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[David Allred]

I bought a laptop on Ebay to run my lighting software, used, but built to order.    The window below popped up, several times.  Ran scandisk and other deep windows diagnostics as recommended on line.  The hard disk checked fine, but the error still popped up.  The online consensus is that it is still an omen.  The seller is sending a replacement drive.  The MYDMX software never failed, shutdown, or locked up.

Over the last 2 weeks I have been experimenting.  I am posting here to see if anyone has an idea of what is going on considering these things:
Software installed in "A" folder.  Runs perfectly, but the problem window pops up most of the time, sometimes after several hours, sometimes very quickly.
Uninstalled and reinstalled... no change.
Uninstalled and dumped several copies of MR18-edit in that "A" folder, and installed MYdmx2.1 into another folder.... still popped up.  Running all the installed MR18 edits alone never had the pop-up.
Deleted/uninstalled all and partitioned the hard drive in half... installed the MYDMX in the new patrician.  No errors for several days, restarting frequently everyday and running over night.
Installed in the original folder... has run for several days with many restarts... no problem window.

I'm sure that Windows probably puts stuff on the drive "where it wants to" and MYDMX is very not likely using the exact same sectors even though it is in the same "folder location". 
Can someone shed some light on what may have been going on?  Do you agree that the drive, even though the pop-up has ceased, is doomed and should be replaced?

Thanks.

[Taylor Hall]

What would shed more light is to run a SMART scan on the drive to see what values are out of spec (bad sectors, IO latency, etc). If windows is throwing up that error then there is definitely something wonky going on, and since you're not experiencing it from one partition to another my money would definitely be on a few sectors being bad somewhere on the platters that you're able to skip past.

At least you're getting a new drive out of the deal, I'd just grin and bear it for the time being, and use the laptop as little as possible to prevent the drive from getting any worse and corrupting all your data. If you haven't done so already I'd backup all your show files and whatnot onto a thumbdrive.

[Tracy Garner]

I bought a laptop on Ebay to run my lighting software, used, but built to order.    The window below popped up, several times.  Ran scandisk and other deep windows diagnostics as recommended on line.  The hard disk checked fine, but the error still popped up.  The online consensus is that it is still an omen.  The seller is sending a replacement drive.  The MYDMX software never failed, shutdown, or locked up.

Over the last 2 weeks I have been experimenting.  I am posting here to see if anyone has an idea of what is going on considering these things:
Software installed in "A" folder.  Runs perfectly, but the problem window pops up most of the time, sometimes after several hours, sometimes very quickly.
Uninstalled and reinstalled... no change.
Uninstalled and dumped several copies of MR18-edit in that "A" folder, and installed MYdmx2.1 into another folder.... still popped up.  Running all the installed MR18 edits alone never had the pop-up.
Deleted/uninstalled all and partitioned the hard drive in half... installed the MYDMX in the new patrician.  No errors for several days, restarting frequently everyday and running over night.
Installed in the original folder... has run for several days with many restarts... no problem window.

I'm sure that Windows probably puts stuff on the drive "where it wants to" and MYDMX is very not likely using the exact same sectors even though it is in the same "folder location". 
Can someone shed some light on what may have been going on?  Do you agree that the drive, even though the pop-up has ceased, is doomed and should be replaced?

Thanks.

Can you open up that details window and paste it here? It will give the info we probably need.

[John L Nobile]

Can you open up that details window and paste it here? It will give the info we probably need.

Hard drives are cheap. I wouldn't risk losing info or having a failure before a show for a possible HD failure. Or wasting time to check it. I'd be nervous after seeing that error. And if it's a used laptop, it's probably a used drive.

If it's not an SSD, go out and buy one to replace the one you have.

[Tim McCulloch]

I saw that warning 2x before the HD failed. The issue appeared to be in the boot sector(s) as I was able to put the drive in a USB caddy and was able to recover all my user-created files.

I replaced the magnetic spinner with an SSD drive (I now keep a spare, I have 6 machines).  A backup and recovery program like Acronis True Image is a good thing to have - aside from the more typical backup stuff you can create a full disk image for each machine, save it on external media, and can duplicate the full HD as of the date you made the image (it includes all partitions, OS recovery, boot sectors, etc - everything that was on the original drive).  From there you can restore with the backup software.

[Len Zenith Jr]

If it's not an SSD, go out and buy one to replace the one you have.

Absolutely, especially in a laptop, one drop to the ground with a spinner and all your data is gone. Plus the fast boot times can save you if you need a reboot on a show computer. You also get longer battery life with a ssd.

[John L Nobile]

Absolutely, especially in a laptop, one drop to the ground with a spinner and all your data is gone. Plus the fast boot times can save you if you need a reboot on a show computer. You also get longer battery life with a ssd.

I started replacing older HD's with SSD's a few years ago on our hotel's computers. I'm not kidding but everyone thought they'd gotten new computers. And they're so cheap now.

[David Allred]

If the SMART scan is the one that has to be done on the next boot, I did that one with the 3 "/x" suffixes from command prompt.  Seems I did the same scan set up from inside Windows, maybe.
I'll see about posting the results.
I'll check with the seller to see if he has already shipped the drive and swap for a smaller cap SSD.
With the exception of the OS everything on the laptop will fit on a 1 gig USB for back-up.

[Bob Faulkner]

Be careful with SSD technology.  Perhaps for most users, there will never be an issue with SSD, but SSD has a finite number of reads/writes they can perform.  Those numbers are very, very high, but there is a limit.  SSD technology has improved a lot over the past 10 years, but limits still exist.

However, most people will probably upgrade their PCs before an SSD reaches it limits.  If you use an SSD NAS at your house, this may impact you more than an SSD in a PC.

[John L Nobile]

Be careful with SSD technology.  Perhaps for most users, there will never be an issue with SSD, but SSD has a finite number of reads/writes they can perform.  Those numbers are very, very high, but there is a limit.  SSD technology has improved a lot over the past 10 years, but limits still exist.

However, most people will probably upgrade their PCs before an SSD reaches it limits.  If you use an SSD NAS at your house, this may impact you more than an SSD in a PC.

Be careful not just with SSD's but ant storage medium.

I find SSD's very reliable. I've got at least 75 computers at the hotel with SSD's and have had zero problems with them. So far, the SSD's are outlasting the computers. Windows machines. Can't comment on Macs. They seem to last a lot longer.

[Bob Faulkner]

Be careful not just with SSD's but ant storage medium.

I find SSD's very reliable. I've got at least 75 computers at the hotel with SSD's and have had zero problems with them. So far, the SSD's are outlasting the computers. Windows machines. Can't comment on Macs. They seem to last a lot longer.

Exactly.

They may be improving over the years. 

In 2009 I started working with SSD in a professional capacity (as a UNIX/Linux consultant).  The SSDs were about 600MB capacity; they were on PCI cards which were installed on the mother-board of the computer.  The cards were used for temporary table space for several Oracle databases.  There would be thousands of reads/writes each day on the cards; they performed well.  The driver/software for the cards included a command option to view the anticipated remaining "life" of the card.  During the first year of use, the cards were down about 12% of their life.

[David Allred]

The seller hadn't shipped, so I upgraded the replacement to SSD.  I dropped from a 500gb hdd (smallest hdd offered) to a 240gb ssd for a minimal upcharge, but for this laptop's workload and storage needs, 240gb is overkill.  Besides Windows, 1gb is about all I would require for the MYDMX install and a lot of show files.  I think I'll time my boot time before and after. 
What kind of % improvement should I expect?
I might get one for my audio control laptop if an improvement is noteworthy.  It definitely has more programs loading at start-up.

[Len Zenith Jr]

What kind of % improvement should I expect?
I might get one for my audio control laptop if an improvement is noteworthy.  It definitely has more programs loading at start-up.

Just a guess but you will probably go from 40 seconds down to 14 seconds. Navigating windows will be much more fluid as well.

[David Allred]

Can you open up that details window and paste it here? It will give the info we probably need.

This is the first scan report.

[Tim McCulloch]

Before this thread goes Zombie...

David, did the computer function correctly after running chkdsk?  Did you install the replacement drive and not see the error again?

[David Allred]

Before this thread goes Zombie...

David, did the computer function correctly after running chkdsk?  Did you install the replacement drive and not see the error again?

No better and couldn't risk a total failure.  Replaced the bad drive with an ssd.  The problem is gone. 

[Tim McCulloch]

Thanks for the update, David.

[ProSoundWeb Community]