Dead or Dying Hard drive????

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bazil62

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#27287 20-Oct-2008 21:26

I recently put together a new PC and put my biggest hard drive (200GB Seagate) from my old PC(XP Pro,3800 AMD, 2Gig RAM) in it.(Which left the original 30GB drive in it) Only to find my new motherboard was dead. (It was a return so obviously the first guy must have fried it!)
Anyway I put the drive back into my old PC and everyhting was back to the way it was. For about 6 days. I left my PC to go have lunch and left a game running. When I got back the PC was locked up. No problem I thought and hit reset. It wouldn't boot. Another rest. and another until I was into my desktop....................only to have it lock up again.
To cut a long story short the PC will now boot up as long as the big drive isn't in there! (There haven't been any click of death noises either!) As a last test I booted up with the SATA cable disconnected but the power cable connected. So far so good and the PC booted up normally. Then I plugged the Sata cable in. Windows detected it. I opened up a window to explore the drive which was happily spinning away and then I heard it go silent. Looking at the screen the cursor was the little hour glass symbol on the window displaying the drive contents but became an arrow off it. Tried closing the window and Windows said it wasn't responding and finally the PC locked up. So something in this drive is really messing up. Any ideas fellow Geeks and Geekettes??????

w2krules

491 posts

Ultimate Geek

#172391 20-Oct-2008 21:41

So the drive shuts itself down after it's been spinning for a while? Doesn't sound good, but check it in another PC.

I hope you have a backup!

I was a geek before the word was invented!

bazil62

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#172400 20-Oct-2008 22:04

Yes it just seems to shutdown after a couple of minutes but as to why it locks up the PC??????????
I had already done a backup so nothing important lost. I might hook it up to my wife's PC and see what happens.

FredDag

206 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#172404 20-Oct-2008 22:27

Boot from a linux 'Live CD' and see.. that will rule out the OS.
If this is a new motherboard you could boot from a boot USD key with the ;Live CD' on it.

http://www.knoppix.org/

Tell us what you discover.

Fred.

w2krules

491 posts

Ultimate Geek

#172422 21-Oct-2008 02:40

bazil62: Yes it just seems to shutdown after a couple of minutes but as to why it locks up the PC??????????
I had already done a backup so nothing important lost. I might hook it up to my wife's PC and see what happens.

Normally when a HDD dies you get an error message during POST. So am not sure what's going on here - although it could be that the OS is getting in a loop trying to read the drive?

I was a geek before the word was invented!

bazil62

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#173823 27-Oct-2008 10:43

Since I need a new drive for my new PC I bought one and put it in my old PC and it installed formatted and works fine. Maybe later I can try and reformatt the troublesome one if it will let me.
Thanks for the advice!

aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#174039 28-Oct-2008 12:42

Basil62,

what do you mean by "click of death" ? Is this a symptom of a dying HDD? Can I get better description of this sound?

I am asking because the HDD on my laptop does a strange thing. It always worked just fine (and it still does), but every now and then there is a sound inside like a click-ing sound, like a mechanism moving through several steps. It is not the DVD drive, it is coming from another part of the laptop... and is not the kind of sound I get from my desktop when havily accessing the HDD. I hear that as well, but is is a rather normal "HDD accessing" noise. The clicking I mentioned is more like a small steel ball falling through a maze... maybe is not a good description, but this is how I visualise it... like a succession of 3-4 clicks, no more than 1 sec in total, repeating pretty much on a random basis, but I would say every 1/2 hour, maybe? I do not use the laptop myself, it is someone else, this is why I did not pay attention to the noise, considering the laptop always worked fine (Fujitsu Lifebook C1320 -bought new 3 years ago - 60GB HDD).

mobo Intel DH55PJ, RAM: 4GB RAM, Nova-T 500 HD + Avermedia Trinity tuner card, Geforce 520 video, 120GB SSD Sandisk + 640 WD + 1000SG, Win7 Home Prem 64-bit, Media Portal 1.15.0; BTC 9019URF Cordless Keyboard, Panasonic 55" (HDMI cable), HTPC Case Silverstone Grandia GD05B.

FredDag

206 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#174043 28-Oct-2008 12:49

>small steel ball falling through a maze

A very good description of the click of death. I strongly suggest that any important data on that drive be saved elsewhere.
Another worth while undertaking is to goto the HDD manufacturers site and download a diagnostic program.. it may show what the problem is.

*shudder* the click of death. just watching these makes me shudder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Faq8tetLRM

Fred

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FredDag

206 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#177651 12-Nov-2008 21:56

The ultimate click of death reference site...
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php