How do you know if you have a bad hard drive in your pc?

Question

I have a presario 6410nx desk top pc that may have a bad hard drive. I would like to try and delet my hard drive and try to reformat from my system recovery disks I purchased from HP. I would like to know how to go about deleting my hard drive? I have opperating system Windows XP Home Edition.

Answer 1

Your hard drive would make an unusual sound that you've never heard before. Plus whenever your hard drive is trying to read or write something you'll get error messages. Have you been getting any errors messages? And of course the files or programs you open wouldn't work the same as before.

Let me ask you something before you reformat your hard drive as its called. Are you sure it's not a virus, spyware, malware, adware, or any other malicious program running your system? Some common signs of that would be you wouldn't be able to bring up Task Manager by pressing Alt+Ctrl+Del all at once. You also wouldn't be able to run regedit or msconfig. Your computer would also be running extremely slow and if by chance you were able to open up Task Manager it would show you something is using all of your CPU power.

If this is not the case and you're definite it is a bad hard drive reformatting it will not work. Your hard drive is dying on you in this case and will not work. I would use whatever time you have left to do some backup of important files you might need (i.e. pictures of family/friends, music, videos, etc.) Start looking for a new hard drive to buy. There out there and installing one is not that hard.

Once you do this all you need to do is insert the CD and follow any directions or answer any questions it gives you. It's pretty self-explanatory. I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Best and easiest way...If you are going to wipe the drive and start over from scratch with a fresh install of windows. Boot from CD, during the installation of windows XP it will ask if you want to use the existing disk partition on the HD. Choose the option to delete the current partition, then create a new one from scratch. You should have the option of NTFS or FAT32. This is your preference, however just keep in mind that only Win2K and WinXP are compatible with the NTFS partition. If you do not know if that even matters, then you are probably fine to go with whatever sounds good to you. NTFS tends to run a bit faster with XP.

Once you have created the new partition, it will format the drive for you, and then begin the install on the new drive. IF the drive is corrupt, you will get errors on install. If that is the case, then you will have to get a new one. ONE IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER!!! Always back up your data to disc before you wipe the drive...otherwise it is gone for good.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

You can't "delete" something physical such as a hard drive. You can delete all the data on it and reformat it fine, however. Just right-click on Local Disk in My Computer and look for the reformat function.

Answer 4

With Windows XP, you need to figure out which file system you have on your hard drive - either NTFS or FAT32. To figure out which one you have, double click the My Computer icon on the desktop and right click on your C drive and choose Properties. Look for the "File system" entry. It'll either say NTFS or FAT32.

If you have NTFS, you need to wipe the drive with a special technique.

You can do this one of two ways by using the Windows XP startup disks or if your computer supports a bootable CD-ROM -- most computers built since 2001 have this feature -- use the Recovery Console tool on the Windows XP CD-ROM.

First, remember that reformatting a hard disk deletes all of the data that is on it, so make sure that you back up your data before you reformat the disk. That data is unrecoverable afterwards. It's gone forever.

To use the Windows XP Recovery Console to reformat a drive, follow these steps:

Start the computer by using the Windows XP CD-ROM (in the CDROM drive) or the start-up disks (in the floppy drive).
You need to go into your BIOS to change the boot sequence to do this making your CD-ROM drive your primary boot device.

Once the computer has booted from the CD you'll see a "Welcome to Windows Setup" screen appear and after all the drivers have loaded (shown along the bottom), press F10 or wait and choose to use the recovery console (choose item #2).

In the "Recovery Console" specify the appropriate Windows installation. It will be listed. It's probably #1. Then log on by using your Windows XP Administrator password. You are probably the administrator and the password if you have never assigned is probably blank, so just hit the Enter key. If you run Windows XP Pro and want to turn off the password prompt then learn how here.

Next, type: map and hit the ENTER key.

Note the drive that you want to reformat. The drive letters may be different in the Recovery Console from what they are in Windows XP, but if you want to reformat the C: drive then its likely the largest.

Next, type: format C: /fs:ntfs

Or if you don't want to format C, use the drive letter of the hard drive that you want to format. Hit your ENTER key.

Next, type: y

Then press ENTER to continue. When the formatting process is finished, type: exit

and then press the ENTER key to restart the computer.

If you have FAT32, you need to wipe the drive with a special technique. You can do this one of two ways by using the Windows XP startup disks or if your computer supports a bootable CD-ROM -- most computers built since 2001 have this feature -- use the Recovery Console tool on the Windows XP CD-ROM.

To use the Windows XP Recovery Console to reformat a drive, follow these steps:

Start the computer by using the Windows XP CD-ROM (in the CDROM drive) or the start-up disks (in the floppy drive).
You need to go into your BIOS to change the boot sequence to do this making your CD-ROM drive your primary boot device.

Once the computer has booted from the CD you'll see a "Welcome to Windows Setup" screen appear and after all the drivers have loaded (shown along the bottom), press F10 or wait and choose to use the recovery console (choose item #2).

In the "Recovery Console" specify the appropriate Windows installation. It will be listed. It's probably #1. Then log on by using your Windows XP Administrator password. You are probably the administrator and the password if you have never assigned is probably blank, so just hit the Enter key. If you run Windows XP Pro and want to turn off the password prompt then learn how here.

Next, type: map

and hit the ENTER key.

Note the drive that you want to reformat. The drive letters may be different in the Recovery Console from what they are in Windows XP, but if you want ti reformat the C: drive then its the largest.

Next, type: format C:

Or if you don't want to format C, type the drive letter of the hard drive that you want to format instead. Hit your ENTER key.

Next, type: y

Then press ENTER to continue. When the formatting process is finished, type: exit

and then press the ENTER key to restart the computer.


Next you need to reinstall Windows XP. Reboot your computer with the Windows XP setup CD in the CDROM and let it boot into the Windows Setup screen. Let it load all the drivers. Then choose option 1 and start the clean installation. When it is done, reboot the computer.

Answer 5

First, make sure you've backed up your data before the hard drive goes completely. Then you need to find out if the hard drive is bad. Try to boot to the utility partition and run diagnostics. If you can't, check who the hard drive manufacturer is (Maxtoy, Seagate, WDC, Fujitsu are the biggies), go to their website, and download their diagnostic tool. If the HDD is bad, don't waste your time reinstalling Windows, get a replacement drive.

Answer 6

Why do u think ur HDD is bad?

In order to delete/reformat ur HDD, insert ur XP disk and enter the XP set-up when u reboot.

Answer 7

All you have to do it put your system recovery dics in and it will tell you the rest.

Answer 8

when it stops working