Hard drive errors running Dell diagnostics CD

Question

Is it normal to experience some errors on the hard drive when running the Dell diagnostics? I booted from the (Dell) CD on a Dell 8200 (hard drive was already replaced). I'm getting several (about 15) 'uncorrectable data error or media is write protected' errors on the 'C' drive, which is the boot drive. I understand that even brand new drives may have some errors on them so I'm wondering if this is OK. The 'self test' of the hard drive passed.   I originally tried to run checkdisk on the 'D' partition of this drive (it was partitioned), but was given an error something to the effect that the drive was corrupted and checkdisk was unable to run. Since I know this system needed a reinstall of the O/S anyway, I went ahead and tried to install XP on it to no avail.(We're talking a clean install after a format)  I suspect bad sectors (or blocks)might have been the culprit because of the previous errors, but I'm not a hard drive expert. I decided to install XP on a spare 20GB hard drive I had and leave the other drive in as the 'D' drive. XP installed OK and recognized the 160GB drive so I formatted the 'D' drive again, and ran checkdisk once again, successfully. Afterwards, I removed the spare 20GB drive, reinstalled XP successfully on the newer 160GB drive.   Because of the difficulty in installing XP on this Samsung 160GB drive, I'm a little concerned about it's health. It was purchased in Feb.2005, so it's fairly new...   This is a system owned by my brother-in-law and could not boot originally due to a bad processor(case) fan. The fan was replaced prior to all this work, whew!!!   Any comments appreciated as to whether some errors are normal or other ways to test the drive.   Mike Message Edited by patchsassy on 01-27-2006 11:49 PM

shesagordie · Answer

patchsassy   No, it's not normal.  Try going to the hard drive's manufacturer's site and download their diagnostic software to a floppy and use that to check the drive.   Bev.

patchsassy · Answer

Thanks , Bev.

No wonder installing XP was so hard... The Dell diagnostics is still running as we speak (thank goodness for mutiple computers), should I just abort it?

Mike

Message Edited by patchsassy on 01-28-2006 12:02 AM

shesagordie · Answer

patchsassy   How long have diagnostics been running?   With the 'Uncorrectable data error code or media is write protected' message, did you get something like this, 'Error codes 0f00:0240, 0f00:0244, and 0f00:1a44'.   Bev.

patchsassy · Answer

No, I did not get a code like that. The diagnostics were running for about an hour (full system). I did see a DDG-D 020-068 error, though.

I stopped the test, tried Samsung's diagnostic on floppy but that errored out too. Error reads: SSIDE.DLL cannot handle this case. Memory map was saved into sside.txt It's getting late. I'll try again tomorrow.

By the way, I just noticed this is an ATA133 drive in an ATA100 system. Does this require an ATA133 PCI card?

Mike

Message Edited by patchsassy on 01-28-2006 01:27 AM

rickmktg · Answer

@patchsassy wrote:

No, I did not get a code like that. The diagnostics were running for about an hour (full system). I did see a DDG-D 020-068 error, though.

I stopped the test, tried Samsung's diagnostic on floppy but that errored out too. Error reads: SSIDE.DLL cannot handle this case. Memory map was saved into sside.txt It's getting late. I'll try again tomorrow.

By the way, I just noticed this is an ATA133 drive in an ATA100 system. Does this require an ATA133 PCI card?

Mike

No, it does not. Drives are backwards compatible.

patchsassy · Answer

Thanks , Rick.

Just as a followup, I went to Samsung's site and downloaded two different versions of their diagnostic software that's suppose to be for the exact model number of this drive and neither one has run successfully, yet.

First error:

[SELF DIAGNOSTIC (Hutil v1.21)]
Service Code => AJ22 : Not Ready.
Error : The program is locked.

The second test using the ther version showed a keyboard failure... Huh? I tried a different keyboard and got the same message...

I then tried a Hitachi/IBM utility and it ran fine but came to the following conclusion:

Problem detected on a non Hitachi disk drive. Please contact your HDD supplier for additional support.

Disposition code= 0x70

Mike

All the while, XP seems to be running fine...:smileyindifferent:

gudgeon · Answer

The drive definitely has problems and my view would be that it's now time to clone your disk to a new drive. Even if you manage an installation to this drive, you'd be mad to trust it.

Storage, Drives & Media

Hard drive errors running Dell diagnostics CD

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