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I have a serious problem going on with my HDD

[SAMSUNG SP1644N- 160GB HDD - real 149GB]

I wanted to reinstall my Windows so I used Parted Magic's Partition editor to format it...

I made an extended partition (and a logical into it) to the drive, but not a primary... -I thought that it's better to create it at the windows installation because Windows makes a system reserved partition too, which I don't know how works but I felt it so important that I made this stupid decision at the end...

The Windows(8) installer couldn't format it, so I went back to check it out with pm's partition editor... it writes: input/output error. When I click all the ignores away and want to create a partition table the problems come up again and it does nothing.

I googled the problem and ended up destroying my MBR and GPT (with Pm's eraser; it said I can now format it with the partitioning programs, but nope) and tried lots of things too... maybe causing more trouble than improvement.

I used the eraser tool in pm to dd erase the drive (not ata secure erase).

In the "Disk Health" [GSmartControl] I see an unknown model and the SAMSUNG SP 1644N

root@partedmagic:~# gdisk
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Type device filename, or press <Enter> to exit: /dev/sda
Warning! Read error 5; strange behavior now likely!
Warning! Read error 5; strange behavior now likely!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: not present
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: not present

Creating new GPT entries.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 312581808 sectors, 149.1 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 21EB1DF4-C30E-4C02-800C-25FCBD33477E
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 312581774
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 312581741 sectors (149.1 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name

Command (? for help):


smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [x86_64-linux-3.18.2-pmagic64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     SAMSUNG SpinPoint P80
Device Model:     SAMSUNG SP1644N
Serial Number:    S0E9J1FP200822
Firmware Version: BV100-50
User Capacity:    160,041,885,696 bytes [160 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA/ATAPI-7 T13/1532D revision 4a
Local Time is:    Tue Mar 24 18:59:54 2015 CET

==> WARNING: May need -F samsung2 or -F samsung3 enabled; see manual for details.

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x02) Offline data collection activity
                    was completed without error.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever 
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:        ( 3699) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:            (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:    (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:    (  61) minutes.
SCT capabilities:          (0x003f) SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   253   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0007   253   253   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       6016
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       8564
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   253   253   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   253   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0025   253   253   015    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       19195
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0033   253   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       4406
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   077   077   000    Old_age   Always       -       65560
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   130   079   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   130   079   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   253   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   253   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x000a   253   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate    0x000a   253   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%     19082         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%     19081         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0
Note: revision number not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
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9
  • Is your system a newer UEFI based system or BIOS only. And new UEFI system can boot in BIOS(really CSM) boot mode. But Windows only boots from gpt partitioned drives with UEFI. And gpt does not use the extended and logical partitions. You may have converted to MBR(msdos)? And Windows only boots from MBR partitioned drives with BIOS. Which did you have UEFI, or BIOS, and then gpt or MBR?
    – oldfred
    Mar 24, 2015 at 19:30
  • welll... i'm not sure... all i know is that windows worked properly, i just wanted to reinstall it. are you having an idea on how to fix the problem?
    – Sorefury
    Mar 26, 2015 at 18:17
  • It makes a huge difference what you need to do depending on whether Windows was BIOS as then you have to undo the gpt partitioning and only have MBR, or if Windows is UEFI as then it only boots with UEFI. And how you boot install/repair media is how it installs or repairs. Post link to summary report, do not run any autofix. help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair And Boot-Repair cannot fix most Windows issues, you need your Windows repair/install disk for that.
    – oldfred
    Mar 26, 2015 at 19:56
  • I made a Boot repair test (used it with an USB,that is the 1GB drive) paste.ubuntu.com/10700033
    – Sorefury
    Mar 29, 2015 at 9:59
  • It looked like Boot-Repair tried to open drive with just about every possibility. I can only suggest going back to Partition Magic and see if it still opens it. Or perhaps another Windows partition or repair disk tool. Did you just dd erase the MBR, that usually makes drive seem like it is blank? Caution dd can be dangerous, there is no undo, double check you have correct drive and change this example from sdX to correct drive: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
    – oldfred
    Mar 29, 2015 at 18:12

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

The fact that you're getting I/O errors from at least two programs is telling. Such errors almost never result from software problems -- and when it is a software problem, it's likely to be a bad driver. I didn't notice anything obvious in the SMART test results you posted, so my guess is you've got a bad cable to the hard disk, or possibly a bad disk controller chip on your motherboard. Try unplugging your disk cable and plugging it back in. If that fails, try replacing the disk cable with a new one. If that fails, try the disk in another computer to see if it works better there. (If it does, your motherboard's disk controller is probably fried. This can be bypassed with a plug-in board on most desktop systems, but in a laptop it's more likely to be the computer's swan song.)

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