Windows 7 Imminent hardware failure according to SMART

TRSS

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Joined
Apr 3, 2014
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Germany
This day was a lot of excitement for me since my main harddrive did not allow me to boot.

Here is my attempt to give you an image of what happened and where I need your help:
- booting pc as usual: splash screen of bios/mainboard
- booting gets stuck while loading windows drivers
- random colourful pixels appearing in top line of screen
- me rebooting system... until getting into the same situation

- inserting windows disc to boot windows live
- running chkdsk with parameter f which takes hours
- a lot of unreadable data segments being detected which are also deleted
- trying to reboot Windows 7 installation without success

- inserting ubuntu disc to boot ubuntu live
- mounting main hdd in order to access files
- every files are there as expected (also hidden and/or system files of Windows 7)
- checking Ubuntu's disk utility: Imminent HDD failure according to SMART data due to thousands of read errors and a bunch of bad sectors
- submitting 'sudo ntfsfix' in terminal which stops due to missing ntfs signature

So, here is the actual issue: Running Ubuntu I can view files on the concerned hdd normally even if the Windows as well as Linux tools tell me the harddrive is completely broken. It looks like it is simply the boot section of my hdd which prevents me from booting its Windows installation, so does it make sense to wipe all data except for my personal stuff in order to make it bootable again? On the other hand I wonder if I can fix the corrupted masterfiletable and ntfs signature via Ubuntu live/Windows live...

thanks for any tips
 
I think the first thing I would do is use your Ubuntu Live Distro to copy off all my critical data to an external resource (USB Hard Drive).
Then and only then after my data was safe would I attempt any repairs on that drive.
Boot from the Windows 7 Installation Media
and choose the repair link
If you're lucky it may work sort of automagically and tell you that it found some startup issues and repaired them.
If not you can try moving on into the advance trouble shooting area to a command prompt and try bootrec.exe to attempt a repair.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
 
What exactly does "rebuild the filesystem" mean?
Oh well, I don't know... since it says "missing ntfs signature" I wondered if there is a way of restoring/repairing/rebuilding it.

Also, nor chkdsk nor bootrec will work due to multiple reasons just like the not detectable Windows installation, the already mentioned file system problem and probably corrupted Master Boot Record (as I assume).

I am using Ubuntu right now again which is a pretty good OS with a nice interface..... too bad Windows applications won't work without some help like Wine xP I think this topic becomes odd now because Windows users won't be able to help me unless they use Ubuntu as well but nontheless this is a Windows forum.

thanks for help anyway
 
"missing ntfs signature"
That Ubuntu message may have something to do with either a "Dynamic" disk configuration or a "GPT" (Guid Partition Table) rather than a more standard "MBR" .
Not a Linux guy so I'm really not sure.
You may have a look at this http://www.partition-recovery.com/
and see if there is some method or means by which you could employ something like that into your recovery efforts.
Basically, I'm just guessing now..... trying to get you around a format and clean install.
Good luck
 
You may have a look at this http://www.partition-recovery.com/
and see if there is some method or means by which you could employ something like that into your recovery efforts.
Basically, I'm just guessing now..... trying to get you around a format and clean install.
Good luck
Yeah, I don't want to imagine all the hours I'd have to spend with babysitting my pc to get stuff working again. But who knows if this may the faster and easier way?

Uhm, does this partition recovery tool only work on Windows, ya? So I wonder how I am supposed to launch this thing in my situation...
 
I thought it provided a means to produce a bootable rescue CD/DVD/USB thumb drive, that you could boot from.
It's really just something I found when looking around for possible solutions.
If it's like some of the similar programs I've used you may have to install it onto a working Windows machine in order to create the bootable rescue media.
 
Failing that I guess you could connect the problem hard drive to a Windows machine with the program install on it
 
I thought it provided a means to produce a bootable rescue CD/DVD/USB thumb drive, that you could boot from
Thanks, I appreciate your time but it offers a .exe file which won't run on Ubuntu and I don't know how to get Wine working... perhaps we can close this thread because this is a Linux issue now.
 
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