System Disk Failure

Update 12/31/2012:

I got some errors reported on drive C: from the HP hardware diagnostics. Just in case this is a real problem, I decided to make a new disk image. The backup failed with this message:

The operation failed due to a device error encountered with either the source or the destination. If
the source or destination volume is on a disk, run CHKDSK /R on teh source or destination volume,
and then retry the operation. (0x8078012D)

Additional Information:
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. (0x8007045D)

A web search for the I/O device error code yielded an suggestion by a microsoft person to turn off "shadow copies" on the drives. The forum is here. A search for 0x8078012D brings me to this forum, which also has some interesting suggestions.

Now running CHKDSK /R on drive U: Drive U: checks out fine.

Now checking out drive C: which needs to be done during boot...bad news on this. The drive is in worse shape than I assumed. CHKDSK fails in progress with a blue screen crash. The blue screen just flashes up for less than a second, but I managed to take a picture of it. The error is BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO, which web research shows is a corrupted registry. After the blue screen, it tries to reboot, which results in a bad mbr error, so this thing is probably toast.

Backup policy change

I have been telling people that I periodically make an image of the system drive, but I have not been making them often enough. To top that off, I deleted the most recent image in order to make a new image of this drive before replacing it. Of course, this failed, so I no longer have an image. Dumb move. It is a good time to do a clean build anyway, but I need to start doing image dumps once a week or so and always make sure the most recent one is available.

Replacing the drive

Having not such good luck with the Seagate drives, I am trying a Western Digital Caviar Black drive, which get good reviews, and have a 5 year warranty.

Model: WD1002FAEX
Serial Number: WCATRA155218

This is a 1TB 7200 RPM SATA drive with a dual processor. According to overclocking and gaming sites, this has higher quality build and is significantly faster than moderately lower end drives.

Recovery Log

• Physically installed new drive
• Booted with recovery disk 1
• Ran diagnostics. Everything passed except the bad drive. The new drive and the V/U drive passed tests.
• Disconnected everything except keyboard and mouse, plus new drive. Temporarily disconnected other internal hard drives.
• Started recovery. It ran without any problems. Did some initial network stuff, but need to get rid of the home group stuff.
• Downloaded Firefox and created Kits directory tree. Now editing this file with the recovered machine.
• Disable homegroups because I only have one other win7 computer.
  • Right click on "Homegroup" in the explorer navigation pane.
  • Select "Change HomeGroup settings" and click on "Leave the homegroup..." in the resulting dialog. I did not have to do this because I never joined it.
  • Go to Services and change the Startup type of "HomeGroup Listener" and "HomeGroup Provider" to "Disabled"
• Set up SMB network workgroup
  • Right click properties on Computer in the start menu
  • Click Change settings on the dialog and fill in blanks.
    • Computer description: Ed's Desktop
    • Computer Name: ejbdesk1
    • Workgroup: AMR
  • Reboot