Hard disk sentinel told me that I had 1 bad sector, the hard disk health was at 99%, and the prediction it had for the HD running at optimal condition was 1000+ days... which is more than enough really.
The problem was that I was downloading some nature videos (no this isn't a euphemism for pr0n, I was *actually* downloading NatGeo documentaries on lions *edit: was proof reading, and read lions as loins...
), when we lost power unexpectedly. It wasn't a scheduled load shedding (rolling blackout), but the main wires outside our house had gone to hell (thankfully got replaced this afternoon by the electric company).
Anyway the UPS kicked in, and then eventually it lost juice and the computer turned off without shutting down properly while furiously writing the HD.
All this happened as I slept, and the UPS beeping didn't awaken me till it was too late.
When I turned my computer on later, it kept crashing etc, and there were weird slowdowns. HD Sentinel reported the error so here I am.
The messed up thing is that after this whole incident, last night, after backing up my data, when I decided to do a slow format, I ran into another issue. After 3 hours the slow format was at 73% (it is a 1.5TB Seagate, but I am not sure if it was that slow because of the size or the errors), when we suddenly lost power again unexpectedly.
The UPS is a dry battery (I am not using the wet battery UPSs' anymore because of the smell), and gives only 15 minutes of backup.
So yea I was praying the power would come back for the whole 15 minutes.
It didn't.
After the power came back at six in the morning, I woke up, turned the computer on, and the Windows startup CD was taking a really long time with the harddrive. I had to delete partition and do the slow format again. Amazingly it reported no hard drive errors.
The electric supply company people came by this afternoon to fix the burnt lines. Apparently a crow had landed on the transformer, causing it to blow, and the lines to burn. This had been the problem. It was why the power kept going I guess...
They finally replaced all the lines a few hours ago.
While I did the slow format this morning, I still decided to go with chkdsk /r as Scotty2Hotty (don't get excited Scott, it is just a prowrestler's name) suggested.
It has been an hour and it is still stuck at 50%, which it went to from 0% in half a minute.
A quick Google search reveals this is normal.
Fingers crossed, though all of this is covered in the warranty. Unfortunately that will be a hassle still, and who knows what Seagate will hand me back instead. I'd rather take my chances with this. If it doesn't work out, I can still go the warranty route.
