What is Reddit's opinion of
HDDScan?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ HDDScan website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
82 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Yup. Sources to go along with that:
Nevermind figured it out... They are called dumpers
"As you can see part of the platter covered with the Dumper. Dumpers sometimes called as Separators located between platters, they reduce air fluctuations and acoustic noise. Usually dumpers made of aluminum or plastic. Aluminum dumpers better for cooling air inside HDA."
Just picked one up. They come with a WD50EZRZ (WD Blue).
EDIT: Hmmm. I'm wondering if at least some of these things might actually have 6TB drives configured to only show up as 5TB drives. The full model number that HDDScan is reporting is WD50EZRZ-00RWYB1. Googling WD50EZRZ shows it as the 5TB Blue's. The last part however only only appears on the 6TB model.
Can anyone else that got one, check what it shows for them. HDDScan will tell you what drives are in USB drives.
HDD Scan has always proven itself for me and I've been using it for years. It gives a graphical representation of individual sectors health. You can evaluate the drives health quite accurately with this based on it's report.
Oh and it's free.
Download this program: http://hddscan.com/
And boot into Safe Mode and run a Surface Scan. Choose full READ (or VERIFY) scan.
It's important that you run in Safe Mode as if anything is trying to read/write to the disk you're scanning, it'll mark any read sectors as "slower" than they actually are.
HDDScan will give you a good map of your hard drive. If you're finding large swaths of sectors that are over 150ms to read (colored Orange or Red or Blue), then yeah, your HDD is not looking so healthy.
If the HDD sectors are pretty much all Grey or Green, you're probably fine.
Sounds like a corrupted file system, hopefully the harddisk itself is does not have any bad sectors.
Take the HDD out, put it in a sata to usb thingy (often sold as harddisk enclosure) and format.
Test the disk itself with a tool like HDDscan, or other utility program to your liking. (Windows has a built in program Chkdsk for that). At least one that does test for bad sectors.
If there are bad sectors, you could have soft or hard bad sectors. Soft ones are repaired instantly by a format again, but you likely shouldn't have any because you just did it. A hard bad sector is a physical broken spot. If that happens, it's broken.
If everything is fixed, put the disk back in the ps3, let it install it's OS and filesystem again and it's like a new ps3.
Have you done a hardware diagnostics? Could be a bad stick of memory (Memtest86+) or a failing hard drive (HDDScan). You should always remove the option of a hardware issue before troubleshooting software. (Otherwise you'll either make it worse or go in circles.)
A failing HDD could definitely be a reason why your PC keeps restarting. I would start out by trying a SMART scan which can be done here.
As for the recommendation, I like the WD Black HDDs if you have the bit of extra cash. For gaming it is better.
I assume by shutting off your PS4 off in the "normal way" you mean using the UI option to turn the system off and not holding the power button down to force it off, right?
I'm thinking it could be a bad hard drive. At the very least, you may try taking the HDD out and putting it back in (just to ensure it's seated correctly). More advanced would be to take the HDD out and run HDDScan on it while it's attached to your computer.
Use the built-in Resource Monitor to display which process is using your disk. (Maybe VSS, as I saw on another website. It can be disabled.) If that doesn't help, check to see if your HDD is failing. Use a tool like HDDScan.
Depends on many things besides "time". Usage, temperature, and power-on time to name a few. Are they constantly "working" when powered on? Do they get warm due to environment? Both of these things will drastically reduce the amount of "time" they last.
I didn't look at your links because I don't have an account on that website. Try popping up a report from HDDScan instead.
100% disk usage can be an indication that the drive is dying. Is it HDD or SSD? If its HDD you can test it with HDDScan. Run the verify test,if you are unsure on the results you can post a screenshot here.
Preallocation is the first step where Steam reserves the necessary disk space before it begins downloading an update. Once Steam downloads the update it makes a backup copy of the game, proceeds to create updated version of the game using the patch files, then validates the new version before removing the backup. This is why it takes around twice a game's installation size to update it. Patching is resource intensive and can take a while depending on how the Dev packaged the files.
If you have a lot of programs running in the background it can slow down the update process so you might want to close out programs you don't need and see if it helps. A full or failing hard drive is also likely to slow things down. You can check your drive's SMART status (diagnostics reporting built into the hard drive) using a program like HDDScan, although SMART diagnostics don't always give a clear picture on the state of a drive's health. If SMART status is reporting a lot of errors and you've noticed trouble accessing certain folders (slow to open) then the disk is probably on its way out.
Hddscan from http://hddscan.com is what I usually use. Really the best thing and does all the offline SMART tests if you want those or non-destructive READ /VERIFY or destructive ERASE tests
I'm not an expert by any means, but I do computer repair for a living. I would personally trust the SMART test more than the DST. You could also download HDDScan and do a butterfly or read sector scan that will test the response of every block on the disk. You can download it here http://hddscan.com/download/HDDScan.zip
Protip with HDD scan, if you double click on the active test you can get a live view of the sector scan.
Those marks are the servo, and HDDguru, a place for people in the data recovery business (includes forums), has this FAQ about servo marks written on the disk platters: http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html
> he clicking that you hear on older drives is caused by the hard drive head arm going back to its "zero'd position" to then accurately move to a new radius on the hard drive.
No hard drive made in the past several decades does this. The "indexing" data you speak of is present on every track, otherwise it wouldn't work.
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html
Or look on YouTube, notice that, no, the heads do not keep "zeroing."
> Wait, magnetizing a blank hard drive makes it unusable?
Yep. Data on a hard disk is written to "tracks" which are not perfectly round. (due to slight imperfections in platter shape, etc...) Because of this, the read/write head needs to move constantly to stay over the track it's trying to read/write.
Precise servo positioning for each track is determined at the factory during the manufacturing process and is written to a specific area of the disk. (called the "servo track") If the servo track is damaged, the drive no longer knows where to position the read/write head, how fast it is spinning (I think), etc...
My memory of this is all really hazy, but a quick Google search turned-up this page by someone who seems more knowledgeable: http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html
tl;dr: There is special information written to the disk that the disk uses to position the heads, and the magnet erased it. There is no way to recover from this, as the special information is written during the manufacturing process. Keep magnets away from all HDDs you intend to ever use again.
Not so long ago i had stutters issues, like 2 second freezes and everything goes back to normal, turns our it was hdd related (so not really apply to ssd), the freezes took the exact time my hdd was starting to spin, if it happens you have the exact same issue try downloading HDDScan (http://hddscan.com/) and then start it, click that round hdd button -> features -> IDE features and then disable Power management and Advanced power management. Thing is you will have to do it every time you restart your pc but that fixes my freeze problems 100%, no more issues. The problem is APM (Advanced Power Management) is a built in feature in many HDDs and that causes the hard drive to stop spinning to conserve energy whenevr its not used for some set time and the freee is when drive starts to spin up again to read additional data like skin files, sound files etc. Disabling APM causes drive to never stop spinning ergo no stuttering issue any more. Intresting thing is APM is supposed to conserve energy but multiple HDD spin down, and spin up cycles make mechanical parts of it wear off faster.
I've got plenty of tested, verified (SMART) and securely erased hard drives ready for sale. =) I use HDDScan for verification (SMART check and full Read test.) Be happy to chat further. Frequently ship them out, and can provide plenty of online reviews for biz. Drop me a PM with what you're looking for (brand/model/size/price) and we can chat, if interested.
It sounds like storage problems. File system is bad and/or disk is bad. First thing to do would be a complete surface scan of the disk using a program like this. This utility can be downloaded and run from a flash drive. First, use the utility to display the SMART data on your drive, then run the surface scan. Post back your results.
Use hard drives of equal capacity for raid, except jbod.
Computer Management --> Disk Management. Make a partition, give it a letter, quick format, and surface scan with hddscan. It takes a few hours for a complete scan, but it's important.
You can do a system backup (control panel), reinstall windows on the new drive and restore it all. Or, you can use a program like xxclone, easeus, apricorn, acronis, ...
Memtest86+ for RAM.
HDDScan for hard drives.
Prime95 for load testing.
Pretty much everything else either works or doesn't.
I have a 2TB F4 in an external enclosure and no problems after 4 months of use. Don't forget to do a surface scan before copying anything on it, it only takes a few hours.
Pro: Home + XP mode, domain join & auto backup Ultimate: Pro + bitlocker & 35 languages.
You can do the same with Home by installing additional software (except the 35 languages).
Few things to try here. Firstly update your SSD firmware. You can do so quite easily by downloading the Kingston SSD manager.
Next repair Windows (I am assuming you have Windows 10). Open command prompt as admin and run the following commands
chkdsk /f
sfc /scannow
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
It also wouldn't hurt to check the health of your HDDs at some point as most HDDs are only made to last 4 years. You can use HDDScan to check the SMART status aswell as run a verify test on it to check the sectors.
100% usage on an HDD is a typical sign of a failing drive. You can download HDDScan and test it with the verify test. If you don't know how to read the results you can post a screenshot here.
Alot of the time the case for a laptop to slowdown is hard drive wear and tear. Does the laptop have and HDD or SSD. If HDD you can download hddscan and run the verify test to check the health of the drive(feel free to post screenshot of results here if you don't know what you are looking at).
Otherwise you might want to save everything you want to keep on an external HDD and factory reset the laptop. I always recommend a factory reset / Windows reinstall every 2-4 years to keep the junk down, though Windows 10 has proven to be pretty good at cleaning up daily junk. I reinstall every year.
>How often do you change your external hdd for backup purpose ?
Since I buy only new drives, even for backups, I used to replace drives every 3-5 years, depending on the drive warranty period.
>What do you use to monitor your external HDD?
For motoring a drive, you can find programs like HDDscan that scan the drive for errors and report on the drive's SMART status, which will report the number of bad sectors. http://hddscan.com/
So you have never bought something that's has been faulty?
What exactly happens to the HDD? Does it format to a file system or to raw?
Test it with hddscan. The verify test will test the speed of each sector and tell you if you need to replace the drive.
Edit: if you are unsure on the results of the test post a screenshot here and I can tell you what's going on. The test will take a few hours.
If the drive is damaged the drive is damaged, chkdsk isn't going to harm it.
Sounds like it's time for a new drive. You can test HDDs with hddscan, or SSDs using the manufacturers tool.
You could run hddscan's verify test and it will tell you the extent of the damage.
You can also use windows check disk utility to "repair" the drive which can help extend its life. From elevated command prompt run chkdsk /f /r
So your computer is trying to tell you your hard drive is dying, you skip it and think, it must be the ethernet?
Test your HDD with hddscan. The verify test is the one you want. But with a repair that ould take 15 hours, I can almost guarantee that drive is dying.
This likely indicates your HDD is about to die. Best give it a test with hddscan. The verify test will let you know how bad the drive is, but from what you have provided I would put it at a 99% chance that I needs to be replaced ASAP
First I would test the drive with hddscan, run the verify test.
Next it would (assuming Windows 10) repair windows. Open command prompt as admin and run the following commands rebooting in between.
chkdsk /f /r
sfc /scannow
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
After that, run DDU and reinstall graphics drivers.
After that, sacrifice a goat the devil and hope for the best.
HDD Scan, checks hard drives for bad sectors. Usually a drive gets several bad sectors over its lifetime, but for some reason it looks like mine has more bad sectors than healthy ones. http://hddscan.com/
Sounds like the HDD is going bad (bad and/or slow sectors). You can check S.M.A.R.T. logs and try scanning it with http://hddscan.com/ to be sure.
Not sure what you mean with the master/slave thing (this is terminology from the IDE days, not applicable to SATA drives). You should be fine with just plopping the new drives in, installing Windows on the SSD and changing the boot drive in UEFI. Then either leave the HDD as is, or copy the files you want to the SSD. If something goes wrong you can always boot from the old Windows install. Downside to this is that you'll see the hidden partitions on the HDD, but you can delete them once you get everything working.
Connect it to a PC via SATA internally or a good USB adapter and download HDDScan (one of the few which can read SMART from USB) to check its health. If it has pending sectors it will act horribly slow when traversing that area, if it's accompanied by lots of reallocated and/or uncorrectable as well you should get a new one asap. If it's not old you may even get RMA on it.
Yup, I meant "motor" to be inclusive of linear actuators such as a voice coil motor (VCM). There's a good picture on this page about 1/3 of the way down. The thick steel plates above and below the magnets are what form the high permeability path I'm talking about--that structure is called a "yoke" or "back iron". You can see that the ends of it are bent over to complete the magnetic path between the top and bottom plates.
HDD Scan is a portable utility that will display more detailed information than DiskPart or the Disk Manager does. It also returns the SMART values on the disk.
If you try looking at how your partition's are mapped out across the disk surface for large gaps across the disk and check if the SMART values under the Sector related fields are OK. If you can backup and then run repair on the boot record and the space is restored, it may have corrupted and truncated part of the free disk area. There's also a test that logs the block access access times across the disk surface, groups of slow blocks can indicate the disk is in bad condition and ready to be replaced.
The Erase command will rewrite over the disk and reallocate any bad sectors if you want to try to reset and see if the correct amount of space appears. I'd replace and avoid using it if you can't determine why most of the disk space has vanished though.
I’ve seen machines with similar symptoms and have been able to get a software HDD test going. We use HDDscan where I work. In your case it does sound like the easiest way would be to remove the drive and use an HDD dock to attach it to another machine and test it. If I was in your shoes I would consider swapping in an SSD either way. They’re much more affordable now and will really improve everything.
Is the drive itself recognized by the OS? You can try getting its SMART status using additional software like http://hddscan.com or similar ones. Most of them show that information. And if the SMART status is bad, do not even play with the disk for further usage, just try to recover your files if you need any pulled out.
take a laptop and a USB to SATA adapter and test it there using HDDScan - they will probably not understand / accept smartctl . SMART short and conveyance tests should be good enough.
Run http://hddscan.com/ (if possible run it twice for more accurate results)
Make sure to disconnect from the internet while running this scan, and try not to have any programs running.
Make sure nothing is installing
It should look something like this, if not send me a picture of how yours looks and I can tell you if your SSD is bad. https://i.imgur.com/zTNo4Uv.png
Run http://hddscan.com/ (if possible run it twice for more accurate results)
Make sure to disconnect from the internet while running this scan, and try not to have any programs running.
Make sure nothing is installing
It should look something like this, if not send me a picture of how yours looks and I can tell you if your SSD is bad. https://i.imgur.com/zTNo4Uv.png
Glad you were able to resolve your issue, thanks for the follow-up report and commitment to backup :)
I'd check the smart status on that drive with something like HDDScan http://hddscan.com and make sure it's happy.
And consider a $10 USB stick to copy your media on so you can watch it on your TV :D
In my experiences, newer versions of DDU have messed up my drivers/left unwanted items. Try an older version.
If there are any nVidia/GeForce programs running, or if anything nVidia related is installed on your machine still, you could use Revo Uninstaller to completely wipe it out. If you see an nVidia process but nothing is installed, you can use Revo's hunter mode to find everything related to it and remove it.
​
If you want a fresh install, when installing Win10, make sure you format the drive before installing it. If you have several drives, verify you are formatting the correct one.
​
Another thing to note: Your HDD (if you're using one) could be going bad. Use http://hddscan.com/ to test the drive for any bad sectors. This could be your issue.
Test the hard drive using this tool:
It could be broken. Maybe it's just the SATA cable though. Try changing it or make sure it's properly attached to the board and drive. I once had a ton of issues with a hard drive due to a faulty cable.
Download and open this, choose the S.M.A.R.T option and let me know if any results do not show a green tick on completion. Attach a screenshot if possible.
http://hddscan.com/download/HDDScan.zip
It sounds as though your harddrive may be corrupted or failing. Back up anything of importance.
Possible corruption and/or imminent drive failure, back up your files in case of permanent failure.
Visit http://hddscan.com and run the program, it will advise of harddrive health and whether a replacement harddrive is needed.
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
Here is link number 1 - Previous text "one"
^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete
Which one is the system drive? Some manufacturers have a tool that allows you to set this.
There's also: http://hddscan.com/
But some models just won't let you change this setting. I don't think it has anything to do with it being the system disk.
I mean, as long as its not failing, hell yeah.
I would give it a once over with this program though: http://hddscan.com/
Check SMART and run a Verify test with that. If SMART is green and the Verify test returns no bad or weak sectors you should be OK. If it DOES return bad sectors (even just one) don't use it. If there are weak sectors don't store anything important on it because it will most likely fail soon.
From 10,000 feet this sounds like a storage issue...
HDDScan is free and will probably give you a good idea of the overall health of your hard drive.
If you don't trust freeware, or for some other reason don't want to try that, all Hard drive manufacturers make their own software to detect issues with hard drives and SSDs. Find out what type of drive you are using (my computer -> right click C:/ -> properties -> hardware) and google their respective software.
Good luck!
I don't have any experience with that dashcam, but have you tried updating the firmware?
https://www.rexingusa.com/en/support/firmware/
Also try another SD card, it's possible that one is failing. Maybe try running a bad sector check on the sd card? this tool might do it. http://hddscan.com/
Jeg tror ikke, at den ville blive alt for skadet indvendigt, hvis den faldt fra et bord. Men det kommer ogsaa an paa, om du bruger en HDD eller SSD, for jeg tror nemlig, at det er nemmere at skade en HDD, da den er mekanisk. Men jeg er ikke professionel, saa maaske tager jeg fejl. Du kan tjekke specifikationerne paa din bærbar, for at finde ud af, om den bruger en SSD eller HDD.
Jeg anbefaler for resten, at du altid sikkerhedskopier al din vigtige data, ogsaa hvis din computer ikke har taget fysisk skade, da en HDD eller SSD kan holde op med at virke efter brug alligevel, især HDD'er.
Men er der egentligt noget galt med den nu, da du nu har skubbet skærmen og rammen sammen? Virker den ikke ordenligt? Hvis den virker ordenligt nu, hvad er saa problemet? Saa har du ikke brug for at spilde nogens penge.
Du kan for resten selv finde ud af, om nogle komponenter ikke virker fint med, blandt andet:
- http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/check-for-bad-memory/ (for RAM)
- http://hddscan.com/ (for HDD/SSD)
Ah darn, I was worried that your computer might be too new for it to work on Windows XP Pocket Edition. Download this Windows 10 Pocket Edition ISO and use Rufus to install that ISO to the flash drive. Once the Rufus is finished, download HDD Scan, extract the folder, and copy it to the flash drive. Then, boot your computer to the flash drive. Once Windows 10 Pocket Edition loads, go to explorer in the start menu, and open up the HDD Scan folder you saved in the flash drive. Run HDDScan.exe and select the hard drive to test. Click the blue round button and then click surface tests from the menu that pops up. All of the settings that show up in the next window are all preset to work as-is, so just hit Add Test. Double click the test you have just created in the test manager window and select the map view. This will have all of the same block colors as Victoria will have. As long as you have 0 blue and less than 5 red, the hard drive is a pass. Repeat the steps for the SSD.
I took a look at the crash dumps, and you have a few things going on for you.
- BIOS is outdated, and there are fixes for Windows8/10. http://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/lenovo-y-series-laptops/y40-70-notebook-lenovo/downloads
- Multiple drivers are out of date, going back to 2013. You need to update them by either going to each manufacturer separately, or by using a tool like SlimDrivers (uncheck optional software).
- Lastly, you have memory corruption going on in one of the dumps, and a driver crash from iaStorA.sys in the other dump. Rather than go the MEMTEST86+ Route, let's try getting the drivers updated, first. Be sure to install these, https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/55005/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST- for the latest RST driver.
Also, if you are using an SSD (Solid State Drive), make sure the firmware is updated. Check the health of the drive(s) by looking at the SMART report (download http://hddscan.com/download/HDDScan-3.3.zip, extract the files, and run the EXE)
2: kd> lmvm iaStorA
start end module name
fffff80ba3570000 fffff80ba3833000 iaStorA T (no symbols)
Loaded symbol image file: iaStorA.sys
Image path: \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\iaStorA.sys
Image name: iaStorA.sys
Timestamp: Thu Mar 13 19:52:06 2014 (532244A6)
CheckSum: 000A4056
ImageSize: 002C3000
Translations: 0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4
Id say something is wrong with the HDD, run a S.M.A.R.T. test on it (there are a lot of free software that can be used like http://hddscan.com/)
And see if it finds any issues... Also a full virus and malware scan wouldnt be a bad idea...
Here and here.
It is worth checking your pc for viruses if you don't have an antivirus or even if you have one. DrWeb CureIt should do just fine.
AntiMalware can help too, i remember using one called "Hitman", if nothing helps - you can try it too.
Or your hdd may indeed be dying. If i recall correctly hddscan can do just fine.
HDD drives can be so slow, that when you ejecting them, they are not done writing all the data from the file cache.
It is one of the possible answers, there are a lot of variables.
Anyway diagnose your HDD with one of the programs, like this:
It's very important to get a reputable brand when it comes to a UPS, there's usually pretty dramatic fudging of tolerances and ratings. I don't know many brands but i've had very good experiences with APC. As for a gas generator you want to go Honda, if not make sure you get one with a true/pure sine wave inverter or you'll be in for some problems. You'll still need the UPS to go with it though, I don't know of any mini-generator auto switch over systems.
As for wiring, a cheap fix that can work is running a high amp rated power cable from a socket near your fuze box or a socket on a lesser used line to whatever high power device you wish to use.
There's a lot of things that could result in a slow down. I'd recommend the following:
Use HDD Scan or HD Tune Pro to make sure your hard drive is fine, download the program, run it and click the "S.M.A.R.T." button to insure all dots are green. You can run a surface scan to be extra sure. http://hddscan.com/
Test your RAM with HCI memtest: http://hcidesign.com/memtest/
Use Microsoft Disk Cleanup or CCleaner to get rid of things stuck in cache and if things still don't improve i'd recommend a Windows Repair installation.
Chkdsk only checks the integrity of the sectors and data on the HDD. So if you have two (2) devices and chkdsk ran successfully, then it may only be checking the HDD that has windows installed. Not the HDD that is missing. Is there are unreadable sectors and they are irrecoverable, your HDD may be failing, so its best backup what you can, otherwise everything is lost (but lets not assume that.) You can try running HDD diagnostics
Possible fix below.
I had the same problem. Background: I have Windows on an SSD but my Steam library is on an HDD. The freeze would occur every time the HDD had to spin up first (that's why it would happen when a new spell is cast, you check someone's inventory, etc), but what others have suggested (setting HDD to no sleep in energy management, using KeepAliveHD) did not work me - none of these tricks could prevent the HDD from going to sleep (it's some 1TB WD that came with the MSI laptop).
What does fix it is a little program called http://hddscan.com/ In there, go to IDE features (select the HDD with Dota on it first) and disable Advanced Power Management. You have to do that every time you boot up. This also fixed the micro-freezes in CS:GO. Hope it does the same for you.
Possible fix below.
I had the same problem. Background: I have Windows on an SSD but my Steam library is on an HDD. The freeze would occur every time the HDD had to spin up first (that's why it would happen when a new spell is cast, you check someone's inventory, etc), but what others have suggested (setting HDD to no sleep in energy management, using KeepAliveHD) did not work me - none of these tricks could prevent the HDD from going to sleep (it's some 1TB WD that came with the MSI laptop).
What does fix it is a little program called http://hddscan.com/ In there, go to IDE features (select the HDD with Dota on it first) and disable Advanced Power Management. You have to do that every time you boot up. This also fixed the micro-freezes in CS:GO. Hope it does the same for you.
first of all i have no experience with onboard gpu.
before testing the hardware i would reinstall/update the gpu driver just to make sure it's not a driver issue (driver issue would also mean it doesn't cost any money to fix the problem ...).
does she also get artifacts in other programs? heaven is often used to stress test gpu's. it doesn't have to be a gpu problem, faulty hdd or ram can cause any kind of errors.
My suggestion would be to run TDSSKiller and an FRST Scan, but this error is a legit windows error. (Not saying it isn't spoofed)
Run chkdsk /F on all volumes on the new drive
Get smart information off the old drive, I prefer to use HDScan for that
SFC /scannow would be good to run, just in case, but I don't think that should throw this error
It's also possible that once the error happens it does not go away by itself, in other words windows may not disable this popup automatically if you move to a new hard drive.
Try running the western digital HDD test and see what it says. Might also be worth running HDDScan to what if it finds any issues. Here are the links.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&sid=3&lang=en
The drive is most likely dead, but CHKDSK won't tell you, you need a hardware diagnostic to tell for sure. I would suggest using Seatools or HDDScan, but there are other hardware diagnostics. Most manufacturers publish diagnostics for their drives, but Seatools has generic diagnostics that work for every brand. Dell, HP and Lenovo computers also have HDD diagnostics built into the BIOS.
CHKDSK is good for fixing file system problems, but it isn't very good at dealing with drives that have a hardware problem. In fact, I have had CHKDSK try to repair data on a drives with read/write issues and it completely trashed what data was left by trying to move it around and recover the corrupted data. If you suspect the drive might be going bad, the best first step is a read-only backup of what data you have.
This, do a quick SMART test first and that may show you something, then you may run a scan if you want to
Though for SMART I prefer
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html
I would update chipset drivers too. Also, use a tool to check your memory and hard drive.
Use this to check the SMART logs on your hard drive.
You want to look for anything in the smart logs that refers to reallocated sectors or bad sectors. Usually it will highlight them in yellow or red. If everything is green, your drive is most likely good (This is only a brief test, but SMART will almost always have something when a drive is failing).
Memtest is pretty simple. You may need to make copies of the exe so it will load your systems entire memory. You could also download Memtest 86 and burn the iso instead.
These are the easiest things to check for.
If I were you, I would download a utility such as HDDscan and use that to scan your HDD and determine if it has any hardware errors.
If you don't want to use a utility for that, you can open up Command Prompt on the computer with the hard drive attached to it, as long as the hard drive you are using is not in use by the computer such as running Windows on it.
Open Command Prompt, and type in: chkdisk [drive letter]: /f
That will check the drive for sector errors and fix them automatically. It can take a while for a large drive.
Here is an explanation of how platter drive tracks and zones work.
TL;DR excerpt with picture: Black dots represent servo sectors. The red line represents servo-track and the green line represents servo sectors with the same number one all tracks, such a line called a Wedge.
That's supposed to be permanent data on the platter that is accessed by the read/write head to let it know where it is currently located on the platter. Something that has to physically be there for the read/write head to see. You can also have a higher-end hard drive that has a dedicated platter (they just spin synchronized) for this information to speed up access times since a different head will be accessing this information but that still doesn't stop that information from being damaged. Without that information, the hard drive will not work properly when trying to access those damaged areas.
Ah, Do you have another PSU of sufficient size? My next step would be to swap the PSU for a few days of use and see if the system is now stable. Failing that, you're looking at possible CPU, motherboard or add-in card failure, :-/
Edit: also try running a "surface test" with all the drives, starting with the system drive. Look for any sectors (or lots of sectors) taking waaaay to long to be read. I've used http://hddscan.com/ before, good tool, free, and shows in a log and visually (turn off live updates however) any sectors that took abnormally, or worryingly long to be read. It also spits out a nice speed graph which is more useful for spinning disks then an SSD, but if the SSD isn't fairly flat for read speed, you might have a problem.
I find it weird that some services are stopping (as if they got the message that the OS was going to reboot) but then it crashes.
First thing that comes to mind is to do a full hardware test. Like cheebs said, grab hiren's boot CD and start with the RAM diag. Memtest 86+ works great. Let it run for an hour or three.
You can grab HDDScan to test your hard drive for bad sectors and response times. Checkdisk works too (win+r > cmd > ok > chkdsk /r c: > enter > reboot)
Recently we purchased several licenses of PC Check that work quite well. Previously we just used a live PE environment and HDDScan and memtest, but when we instituted the 'check every computer for everything' policy (my idea), the automation that PC Check offered was worthwhile.
If the hardware scan comes back clean, then we attack the software side of things, I suppose.
As far as my stated percentages, I just went through every work order we checked in (267), and tallied every mention of good/bad RAM/HD. Was that the answer you're looking for?
Did you install the Asus AI Suite II software? That contains overclocking software that you could have inadvertently activated.
I would also download http://hddscan.com/ and have it check the SMART data on your SSD and HDD to make sure it isn't failing.
Other things you could try:
-Check event viewer and look for errors. Google what looks suspicious.
>When troubleshooting through a windows prompt, the computer freezes, and has to be shut off via holding down power button.
-I am going to assume you are trying to run ipconfig? If the command prompt is freezing after running that command, then you definitely need to rollback/update drivers.
If the entire computer is freezing when you try using command prompt, be safe and check SMART to rule out hard drive issues.Make sure your backups are up to date.
Download HDDScan
Run it. Select your main hard drive from the dropdown.
Click the icon to the right of that dropdown and select surface tests. Click on Add Test
In the bottom window you will see the test. Double click on that.
Below the Pause button, click on Map.
If you see more than 5 in either orange or red, I would call that a failing hard drive.
If you see any Blue bads at all, the drive's bad. Sometimes you can repair bad sectors, but usually there will be more in the near future.
http://hddscan.com/ That may come in handy for the future. This version works in windows 7 and 64 bit os. I still stick with my linux boot though. You can't always get into windows.
Good luck
To be sure, do a surface scan and all the tests you think you need (this will take several hours).
CrystalDisk can also give you an idea about your hard drive's health status.