hard drive SMART failure - HELP

[mastermindpl]

So my friends PSU broke. We bought a new one and hooked it up to his sony vaio, we had to swap it back and forth a few times cause there were some errors with bios on his machine (it tried to read PSU fan speed, but new PSU came with no fan sensor on it), so we swapped it back and forth few times, and just when everything was going fine, the pc gets a S.M.A.R.T. error message at the boot up - which it never did before we started to mess with PSU. What can possibly be wrong now? I tried disc check, it didnt fix anything. I also loaded up a few programs to repair hard drive, and all of them wouldnt do it cause everything is evaluation copy and instead of spending $60 bucks on a program that we'r not too sure if it would even fix the problem, its better to just buy a hard drive. But can we attempt to fix it first? What can i do? I already tried disabling SMART for this hard drive (Maxtor 4D080H4) but even if it says DISABLED in bios the message still comes up....

[photolady]

Seagate the now owner of Maxtor drives has a diagnostic software for free at their website. Have you tried Seatools yet? You need either a floppy disk and drive or a cd burner with cd to use their software.

Link to SeaTools

[mastermindpl]

Originally Posted by photolady

Seagate the now owner of Maxtor drives has a diagnostic software for free at their website. Have you tried Seatools yet? You need either a floppy disk and drive or a cd burner with cd to use their software.

Link to SeaTools

Hello,
Ok, i downloaded the seatools, and honestly, i dont see anything there that will help me fix the problem it just lets you run a bunch of tests, but it doesnt let me save a log file or anyhting (unless im blind or something), so i dont know what should i do with this app?

'thanks!!!

[photolady]

Which version did you download? I use the .iso, burn an image with Nero and boot up to test the drive. Not in windows.
And not all tools will fix harddrive problems. They can attempt to recover bad sectors but not always does it work. If you get drive failure messages, it's best to save your data and buy a new drive.

[mastermindpl]

Originally Posted by photolady

Which version did you download? I use the .iso, burn an image with Nero and boot up to test the drive. Not in windows.
And not all tools will fix harddrive problems. They can attempt to recover bad sectors but not always does it work. If you get drive failure messages, it's best to save your data and buy a new drive.

im sorry, call me dumb but i really dont see where you get that!! lol, i only see 3 things for download there, which are:
SeaTools for DOS
SeaTools for Windows
SeaTools Enterprise Edition


maybe the link you gave me wasnt the right one?

[photolady]

You need to take it a couple of steps further. Click on the Seatools for DOS, then you agree to the agreement, then you have to register (which is free), then you get the actual download page where you can chose .iso file/s instead of .exe files.

Once it is actually in a folder on your harddrive, using Nero to burn the .iso image, you can boot from it before your computer boots to windows.
Nero's burn image option is under the main Menu heading of Recorder. Just chose Burn Image, then point that to the .iso file.

[mastermindpl]

Originally Posted by photolady

You need to take it a couple of steps further. Click on the Seatools for DOS, then you agree to the agreement, then you have to register (which is free), then you get the actual download page where you can chose .iso file/s instead of .exe files.

Once it is actually in a folder on your harddrive, using Nero to burn the .iso image, you can boot from it before your computer boots to windows.
Nero's burn image option is under the main Menu heading of Recorder. Just chose Burn Image, then point that to the .iso file.

Ohhhhh ok, now i got it. well here the problem with this... my buddies comp doesnt have a cd burner nor the comp im currently on.... my regular comp. is broken down right now, so it sits there untill i raise some funds to fix it. but back to this.... i have to use floppy for it, so i downloaded the v 2.07 for floppy, formatted, created flop, and running it right now, but all it says is "FreeDOS" and blinking underscore, nothing else happens, i mean its sitting like this for good 15 mins now, it sounds like hard drive is doing somehting, because i can hear the head reading and everything, so i dont wanna stop it... you think its alright if it does that for so long? i also downloaded the 1.1 version and ran it, but that gave me some kind of error message

letme know please!!! thank you...

oh, and go ahead if you have new ideas!! especially programs that would actually fix stuff not just tell me theres somehting wrong

[photolady]

Once you download the floppy version, you need to extract it from it's executable file. You don't just add it to a floppy disk. With a floppy disk in the floppy drive, double click the .exe file. It will create a bootable floppy disk. Set your computer to boot from the floppy disk as first boot device, with that floppy disk in the drive, save and exit BIOS/Setup. It should boot from the floppy giving you the program to test the drive. You will need a PS/2 mouse as a USB mouse cannot navigate in these programs.

Also, there is no software to fix harddrive problems. The diagnostic software can attempt to recover bad sectors but I've never had one to work successfully.