Question

Bios reports SMART tripped on hard drive but drive tests OK

Asked by: Ursala

I have an HP m8150n computer with Windows Vista Home Premium. It has been shutting down on it's own randomly. It is not overheating but something is not right. I reinstalled it from the factory onboard recovery image. I had just enabled it to display it's posting information instead of the quick post and I see a message that the S.M.A.R.T. has been tripped on the drive - this is noted under the controller for the RAID. It is not set up as a raid system. I then downloaded and created a disk to test the Samsung drive from Samsung but it does not report the S.M.A.R.T. as being tripped and passes other tests. After reinstalling the system, it is still very slow to start up and randomly shuts down. I then cloned the Samsung disk to a new Seagate 500 G SATA drive using Acronis True Image Workstation. The computer does not boot up any faster. I ran check disk on the SAMSUNG and it did not find any errors.

 I have tested the RAM with the onboard memory testing plus also using Memmtest and PC Doctor and Microsoft Memory Testing but nothing shows up wrong except with PC Doctor which has a quick test fail when all 4 sticks of RAM are installed but no fail when individual ones are installed. i also downloaded a 30 day trial of Burn In Professional and when running it nothing shows up there either.

This computer is 2 years old. It was on once during a storm and went out when the power went out and was set to restart when the power resumed. I think it might not have been adequately protected by the surge protector. I have bought a UPS since then not knowing better before this.

My feeling is that there might be something wrong with the motherboard or could it be the power supply itself.  It is weird to have these conflicting results. I would appreciate any guidance as to what else I might try to test.

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Asked On
2009-09-21 at 02:12:21ID24747750
Tags

Samsung SATA

,

S.M.A.R.T. tripped

,

random shutdowns

Topics

Computer Motherboards

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: leewPosted on 2009-09-21 at 02:15:42ID: 25381235

Have you checked the smart details with HDTune?

 

by: UrsalaPosted on 2009-09-21 at 02:23:53ID: 25381252

Thank you for your help. I forgot to mention HD Tune. I did install and run it and it does not report anything on that page with the S.M.A.R.T - all the boxes are blue and no information is listed. It shows the temp. as being 25 and you can do a surface test which is OK but all the other information is missing even the serial number.  I have never used this test on a computer with a SAMSUNG drive before.  When I swap the cloned new Seagate drive all the tests show up with the results as I usually see with other drives. I must go and put the 2nd 320 gig Samsung drive back in ( it was just being used as a 2nd drive for backups) to see if it does the same as the primary Samsung drive.  I will get back about this in a few minutes.

 

by: UrsalaPosted on 2009-09-21 at 03:09:40ID: 25381444

I just swapped the original Samsung primary drive back into the HP and added the 2nd 320 G Samsung drive. This time the AHCI for the SATA drives reported S.M.A.R.T. even logged. This is the first time I have seen this message, it has always been S.M.A.R.T. tripped before. Anyway, the blue HP Invent splash screen with the different BIOS selection options stayed there for 50 seconds before it started to post, then when it got to the Vista start screen it hung there well over 90 seconds before it started up. I then ran the HD tune for both Samsung drives. The primary drive still showed no information at all in the INFO screen whereas the second drive showed all parameters and everything was OK. I just started the Samsung utilities program again to see if the S.M.A.R.T. tripping was logged with it's utility however I forgot to turn off Automatic Updates so have to wait till that finishes. I do not want Service Pack 2 going in and making things worse so I will turn Auto UPdates off completely for now.

 

by: dlethePosted on 2009-09-21 at 05:20:09ID: 25382114

You are using the RAID mode in the controller?   If so, and HDTUNE reports blanks, then I have the answer.  The RAID mode unfortunately uses a vendor-specific SCSI emulation mode that is incompatible with HDTUNE. The ATA commands used to obtain the disks's inquiry and S.M.A.R.T. details are not getting through.  HDTUNE is not smart enough (sorry for the pun) to tell you that it isn't getting good information. (BTW, in interest of full disclosure, I write S.M.A.R.T. software and HP OEMs our software, so I know a lot about this).

Trust the HP controller.  Replace the disk, perhaps there is warranty left on it.

 

by: UrsalaPosted on 2009-09-21 at 06:01:29ID: 25382393

Thank You dlethe: I am not using RAID mode, I am using AHCI mode. Does that also use vendor specific SCSi emulation mode? What I did next was go into the BIOS and run the SMART Extended self test and the short test and they both passed. Also, When I run the HD tune on the second drive which is also listed under the SATA controller and in AHCI mode, all the info is visible. I will reinstall the new drive and see what happens. So far, with either drive the takes a long time to boot and a long time for windows to open. Thank you for your  expertise.

 

by: gikkelPosted on 2009-09-21 at 07:02:29ID: 25382899

Take out 2 of the 4 sticks and attempt to boot (make sure they're in the correct slots)...it  sounds like it could also be a memory issue.  I've come not to trust memory diagnostic tools.  As for your smart error, I agree with dlethe...you should replace the disk, but i don't think its going to solve all your problems.

 

by: UrsalaPosted on 2009-09-21 at 09:14:21ID: 31631331

I am giving partial to the solution as I knew there was something with the RAM and had replaced it along with the hard drive after the advice to trust the HP controller. The computer is starting up much faster now. I have 2 Gigs of DDR2 800 (dual mode) and so far so good. Thank you for your timely help and explaining about the SMART and the controllers. It will be helpful in the future to know for sure.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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