

A SSHD is part SSD and regular hard drive (i.e., spinning platters). The SSHD has a small amount of SSD type RAM to speed up certain programs, but SSHD don't even come close to the performance improvement provided by a SSD. It's kinda like getting a small SSD integrated with a large HD.

I think this Link also partially quoted below gives a good overview of the different color designated WD drives.

WD Blue

These are your baseline drives; typical power consumption, solid performance, good price. If none of the specific features of the other types stand out then these are the ones you want, they're ideal as capacity drives for a desktop for example.

WD Green

These are all about saving energy; they're not actually all that slow in practice for things like streaming, but for more random read/write they lag behind a bit, again not by all that much. The main benefit is that they save power and wear by spinning down when they can, this means they're basically best for things like backup drives which are only in use periodically (e.g - once an hour), if they're made to spin up too often then you obliterate any potential savings you could make, at which point you've got a slightly slower Blue.

WD Black

These are pure performance drives, all about speed. Their top speed for streaming isn't that much further ahead than a blue drive, but the main difference comes from it being generally more responsive. Basically if all you want is speed, but you can't afford an SSD with the capacity you need, then WD Blacks are for you. A good value gaming system can do well with an affordable SSD for OS and a few other bits and pieces you can fit, with a WD Black as your main drive for your games, for example by moving your Steam folder onto it, giving you good all round performance and capacity.

They also now have generous warranties (5 years), they're basically WD Red+, if you can take advantage of the extra performance that is.

WD Red

I think of these as a hybrid between Greens and Blacks; their power consumption is really good, but unlike the Green which is designed to save power between uses, the Reds are designed to just spin constantly for continual use/availability. They're quiet, responsive, and have good speeds, but most importantly they have an extended (3 year) warranty.

You could use them as system drives and they'd perform just fine, but you probably wouldn't be getting the most of their cost; they're ideal for often used NAS devices, I also like them for RAID setups, particular RAID-5 and RAID-6 since a bunch of them doesn't use tons of power, but they're responsive enough to handle the distributed blocks of data, parity writes etc.

So to summarise:

WD Black = Speed/high end use, extended warranty.

WD Blue = General use.

WD Green = Energy saving for backups or other less frequent use.

WD Red = Some energy saving, continual use, extended warranty, ideal for RAID.

Very many thanks....

Yes have looked before at SSD, but put off with the price..

Do the same every morning come downstairs, switch on PC, open windows and doors to let the dogs out, go to kitchen and switch on coffee machine, by then the PC is ready to use, so always questioned if spending another 4,000 + baht for a SSD was any point.

If I have to buy a new hard drive, then these Hybrid things at only 200+ baht more maybe the way to go ??

[Pib]

A hybrid/SSHD would probably be a better deal speedwise as the SSD portion is designed to remember the programs you most often use and load them up/operate them faster. And a SSHD will help somewhat with boot time. Take a look at below youtube video which shows a SSD, SSHD, and HDD running side by side on identical machines...mostly just some booting up comparisons and starting up a browser. A SSD can make a big difference if you are a gamer. Plenty of youtube videos comparing SSDs, SSHDs, and HDDs with various types of software.

Larger SSDs like around 250GB and up are still very pricey in Thailand....like around 40% more than in places like the U.S. I put a SSD in each of my 3 laptops (an approx 500GB in two of them and a 240GB in the third) and it made a BIG difference in speed for the two older laptops, especially bootup...but really good speed improvements with my software...and made loading Windows updates much faster. Two of the laptops are eight year old Toshiba's and the SSDs was like putting a turbocharger on an engine. And the SSD I put in my fairly new i7 CPU based Lenovo helped a little for bootup (it already booted up fast under Win 8.1 with the original HDD in it), but really made some very noticeable improvements in how fast programs open, operate...and how fast Windows updates install...how fast the laptop shutdown, etc. And if you use any software that uses/loads a lot of "small" files it will make a BIG difference as a SSD simply blows away a SSHD & HDD in small file reading and writing....a SSD is also much faster in reading and writing large files, but really really shines in the small files arena.

I bought my SSDs from the U.S. at around half of what they cost in Thailand...fortunately I was able to get them delivered free/no customs....I got a Samsung 840 EVO 512GB, a Seagate 480GB and a Kingston 240GB. All three SSDs and laptop are trucking along just fine. I like the Samsung 840 EVO the best primarily due to the support software Samsung provides like their Magician program. A SSD can make a big difference in the overall responsiveness/speed of your computer....regular HDDs are now in my past except for backups, my NAS, etc...and SSD prices keep coming down (except not so fast in Thailand).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iBhf8rpobo

[lostinisaan]

Yes, for sure tell it to run scandisk on next startup. What it's saying is that it needs to run scandisk outside of the Windows environment, before Windows fully loads. I should have told you. scandisk can't do everything it needs to do while files including Windows files are in use.

This is the same Windows file protection system that tells you that you can't move/delete/etc. a file because it's in use.

Be prepared for scandisk to run "forever" because your hard disk has failed. It might even not be worth the trouble if you have:

A replacement hard disk

Have an image

Have a recovery disk as I just explained in "Another boring thread about backups."

Well it is now tomorrow.... last night when switching off got a message that 25 Microsoft updates were being downloaded..

This morning 25 undates being installed, and then went through the Scandisk, and opened no problem...

No idea if all is know OK, or what was wrong for 5 days

It sounds that anything from dust to an almost dead HD could be the reason. If I were you, I'd download Hardrive Sentinel, which tells you the "health" of your HD.

I hope you've got your system backed up. Try Sentinel, if it tells you that there's something wrong, replace the HD. Some brands have a three year warranty, but you won't get a replacement drive immediately.

They usually send it to Bangkok, some HD get fixed and sent back.

It has nothing to do with how old a hard drive is. Mine in my notebook died after only five months, but I was aware because HardDrive Sentinel told me to replace it.

[ignis]

So Sentinel =

There are 4649 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
The drive found 1575 bad sectors during its self test.
There are 1575 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk.
1187 errors occured during data transfer. This may indicate problem of the device or with data/power cables. It is recommended to examine and replace the cables if possible.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

It is recommended to backup immediately to prevent data loss.

so guess must get a new hard drive ?

Possible to transfer the OS + all data on this 'C' drive to a new HDD ? don't feel like spending days re-loading everything fresh

Yes I do a backup/image often last one was Monday 9th.

[Pib]

Sure, just make an image of your current failing drive and then reload that to your new drive. When imaging a drive it won't copy bad sectors that it can't read which means those bad sectors are not part of the image...but of course if it couldn't copy "data" that might have been saved on bad sectors then that data will be missing when you reload the image on your new drive.

You could also clone the two drives but depending on the cloning software used it might clone over bad sectors also, however, the new drive should be able to set the bad sectors aside...but once again missing/corrupt data will not magically reappear on the new drive as now available/good data. Garbage in, garbage out.

And of course both an image or clone operation could fail depending on the condition of the old drive. Whether doing an image or clone just don't override/reformat your old hard drive until you are satisfied your got the best possible clone/image from it.

Just use the imaging utility built into Windows to make your image and recovery disk. And for cloning I recommend Macrium Reflect Free. I used Macrium three times over the last year to clone some hard drives to new SSDs on my three laptops. In each case I had issues using the cloning software that come with the SSDs (Samsung, Seagate, and Kingston), but he Macrium Reflect Free worked like a charm in cloning all three hard drives to the new SSDs..

[ignis]

Up-date

moved/copied everything to another hard drive, and then kept using the Seagate 1 TB hard drive, last Tuesday switching on, PC could not even find the hard drive....

Took it to Advise IT, yep was dead, and still well in warranty, so will get a new HDD replacement in 14 days, bought a new HDD... 1TB Western, reloaded Window 7 new/clean from my disc and up and running in no time..

Looked at the Hybrid, but only Seagate, and my experience with Seagate put me off, never had any problems with Western Digital hard drives, and some are over 10 years old..

[NeverSure]

Was the HDD itself checked in another machine and it tested bad?

The reason I ask is that I have had HDD failure messages from Windows on company machines but Windows does't appear to know if it is actually the HDD or the controller on the motherboard. A number of times we have first replaced HDDs and wound up replacing the motherboard or totaling the machine. Either one can send HDD error messages and also corrupt data.

On more than one brand of motherboard I have observed that if it won't use the HDD it also won't use the optical (CD/DVD) drive. They appear to be on the same channel. In that case they would give a HDD error message on trying to boot and they also wouldn't boot from a CD/DVD.

There's no way that I know of to test that until it dies if it's just giving warnings and corrupting data. I guess the worst thing that could happen is that you have new HDD to use as a new external and it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace the USB enclosure.

Edited June 1, 2015 by NeverSure

[ignis]

Was the HDD itself checked in another machine and it tested bad?

The reason I ask is that I have had HDD failure messages from Windows on company machines but Windows does't appear to know if it is actually the HDD or the controller on the motherboard. A number of times we have first replaced HDDs and wound up replacing the motherboard or totaling the machine. Either one can send HDD error messages and also corrupt data.

On more than one brand of motherboard I have observed that if it won't use the HDD it also won't use the optical (CD/DVD) drive. They appear to be on the same channel. In that case they would give a HDD error message on trying to boot and they also wouldn't boot from a CD/DVD.

There's no way that I know of to test that until it dies if it's just giving warnings and corrupting data. I guess the worst thing that could happen is that you have new HDD to use as a new external and it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace the USB enclosure.

Yes tested it on another PC and on a laptop, both could not find that HDD......... Advise IT also tested it when I took it back, they scanned there sticker and found the HDD was 13 months old, warranty is for 3 years, so no problem for a replacement under warranty.