2 Hard Drives broke in 1 week.

Last week my IDE maxtor 80GB HDD died after I was overclocking my pc. I thought overclocking couldn't break hard drives so I thought it was a coincidence, but now the spare HDD I was using (Maxtor IDE 20GB) has just done exactly the same after I tried overclocking again.

It's saying 'please select a proper boot device or insert boot media into boot device and try again' right after the bios post screen. The HDD's have been tried in another pc and they don't work either. They are both detected in the bios correctly still.

Is there anything that can be done to fix these hard drives or are they completly broke?

Thanks

Sounds like a completely corrupted drive. A low level format should fix it... Obviously though, you lose all data on it, including anything which could have been saved.

They are recognised in BIOS and therefore it must be something to do with the data - so long as they aren't making any clunking noises....

Thanks, I have formatted the 20GB drive it and I'll put windows on tomorrow.

I didn't think of trying a format because when my 80GB hdd broke It wouldn't let me read from any other drives or format it.

Here lies your problem: Maxtor

Seriously, do yourself a favour, and get rid of those Maxtors. Get a real drive in, such as a Hitachi or Western Digital.

basmic said:

Get a real drive in, such as a Hitachi or Western Digital.

Click to expand...

I second that!

mate are you sure there broke, go into the boot device priority and make sure your windows drive is the 1st.

cos on mine the default is my hitachi ide, and i always have to change to to the western digital sata (win drive)

and it says what yours was saying...

My 80GB is dead but my 20GB is working again so I will get a new drive soon as I need more than 20GB.

I use the pc for gaming but probably will not use more than 80GB. Should I get the 80GB samsung/hitachi/seagate Sata II?
Basmic you suggested the western digital, the 80GB one is only SATA would I be better off getting this or getting a sata II HDD.

Is sata or sata II much faster than ide and would I be able to notice the difference.

I would, personally, suggest Hitachi over Western Digital - purely for the speed, and reliability.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 NCQ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A30356) (HD-000-HI) - £38.72
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31637) (HD-001-HI) - £55.17

For the sake of £16.45, I would get the 160gb drive.

A 250GB WD can be had for £65 plus var, looks to be the sweet spot of price/capacity. Seems 350GB+ aren't as such good value.

If you get an 80GB, Hitachi or seagate. I just bought 4x80 GB for a new RAID0+1 array and they are good drives. Gave them a quick run through but haven't got the array up and running yet.

I used to buy maxtors all the time, the newest are rubbish in my experience. There's a good reason why they didn't offer more than a year warranty with the things (I had 2 D'Max 9 die in the same week, one out of warranty by 2 months and one about 10 months old, so just in).

Using one as a paperweight at the moment - about all it's good for.

I'd suggest any other brand - just check out the warranty period they offer and make sure it's 3 or 5 years. I have maxtors running with fans pointing at them and they are still quite a bit hotter than the Seagate/Western Digi/Samsung drives I have in my boxes.

I use nothing but Samsungs now in systems i build for people unless they insist on something else.Made the mistake of using a 250gig Maxtor for my brother in law and, YES ITS BROKEN !!!

Seagate are good drives too.