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Hard Drive Failure

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by paul681 1 view

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I have had 3 hard drives go on me in a span of 2 months. All looked like bad sectors. The manf. diagnostic program always came back with a fatal error code and the drive needed to be replaced.
These all occured in a PC that I built a few months ago. The first HD I put in was a WD and was 1.5 year old.
The 2nd one was a maxtor. It allowed me to load the OS then died. That one I brought back to the store.
The third one is also a maxtor 20GB. I have been using it without a problem for 3 weeks.
All of a sudden it crashes. When I run the diag program it gives me an error code that indicates the drive needs to be replaced.
When I booy up the computer it asks for a bootable device.
I cant access the drive at all. It does show in the CMOS.
Could this be the power supply??
These have all gone bad under the same case.
I can't believe I could have such bad luck as to have 2 brand new HD fail within a month.

Anybody have any Ideas.
I dont just want to throw another HD in there ubtiull I find out what if anything is causing this to happen.

12 replies

by purple713

It could be a problem with the power supply or the motherboard, or the ribbon cable. Try changing the ribbon cables first and then look at a possible problem with the motherboard.

by paul681

I have tried changing the cable already.
The IDE controller looks to be ok also as I have a CD as the slave and it is detected when I boot up with the floppy.
What other problems could there be with the motherboard?

by paul681

I have tried changing the cable already.
The IDE controller looks to be ok also as I have a CD as the slave and it is detected when I boot up with the floppy.
What other problems could there be with the motherboard?

by thechas

The first thing I would check is the power supply voltages. Even though other devices seem to be working, it is possible for the voltage to be out of spec, and cause problems.

Next, I would review how the drive is mounted.
Are there any strong magnets nearby?
Are the vents on the drive blocked?
Does the drive get too hot?
Is the drive mounted at an angle, or upside down?

Any of these can cause a very short drive life.

Do you shut down windows properly, or just kill the power? On ATX style systems in particular, it is a very bad idea to cut the AC power before the mb has shut the power supply off.

by paul681

the hard drive is near the system speaker and i thought this may be the problem.
there is a little speaker with a magnet that is about 6" away from the hard drive.
could that actually cause a problem,it came connected to the case.
everything else you luisted is a negative
where can i find what the ps voltages are sopposed to be?

by david balogh

I had EXACTLY the problem with your last drive, except mine was a Quantum (ironically enough the quantum HDD's are now owned by Maxtor)... i had to send the drive back, and theres nothing i could do about it. I've just had another problem with the replacement HDD, where windows wouldn't boot up one day, and it was making this funny noise, like a seek or something, but i could acess ALL my data when i slaved it into another computer.
BUT, for the two HDD's i had totally different cases, ergo, different power supplies, i now have a 450Watt P4 rated, so there is no problem with that, I also have a cooler, so i dont think its heat, but i have heard different thoughts (some good, some bad) on the use of the 7200 Rpm used.

I haven't been able to figure out just yet what exactly caused the HDD to go this time, but i did transport it around a bit, although in the OFF state it shouldn't matter.

Hope this has been some info for you, even though its not really a solution,
David

by paul681

i have a p4 300w ps and i checked the voltages and all are
within spec.
i should have my replacement hd by friday
could a speaker magnet do this if it 4 to 6 inches away from the hd????

by thechas

The system speaker magnet at 6" away is not enough to cause a problem for the hard drive.

As to what are the voltages suppossed to be just look up the AT or ATX power connector pinout.
It is in many MB/PS manuals.
The voltages should be within 5% of nominal.
The drive power connector has +5, gnd, gnd, +12.

It is possible that you have just had a run of bad luck with drives.
However, the last time I thought I had a bad drive, it turned out to be a MB problem. And yes, the other IDE devices worked fine.

Have you tried any of the drives in another system after they failed? It would be an interesting experiment.

by paul681

Yes I have tried the drives in other machines and they are
Toast no matter where I put them.
I did check the ps voltages and they are ok.

by Member 33864789

If the CD drive has been present at the same cable it might be a conflict between the drives that burns the interface in the harddrives, i would mount a seperate cable for the CD which also should improve the performance of your system and then maybe try an "old" inexpensive HDD first and see if that works for a month or longer maybe even on another IDE channel and then move it to the channel you are currently using.(not really the most exiting advice, sorry).

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