Constant Hard Drive failures??

[rikky]

Hi folks, hopefully some of you clever people will be able to help on this one. About 2 months ago I bought a new 2TB Hard Drive to boost my pc storage and have had nothing but problems ever since.

On trying to add this new hard drive to my PC I found it to be D.O.A. - I tested via different sata cables/headers and it wouldn't even spin, unfortunately whilst doing this and swapping connectors over I somehow also managed to lose my 1TB Samsung sytem drive - which also became Dead as a Doughnut!!

So I RMA'd both hard drives and bought a replacement Samsung system drive - but it too was D.O.A. which started making me suspicious, well another 2 hard drives have failed on me and each time not given me any warning whatsoever apart from 2 days ago whilst copying files from my 1.5TB Samsung HD I noticed it was transferring very slowly and then shortly after disappeared from "My Computer" never to be seen again and at the same time my Sata DVD burner also appears to have died (though it still is getting power).

Now I am guessing that this could be a problem with either:
A) My motherboard >> Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R >> most likely??
B) Power Supply >> Corsair HX520W

I still have about 4TB of storage onboard my PC and I am worried this is going to die before I get a new rig built and this one sorted, so does anybody have any thoughts on what would be the realistic cause of these failures Temps are fine on all hard drives so I would rule that out for a start especially with it being 3 x low power storeage drives that are idle most of the time ...

thanks in advance guys.

 

[wonko]

I can see why you're looking for a common cause after that many DoAs / failures.

Apart from mechanical damage/impacts or temperatures (which you say is OK) I can't think of any obvious other causes. Did you manage to test any of the new/dead drives in another pc (or via a usb caddy) to prove they are truly dead?

For the mobo, a faulty sata controller can obviously stop the sata ports from working, but I can't see it as likely that it could cause permanent physical damage to an attached HDD. For the PSU, the BIOS will probably give you rough 3.3/5/12V levels and might inidcate a problem but won't prove all is OK.

I'm presuming you've been disconnecting and attaching drives while the pc is shutdown... were the 'dead' drives detected by the BIOS during boot?

 

[rikky]

Hiya, thanks for your reply wonko.

On the first drive (that took out my system drive as well) I tested both drives in my brothers pc and they were both dead - didn't spin and couldn't be detected in the bios, I also took my system drive to a local pc shop and they tested it and confirmed it as being dead. Three of these drives have been RMA'd and confirmed as being dead.

With the last failure also taking out my sata dvd burner I would rule out heat being the cause and that failure is the only one to actually happen with the pc being used and not rebooted to find a failure ... any idea where I would find those voltage reading in this gigabyte motherboard as I shall have a look.

As I say seems very strange for all these drives to just basically die on me - had this pc up and running for over 2 years and never had any problems whatsoever so it is not as if it is a new build.

thanks for your help
rikky

 

[wonko]

Hi rikky,
if you go into the bios setup (normally pressing delete while booting) there should be a "Health" page or similar that will cover temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. (There may be a utility that comes with the mobo that allows you to see them from within windows too). The measured voltages should be within a few percent of the nominal levels - if they are much different it suggests a psu problem. If the psu has developed a fault that creates voltage transients/spikes then that could conceivably cause damage to drives, so just because the voltage levels look ok doesn't mean there isn't a psu problem.

Have you by any chance added a power munching graphics card lately (i.e. is the psu loaded more than 'normal')?

 

[rikky]

OK just to bring you up to date with this ...

Checked the voltages in the bios and they were spot on, but yesterday I restarted my PC and low and behold my Pioneer dvd burner (which I still had connected) showed up as being available again ... today I have connected up the hard drive which disappeared from sight and it too seems OK!!

Now I have not done anything for this to happen as I tested the Pioneer drive connectors originally when it failed - disconnected the sata cable from motherboard and drive and then reconnected. I also tried it with the cables for the other optical drive I have connected - but no joy!! Same thing with the hard drive - in fact I tested it again just 4 or 5 days ago ... dead as a corpse.

Anybody any idea how this could happen - must be the motherboard, or PSU??

thanks
rikky.