I'm getting the error message upon boot-up indicating that something
on my hard drive is out of spec. I read about this in a recent Jim
Coates column, and he recommended, after backing up everything, doing
a thorough surface scan with Scandisk. I have tried doing this, but I
get a messsage back saying that the computer has tried multiple times
but has to keep starting over because a program keeps writing to the
disk. The thing is, I'm doing this in Safe Mode, and the only program
running when I hit ctr-alt-delete is Explorer. If I close that
program, the computer shuts down. Any ideas/suggestions would be
welcome. |
Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
20 Oct 2003 06:22 PDT
Hi Boomering,
Could you tell us what the exact error message is and your OS if possible?
Thanks.
-Feilong
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Clarification of Question by
boomering-ga
on
20 Oct 2003 06:47 PDT
Hi Feilong,
I'm running Win ME. The exact message occurs before boot-up is
complete and it reads "WARNING: DELL's Disk Monitoring System has
detected that drive 0 on the Primary EIDE controller is operating
outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back
up your data and replace your hard-disk drive
by calling your support desk or DELL Computer Corporation.", or
something pretty close to that. I understand it is part of a protocol
by the major drive mfr's to predict disk failure, and that my drive is
not meeting some spec. The thing is, it doesn't specify what's out of
spec, and which spec it is. So i'm trying the surface check with
Scandisk and i'm hitting the problem i listed in the question.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
20 Oct 2003 14:07 PDT
Thanks for your response. I have to agree that the message is vague.
There are other researchers here who are familiar with Dell computers
who may be able to help. Perhaps you can respond to some more
clarifications:
When did the problem start? Please give us more details.
Did you change any settings in the BIOS or jumpers on the mobo, hard
drive, etc.?
Did you add any component to your system before the problem started?
Is the size of the drive correct (i.e if the drive is 20 gig, is it
displayed as is or is the value much hicher/lower)?
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Clarification of Question by
boomering-ga
on
21 Oct 2003 08:44 PDT
Hi Feilong,
I don't associate any changes I made with the onset of the message. I
believe it goes beyond Dell and is a SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis
and Reporting Technologies)which is "a set of symptoms established by
the world's top 5 hard drive makers to track everything from
relatively minor failings like bad error reporting right up to loose
screws and surface gouges." This quote is from the Jim Coates column
Saturday. And as I stated in the original question, one thing he
recommends is doing a thorough surface scan, which I've tried to do
with Scandisk, but I get a message back that says the process has to
keep starting over because there is a program writing to the disk. The
thing is that I'm doing the Scandisk in the Safe Mode, so the only
program running to my knowlege is Explorer, which has to be running
for the computer to operate. So I don't know what to try next.
And to answer your other question, the size of the drive (60Gig)
displays correctly. In fact, it does a standard (non-thorough)
Scandisk and Defrag without problems. But it still displays the SMART
error message, and it still won't complete a thorough Scandisk
operation.
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Request for Question Clarification by
izzard-ga
on
21 Oct 2003 13:00 PDT
S.M.A.R.T. is a feature often found in modern drives which allows them
to report on a slew of parameters such as the temperature of the
drive, its average seek times, how long it takes to spin-up and so on.
It knows what are 'good' values and will signal a potential problem
if one of these values goes outside of its prescribed limits.
In most cases, there will be little you can do. (I.e. If your drive
is suddenly taking longer to spin up then it is telling you to 'BACK
UP EVERYTHING NOW AND REPLACE THE DRIVE!'. On the other hand, if may
simply be that the drive things it is getting too hot. This could
happen if one of your case fans has become blocked, the case has
moved, the weather has got warmer, etc. So, you need some software to
access the drive's S.M.A.R.T reporting and find out what parameter has
been marked as 'out of limits'.
I haven't tried this one, but you might try looking at:
http://www.softpile.com/Utilities/Disk_Utilities/Review_09941_index.html
or: http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/index.html
Good luck! Let us know how you get on.
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Clarification of Question by
boomering-ga
on
22 Oct 2003 21:44 PDT
Hi Feilong,
Well I looked at the links for the software, which might give some
info as to what's out of spec, but it wasn't clear to me that I would
get a definitive answer from it. And in any case, I don't think it
would address my original question, which was trying to figure out why
something keeps writing to my hard drive and interrupting the ScanDisk
program. I'm thinking i should maybe just withdraw the question and
try to get Dell to replace the drive under warrantee.
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