Failing Hard Disk Drive

I have a couple of the Seagate 3000GB drives from a few years ago which are known to fail. Files sporadically became unreadable. Running the MS Windows built-in check disk command didn't recognize any errors. From a command window, the check disk syntax is: chkdsk driveletter: like "chkdsk d:".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check disk completed without finding errors. See the line "0KB in bad sectors".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to reformat the drive and it would not format correctly. 

If you have a failing drive, promptly back up the contents. Then try a reformat or a disk stress tool. It's unlikely a failing drive will heal itself, so have some fun opening the drive. Safety glasses and a small screwdriver should open the drive case. 

 

Shutdown Power States Of Microsoft Windows

To enable a faster startup experience, MS Windows implemented various levels of power off such as "standy" and "hyrbrid sleep" and "fast startup". The "fast startup" was included with MS Windows 8, and it often made a significant difference in startup speed. "Fast startup" is still available in versions 10 and 11. A "shut down" Microsoft Windows can be in various levels of being actually shut down. Microsoft describes the system power states used by MS Windows.

An important differentiating point of the "shut down" states is when all disk writes are finally persisted to disk. A person who is concerned about minimizing risk of data loss or corruption, or wants to ensure a full reboot wil actually work, will want to ensure a complete shut down. This will slow down getting MS Windows to the "working state".

 

Open the Control Panel and go to power options at Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options. 

Choose one of the plans and click on "Change plan settings" then click on "Change advanced power settings". This will open the "Power Options" window and various running and hybernation settings are available, along with hardware settings such as the wireless adapter.

 

In Control Panel, click on the option on the left for "Choose what the power button does". This is in Control Panel at Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\System Settings .

Under "Shutdown settings", uncheck "Turn on fast startup" to completely shut down and fully persist state information at shut down. If the checkmark is grayed out, click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now open a Powershell as Administrator.

Run "powercfg.exe /list" to view the existing schemes. This is similar to the "Power Options" GUI.

 

 

 

 

Run "powercfg.exe /a" to view which power states are available for your motherboard and CPU.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may want to explore the powercfg.exe options /ENERGY and /SYSTEMPOWERREPORT.

When the PC is doing a complete shut down and restart with all data persisted, upon startup you will see the power on POST messages from BIOS firmware. If you are not seeing POST messages, you may not be doing a full shut down and restart. The only way to know if the PC will restart successfully is to persist everything to disk and do a complete and slower restart.

Quick Check of Hard Disk Drive

The data drive for personal and work files began to have some picture files unable to be read. I copied all files to another drive. Then I did a couple quick disk checks in MS Windows 10, and suprisingly no errors were found. A thorough test of the disk would do repeated reads and writes across the entire disk.

 

Run PowerShell as admin and use the deprecated wmic command:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Run cmd as admin and use chkdsk: