You need to read smart and see what's shown there (and post a screenshot?). You can usually tell the state of the drive pretty conclusively just by looking at those data.

But usually if you are able to to see bad blocks with surface scan or write/read errors happen in OS the drive is pretty much dead. Unless of course it is some sort of compatibility issue, but that is impossible to tell with info provided.

To begin with - are you using 80 wire cable?

As for the connectors - IDE1 and IDE2 are connected to chipset integrated controller, up to ATA33. IDE3 and IDE4 are connected to separate controller which supports up to ATA66. 3 and 4 are going to be faster, but you need to be careful which mode the controller is set to (you probably do not want raid) and from compatibility point of view chipset ports are always better, at least in my experience...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-09-09, 00:37:

You need to read smart and see what's shown there (and post a screenshot?). You can usually tell the state of the drive pretty c […]
Show full quote

You need to read smart and see what's shown there (and post a screenshot?). You can usually tell the state of the drive pretty conclusively just by looking at those data.

But usually if you are able to to see bad blocks with surface scan or write/read errors happen in OS the drive is pretty much dead. Unless of course it is some sort of compatibility issue, but that is impossible to tell with info provided.

To begin with - are you using 80 wire cable?

As for the connectors - IDE1 and IDE2 are connected to chipset integrated controller, up to ATA33. IDE3 and IDE4 are connected to separate controller which supports up to ATA66. 3 and 4 are going to be faster, but you need to be careful which mode the controller is set to (you probably do not want raid) and from compatibility point of view chipset ports are always better, at least in my experience...

Before, when I first started getting these Scan Disk issues, it was detecting bad blocks. The last time, however, there didn't appear to be any. But I wasn't about to let it run for several hours again to find out. The surface scans I've run with Seagate Tools and Super FDISK haven't turned up any issues. Same right after it's reformatted.

I am using an 80 wire cable, yeah. Though I've had to hook up a male to female adapter as IDE 1 and 2 are 39 pin whilst 3 and 4 are 40. For my motherboard, IDE 1 and 2 are controlled by the BIOS whereas 3 and 4 are a separate chip/controller.

Rather than re-upload all the pics again, I'll link to the other thread I made, which was a different hard drive issue. It shows all the options I have in the BIOS.

Re: Struggling at setting up HDDs correctly

Unfortunately I have no way of being able to tell if IDE 3 and 4 have LBA enabled. Super FDISK and the Seagate Tools seem to think so, but there's no option to adjust in the BIOS or the controller's BIOS.

So far, since connecting it back to IDE 2, it all seems fine. And Alcohol 120% hasn't crashed whilst creating some CD images to the drive.

Then it would point towards some compatibility issue with controller. It happens. I personally try to avoid such controllers if i can for this reason.

Still worth checking smart though...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-09-09, 01:45:

Then it would point towards some compatibility issue with controller. It happens. I personally try to avoid such controllers if i can for this reason.

Still worth checking smart though...

It could well be. What/where do you mean by smart though?

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 01:51:

It could well be. What/where do you mean by smart though?

This:

Do not pay too much attention to any "health" or whatever any utility used to read it shows, but actual data will indicate most issues that exist.

For example attribute 05 indicates number of bad blocks which were reallocated by the drive, C5 indicates number of blocks which can not be read but were not reallocated yet. If both are non-zero the HDD is very likely bad to a point of not being worth trying to do anything with. C7 would show interface transfer errors, for example because of bad cable. Etc.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-09-09, 02:14:

This: […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 01:51:

It could well be. What/where do you mean by smart though?

This:

The attachment smart.JPG is no longer available

Do not pay too much attention to any "health" or whatever any utility used to read it shows, but actual data will indicate most issues that exist.

For example attribute 05 indicates number of bad blocks which were reallocated by the drive, C5 indicates number of blocks which can not be read but were not reallocated yet. If both are non-zero the HDD is very likely bad to a point of not being worth trying to do anything with. C7 would show interface transfer errors, for example because of bad cable. Etc.

Ohhh, that. That was the utility I couldn't remember the name of. Crystal Disk. Yeah, the last I saw, everything seemed fine, but I'll give it another check. But thanks for clarifying what to check. 😀

Just seem to have having some issues finding Crystal Disk Info for Windows 9x/98. I can't remember which one I tried before, but I don't appear to have it saved for some reason.

Yeeeeaaahhh, I think the HDD is faulty. Just re-booted and it complained of bad sectors again. Tried to go through the Scan Disk. Of course, I can't find out for definite as I can't find Crystal Disk Info for 98 anywhere. 🙁 There's Crystal Disk Mark, but it doesn't have the same info; it looks too simplified. And if it was never released for 9x, then what version at least works? Because I definitely used it before.

Went back to an old thread of mine, which discussed health checking software, and yeah - there is no version of CrystalDisk Info for Windows 98. Only XP and above. Damn. Looks like it was SpeedFan I used before. Only this time, loading it up, it doesn't even list any of my HDDs. 🙁

Can't use Hard Disk Sentinel either. Says it needs a S.M.A.R.T. driver. Not sure where to get that from. Nothing much is coming up on Google.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 13:45:

Can't use Hard Disk Sentinel either. Says it needs a S.M.A.R.T. driver. Not sure where to get that from. Nothing much is coming up on Google.

Have you tried the DOS version?

https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_dos.php

douglar wrote on 2025-09-09, 16:56:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 13:45:

Can't use Hard Disk Sentinel either. Says it needs a S.M.A.R.T. driver. Not sure where to get that from. Nothing much is coming up on Google.

Have you tried the DOS version?

https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_dos.php

I haven't, no. Didn't realise there was one. Thanks. 😀

Still trying to figure out what I need to install to get the S.M.A.R.T. drivers on.

Don't think 9x supports SMART data...

Try MHDD 4.6 for DOS, and run a normal scan on it ("F4" key or type "SCAN" when you launch it). Or better yet, plop the HDD inside an XP machine and launch Crystal Disk Info from there.

kotel wrote on 2025-09-09, 18:03:

Don't think 9x supports SMART data...

Try MHDD 4.6 for DOS, and run a normal scan on it ("F4" key or type "SCAN" when you launch it). Or better yet, plop the HDD inside an XP machine and launch Crystal Disk Info from there.

Ahh. Sadly I don't have an XP machine. But thanks for the suggestion, I'll give MHDD a try. 😀 Thing is, I could've sworn I ran something like Crystal Disk Info on my 98 machine. If not, it was definitely Mark because I posted a screenshot from that in another thread. Either way, I thought I ran some sort of test in Windows, even if it doesn't support SMART data. So no idea what that was or how.

This is the first test from Hard Disk Sentinel DOS

According to that it's perfectly fine. 😮 I'm not sure it's giving me the full picture though. Performance is definitely a problem. I have some 80 IDE cables, though they're technically 39 pin, not 40. So I'll have to see if there are any 80 40 pin connectors. At the moment, it's using an 80 pin connector, but coupled with a male to female adapter.

These are the SMART details from MHDD:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 19:44:

These are the SMART details from MHDD:

The attachment IMG_4549.JPG is no longer available

Seems to me like the storage device is saying is that it's fine, but the controller is telling the operating system that there are problems. The root cause is likely one of these:

1. failing IDE controller in the system
2. cables not working at the speed negotiate between the controller and the storage device
3. an incompatibility between the controller device driver & the storage device firmware
4. edge case system memory that works fine with the CPU but fails intermittently on DMA requests

douglar wrote on 2025-09-09, 20:33:

Seems to me like the storage device is saying is that it's fine, but the controller is telling the operating system that there a […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-09, 19:44:

These are the SMART details from MHDD:

The attachment IMG_4549.JPG is no longer available

Seems to me like the storage device is saying is that it's fine, but the controller is telling the operating system that there are problems. The root cause is likely one of these:

1. failing IDE controller in the system
2. cables not working at the speed negotiate between the controller and the storage device
3. an incompatibility between the controller device driver & the storage device firmware
4. edge case system memory that works fine with the CPU but fails intermittently on DMA requests

Hmm. Curious. I hope it's not the first possibility. Could using an 80 cable with a male to female adapter be causing an issue with the speed? I can't seem to find any 80 cables that are exactly 40 pins, only 39, so I'm not able to connect it completely from drive to bus.

Not sure if I already have the latest driver installed for the controller. 1.25 was what I installed. I'll have to see if I can find the latest firmware for the HDD. I take it nothing can be done if it's failing intermittently?