Hey Dave,

How've you been?

It sounds like your doing the right thing, erring on the side of caution. It could very well be a HDD failure but it could also be a program doing it. Is the drive giving you problems or acting flakey in any way like long access or write times? If not you may want to look into Windows or one of your apps that may have that disk scan scheduled.

Let me know what you find.

BIG D!!! Man, it's good to see you!! I can't tell you how many times I've thought, "Where's Big D?" Welcome back!

Pretty sure Windows isn't scheduling it, and I don't think I have any apps installed that can do that, and the problem started without making any major changes to anything. I think I need some kind of difinitive test to see if the HD is bad, if there is such a thing.

Still confused. I knew I should have studied computers instead of music!

Have you tried downloading SeaTools Desktop? Simple diagnostic. It should be able to tell you about hardware problems.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

The download link is in tiny print at the bottom.

Well, I tried SeaTools, and it returned file system errors, but no physical errors. It recommended that I use the Windows file system utility. Had already used this, but I used it again anyway. This time, for some reason, it worked.

Thanks guys.

David, I too have had some occasional problems with certain disk drives. In many of the motherboard bios's, there is an optional setting for the install the hard disk drives called S.M.A.R.T. hard disk monitoring. It's supposed to notify you of any impending problems. Sometimes, it's a problem all by it self. It can be easily defeated by booting into the bios where you'll find that SMART disk monitoring is enabled. Just disable automatic SMART disk monitoring and you won't get the ScanDisk boot and warning messages.

I would however set up your machine to run a full disk check with a full surface scan? Of course you have everything important backed up already don't you? I hope so?

With these disk drives they always seem to indicate their "MTBF" or mean time between failures. They are frequently rated well over 150,000 hours and that really is the case, it's like I have won the lottery at least a dozen times in the past two years! I should be a friggin' millionaire!

Feeling like a millionaire. Looking like a million.
Ms. Remy Ann David

Dave,

It's good to be back! :D

I haven't been able to be involved for quite some time but I'm hoping things have finally settled down for a while. I'll tell you all about it ASAP.

I'm glad your drive issue is fixed. Wouldn't want to lose any of those great songs.

Talk to you soon.