Hello!

I noticed most of the HDD controller errors occur during shutdown on my
dad's old Toshiba Satellite P15-S470 notebook/laptop. A few of these
errors even came up during the boot up. The computer only has one HDD, a
D: DVD burner drive, and sometimes an external USB flash drive/stick.

Exported Windows XP's System Event Logs with the sections that look
suspicious can be found here: http://pastebin.ca/744908 ... I attached
SpeedFan v4.32's online HTML SMART results (overall good) in this
newsgroup post.

What do you think? Thank you in advance.
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S.M.A.R.T. hard disk status and hard disk failure preventionAnt <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote:
That the drive appears to be fine from the SMART report.

The XP event log is likely just mindlessly rabbiting on about something that doesnt matter.

I'd normally see what the diagnostic has to say in this
situation, but thats likely a problem with a Toshiba laptop.

Stop smirking, boy.

On 10/21/2007 7:02 PM PT, Rod Speed typed:

Are you talking about the Toshiba's diagnostics utility? If so, then I
will have to find it. [smirks for Rod]
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Ant <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote:
Yep.

Thats the hard part.

On 10/22/2007 12:32 AM PT, Rod Speed typed:

Wait, do I want diagnostic program for the whole laptop/notebook or just
the HDD?
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Ant <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote
Whatever you can find, given the problem with toshiba and diags, and
the fact that the event log is whining about a problem with the controller.
In theory the HDD diag should cover that, bit it may well not see a
problem given that the event log only whines about it at shutdown.

Just the hard drive.

You are looking for something that does not exist.


Ant wrote:

Are you saying Toshiba doesn't make HDD utilities?


On 10/22/2007 12:04 PM PT, Barry Watzman typed:

"For an ant to have wings would be his (her) undoing." --Iranian
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Pretty much, yes. Toshiba has not, in the past, offered diagnostics for
their hard drives.

Ant wrote:

Wow, what's up with that? Since I never used Toshiba HDDs before. How
good are they? Are they reliable? Good warranty?

So, do you guys just use third party to test HDDs like chkdsk/scandisk,
Norton Disk Doctor, SpinRite, etc.?


On 10/23/2007 8:10 AM PT, Barry Watzman typed:

"Ants never lend, ants never borrow." --unknown
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Ant <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote:
God knows, one of the weirder things we've seen in years.

Pretty average.

Pretty average.

Nope, I personally use a decent SMART ute like Everest.

Some of the other hard drive manufacturer's diags will do the basics on any drive.

Well, Toshiba only makes laptop hard drives (e.g. 2.5"). They are not
all that well regarded; not junk, but some other lines are more highly
regarded (IBM/Hitachi among others).

Generic diagnostics are absolutely useless with ANY modern hard drive;
hard drives "lie", and what is seen by BIOS, Windows and diagnostics
isn't what's really going on, making ALL diagnostics useless unless they
can interrogate the drive using either S.M.A.R.T. protocols or the
manufacturers proprietary protocols (of the diagnostics you listed, only
Norton & SpinRite MIGHT be able to do that). All other diagnostics will
show a perfect drive right up until it is failing catastrophically.



Ant wrote:

Barry Watzman wrote in news:471eb736$0$24319$4c368faf@roadrunner.com
Utterly clueless.

Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:

Wrong when the SMART data is used.

So your original is just plain wrong.

Mindlessly silly.

Wrong if they use the SMART data from the drive.

No, you are the one who is clueless. Modern hard drives do defect
relocation to spare sectors and do not report their real status to
diagnostics such as scandisk and checkdisk. A diagnostic using the
manufacturer's protocols or S.M.A.R.T. can find out what is going on,
but to a "dumb" diagnostic that simply tries to check the disk by
reading every sector, the drive will appear perfect right up to the end,
even though in fact it has been failing progressively for some period of
time.


Folkert Rienstra wrote:

Obviously you didn't both read the part where I said "UNLESS they can
interrogate the drive using either S.M.A.R.T. protocols"

Otherwise, they lie about their health, and running a diagnostic like,
for example, Scandisk, is absolutely useless for finding drive defects,
although it will find file system structural defects (which are not the
drive's problem).


Rod Speed wrote:

Barry Watzman wrote in news:471fad66$0$11444$4c368faf@roadrunner.com
Which is just as worthless or useful as any other user program or
generic testprogram reading or writing to the drive.

Bad example. It's not a test program.

Bwahahah. So what's the surface scan for, moron?

[snip]

Barry Watzman wrote in news:471f95cd$0$9579$4c368faf@roadrunner.com
So what.

Bwahahah, diagnostics? Idjut.
Diagnostics give the drive a workout, a workout that's harder than you
could ever establish by merely using it.

Bart's disktool is a diagnostic, ie a testing program, scan/checkdisk is not.


And perfect it is then. What would you want more? Have it lie to you?

That's called normal service life, moron.
They fail eventually -of wear and tear-, 'progressively', if they didn't
they would live forever.

[snip]

Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:

Corse I did, thats why I rubbed your nose in the stupidity
of your original comment when ALL modern hard drives
keep the SMART data and all the diag has to do is use it.

No they dont when ALL modern hard drives keep the SMART data which
is no lie on what has been reallocated and much more about the drive.

Scandisk isnt a hard drive diagnostic.

Wrong with sectors that cant be reallocated for whatever reason.

But sectors which cant be successfully read are.

Ant <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote in
news:471bcc10$0$9539$4c368faf@roadrunner.com:

I had an HD doing that (errors in Event Log) on me in the past (IBM
Travelstar). No SMART problems either. Then in about a month it
started clicking. SMART and IBM HDD test both showed it fine. I backed
it up. In another week it gave up a ghost. There was no warning from
SMART.

There was another HD (Toshiba) that SMART reported having problems from
the start. I don't remember what exact parameter that was (probably
Seek Error Rate in the range of millions). That drive served me well
for about 2 years until I replaced it with higher capacity drive. Go
figure.

It is true that SMART came a long way since then. But I've learned not
to trust it. The only useful information it bears for me now is HD
temperature

1. Backup is your friend.
2. If in doubt and not short on money, replace HD.