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Data Recovery and Detecting Bad Sectors: My Personal Experiences Detecting Bad Sectors Example 3

In this post I am going to write about one way in which you might be able to detect Bad Sectors.

In this post I am going to write about one experience I have had detecting bad sectors.

In the future I will write other posts about my personal experiences detecting bad sectors.

Below is one experience I have had with a bad Power Adaptor for a Computer causing problems including the hard drive developing bad sectors.

My friend had an acer aspire all in one desktop computer that was having problems with the
computer rebooting by itself. This computer had windows 7 installed on it. One time it rebooted while in windows 7 when an iphone was plugged into it. The model number for this acer aspire all in one desktop computer is AZ1620-UR31P. In this situation the computer used a power adaptor like the ones you use for laptop computers that convert ac to dc for the computer.

I made sure that i did not have to use a data recovery program to recover any data from this computer before trying to fix it or running any hard drive tests that would destroy the data. My friend said no data needed to be recovered from the computer. After finding out that i did not need to use a data recovery program to recover data from the computer i did the things below first before testing the computer with the PC-Check Diagnostic program.

When i first turned on this acer aspire all in one desktop computer the computer was not able to boot into to windows. In order to get the computer to boot into windows i had to use the bios boot menu to select the hard drive to boot from for windows 7 to load.

Once i was in windows i shutdown the computer and unplugged the power adaptor from the computer to remove all power from the acer aspire all in one desktop computer because i needed to remove the back of the computer case.

It can be difficult to remove the computer case for some all in one desktop computers without the service manual.

To remove the back of the computer case i needed the service manual for this computer so i emailed acer.

acer said they do not provide service manuals for their customers.

At this point i had to search www.google.com to find the service manual.

Once i found the service manual i was able to remove the back of the computer case.

I needed to remove the back of the computer case to reseat the two so-dimm memory modules in the computer and use compressed air from a can of compressed air to remove any dust from the motherboard that can cause a computer to lockup or reboot.

Sometimes reseating all the memory modules in the computer and using compressed air can fix
lockups and reboots.

I also checked that all the cables inside the computer were plugged in and had not come loose.

I found out by testing the hardware in the computer that the power adaptor that plugged into the ac outlet was bad in this case.

Because the computer was rebooting by itself from windows and when i was in dos running diagnostic programs i suspected that the power adaptor might be bad.

I used the self-booting version of the PC-Check diagnostic program to run a full set of diagnostic tests on the computer.

This acer aspire all in one desktop computer had a desktop Serial ATA (SATA) 3.5 inch
mechanical hard disk drive in it and not a Solid-state drive (SSD).

I tested all the hardware in the acer aspire all in one desktop computer except the CD/DVD drive.

The tests that always passed in PC-Check when run on this computer are below.

The cache memory test i ran under the advanced diagnostics memory test menu always passed.

When i ran all the motherboard and cpu tests in PC-Check they always passed.

when i tested the processor i made sure to select each processor core before running all tests on that processor core to make sure that i tested all processor cores.

The Internal cache test for the hard drive always passed.

The Mechanics Stress Test for the hard drive always passed.

Some of the tests that passed did not pass every time they were run.

The tests that did not always pass in PC-Check when run on this computer are below.

For example one time when i ran the extended memory test by choosing Test System Memory it passed but the second time i ran the extended memory test the computer locked up. Also when i ran the video memory tests one time the tests passed and the next time the video memory tests were run the computer rebooted.

The only tests that always failed when run was the hard drive read and write tests.

The hard drive read and write tests i ran in PC-Check which failed are listed below.

Read Test
Read Verify Test
Non-Destructive Write Test
Destructive Write Test

These read and write tests always reported 1 or more bad sectors.

I used another program called Darik’s Boot And Nuke to test the hard drive as well. This program lets you erase the entire hard drive. This program was never able to finish erasing the hard while testing the computer. Everytime this program was used to try and erase the hard drive the computer would lock up or reboot before the program finished erasing the hard drive.

At this point i thought the problem had to be the power adaptor because whenever you have multiple pieces of hardware fail in your computer such as in this case the memory tests failing and the hard drive tests failing then you could suspect a power supply problem. In every case when you have multiple pieces of hardware fail when using diagnostics to test the hardware its not always a bad power supply causing it.

Just keep in mind that whenever you have multiple pieces of hardware failing and the computer is locking up and rebooting then this is usually a sign of a bad power adaptor or bad power supply but not always.

I ordered the restore and recovery discs from acer and a new power adaptor from ebay.

The adaptor i bought was for this model number computer but the end of the new power adaptor was to small to plug into the computer. I thought that acer might have made two different computers with the model number AZ1620-UR31P. I was thinking at the time that acer might have made both an all in one desktop computer with the same model as a laptop computer they made. This was the only adaptor i
could find for the AZ1620-UR31P model computers. The company I bought the power adaptor from sent me a small plug extension for free to make the adaptor plug into the back of the computer.

The power rating for the old adaptor is listed below.

AC Input for the old adaptor is 100-240v-,2A 50-60Hz
DC output for the old adaptor is 19V 7.8A

The power rating for the new adaptor is listed below.

AC Input for the new adaptor is 100-240v-,1.5A 50/60Hz
DC output for the new adaptor is 19V 7.1A

As you can see the old power adaptor outputs 7.8A and the new power adaptor outputs only 7.1A

I was concerned that the new power adaptor would not provide enough power for the computer at all times so i emailed the company i bought the adaptor from and they said that it won’t be any problem using the new adaptor because 7.1a is the rated current on the label but the actual ampere is higher than that for the adaptor.

The seller on ebay that i bought the power adaptor from was sourceswide. The website for sourceswide is http://www.sourceswide.com

Once i replaced the power adaptor then I ran the PC-Check diagnostic tests again on the motherboard, cpu, memory, video memory and hard drive and all the tests passed.

I ran the motherboard, cpu, memory and video memory tests more than once to make sure the computer did not lockup or reboot while using the new power adaptor.

I ran the hard drive tests in PC-Check last in the following order.

Read Test
Read Verify Test
Non-Destructive Write Test
Destructive Write Test

I was able to fix the bad sectors on this hard drive that developed because of the bad power adaptor using PC-Check.

PC-Check is a good computer hardware diagnostic program that can help you repair bad sectors on your hard drive. PC-Check does not have a bad sector repair option in it’s menus but the way to repair bad sectors with PC-Check is to use the option that erases all the data on the hard drive you want to remove the bad sectors from. This option is usually the Low Level Format, Destructive Write Test or Low Level Initialise Drive option. This option may be called something different in each version of PC-Check.

I also erased the drive using Darik’s Boot And Nuke program sucessfully using the new power adaptor without the computer locking up or rebooting on me. At this point because all the tests passed i used the restore and recovery discs i bought from acer to restore the computer back to the its original condition.

For a list or programs that can detect and repair bad sectors read our Data Recovery From Bad Sectors post.

For free data recovery software read our Free Data Recovery Software post.

For even more data recovery programs read our Data Recovery Software Experiences post.

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Data Recovery and Detecting Bad Sectors: My Personal Experiences Detecting Bad Sectors Example 3

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