3 HDD's - same problem!

Voo

Voo

Voo

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Hull, East Yorks
Need some advice on a problem i appear to be having with Hard Drive's recently.

I used to have a 74Gb WD Raptor and a 150Gb WD Raptor (both less than a year old) installed in my current machine until i got back home from a LAN event in the UK. When i plugged everything back in, the machine wouldn't boot up intermittently and when it did boot up it would crash occasionally. Both drives started clicking when these crashes occured and so i was forced to remove them.

I managed to use an older Maxtor 200Gb (3 years old) to get my pc back up and running on a fresh install of XP and retrieved all the data from the 2 Raptors.

Yesterday the same problem happened with the Maxtor, i was in a game and the PC crashed, i rebooted and the drive started clicking and wouldn't load into Windows XP. I rebooted again and got invalid system disk error message. I then checked BIOS and the Maxtor drive is no longer detected.

So i'm looking for ideas on what is causing this to happen, i refuse to believe 3 HDD's can all have the same problem within 2 months of each other.
 
Reality|Bites said:
Either your memory causing read/write errors, Faulty cables or faulty contoller on the motherboard then.
Click to expand...

+1

Turn the PC off (on the back of the PSU so the mobo is really dead) then reseat RAM and all cables. (You could possibly also reseat the CPU but I would say its highly unlikely to be the CPU/CPU seating that is at fault.) Then turn the PC on, go into the BIOS, load setup defaults to ensure stability. Then bootup the PC and run Orthos and MemTest86 etc to test system stability. I would also do some copy tests - copy a large quantity of data (Windows folder?) from one drive to another so the data has to travel over various data cables and controllers. Then do a file comparison (use command line "FC /B" command is one way) to see if they copied OK. Another way would be to generate e.g. SHA/MD5 checksums for the files and then copy them and generate the signatures again. If they differ they were corrupted in transit and you've still got a controller/cable/mobo problem. (A very useful little utility here is HashTab: http://www.beeblebrox.org/hashtab Then checking/getting the checksum/hash is simply right-click, properties...)

Then once you're convinced all is well, do a clean XP install to make sure you've got no corrupt OS files anymore.
 
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Thanks for the input, i've had a look on WD's site and they suggest just keeping the hdd's power cable plugged in and remove the data cable to see if it still clicks.

Failing that, will use their diagnostic tools to check the disks.

Cheers
 
What are your 12v and 5v lines like, if disks are dying like this then I'd suspect the PSU after having checked that all the cabling is secure.
 
Just had another thought, heat build up within the case could cause this. I used to have something similar using my old case when I used to run an all SCSI system, the disks would die every 5-6 months and eventually I found out it was related to the disks getting very hot due to lack of any air flowing across them. I them modded the case by installing a HD drive tray on the bottom of the case so that the front intake fan was blowing across it and hey presto problem solved.
 
I dont know how to check the 12v and 5v lines.

As for heat, the HDD's have a 120mm fan right next to them.

My case is the NZXT Lexa - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-000-NX&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=35

I've had the 2 Raptors connected up (power only) all day today and they are not clicking, but they are also not being accessed either, nor do they click on boot up.

Is there anywhere that could tell me the power comsumption of every component i'm using so i can work out if i need higher than 580W?
 
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