Cannot boot into windows - HDD failure?

Supercow

Supercow

Supercow

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Got myself 2 brand spanking new 500GB Samsung Spinpoints and went through the arduous task of reinstalling.

All running fine for a few days, switched the PC off last night, and when I tried to switch it on this morning - can't load into windows :(

Bios posts fine, bios sees both drives just fine - but when Windows loading bar things runs past - it just keeps going, untill the pc resets itself.
Here's the weird thing, as soon as the bar has gone past about 2 times, there is a ticking/click sound everytime it passes again after that. Does that about 4 - 5 times and then stops. This happens every time without fail.

Cant boot into safe mode either, lists all those sys drivers and things and the PC resets.

Can I safely assume it's a dead hard drive?
Why on earth would it run fine for a few days, and this morning for no reason at all it's Fubar?
 
It may be a dead hdd, but it may also be a raid driver gone fubar, the usual thing windows does when it doesn't find the ide/raid drivers is a reboot.

What happens if you boot from another hdd and try to read the RAID drives in windows?
 
No software as such - least none that I know of.
Not thought of the raid drivers to be honest snowdog. I only had Vista update all my drivers etc - think it's worthwhile updating from Gigabyte's site in stead? (have a DS3p)

edit: still makes that ticking sound though when the hard drive is trying to be accessed by the OS - installed the OS on the other HDD last night, and I had a couple of freeze up's with the new one too.

hmmm
 
check the samsung website there are test programs on there you should be able to use on the drives.

could try just one drive or installing the raid drivers supplied with the mobo if it will let you.
 
Countcussy said:
Dumb question, but can`t you boot from the XP/Vista CD and check from there? Either using standard disk check tools or recovery console?
Click to expand...

you can do, try the fixmbr /fixboot options etc, but you're better off using the manufacturers software to check the state of the drive itself
 
I have x2 WD SATA HDD running under IDE mode in the HDD setting, sometimes if windows shuts down unexpectedly the HDD setting changes to something else (can't remember).
When this happens the computer will keep restarting at the windows logo.

Check your settings just to make sure it is not in the bios.
 
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