Double HDD Failure?

Tellox

About a week ago, I felt bored, and decided to install fifa2002wc onto my PC to waste a couple of hours. So I installed, and when I opened the program, I heard a horrible grinding noise coming from inside my case. This of course, caused me to quickly restart.

I thought either I was hearing things, or the neighbours next door were drilling, or something to that effect. So I tried it again. And I got the same horrible grinding noise while it was changing resolution(It stops when the resolution is changed, and the splash screen appears). Clearly, my hard-drive was protesting against fifa.

So I decided to leave it, and go to bed instead. I left my computer on overnight,as I usually do, downloading Tv shows. When I woke up, I was greeted by a blue screen. The excact error eludes my memory. All I can remember is seeing "Kernel" wrote in there somewhere.

So I turned it off,and left it off for about an hour while I ducked downtown to buy pandora tommorow. When I got back, I heard a clicking noise coming from one of the HDD's. My computer restarted itself at the XPhome splash screen, and brought me to the boot menu.

I booted in safe mode, and ran system restore, and backlogged to about a week ago or so. I noticed when booting in safe mode, while listing all the drivers it was loading, It got stuck on one of them (once again, excact name eludes the memory). The clicking noise was now occuring every few minutes, leading me to think somethings broken.

When system restore started, I left the room, as I cba to watch the screen for 5mins or so while it system restores. On return, an error was on the screen, telling me that as windows did not shut down correctly, it is recommended I run system restore again. On the bright side, it actually booted this time.

I went to install pandora tommorow on my secondary drive (D), and the install went horribly slow. I decided to end task on it. As I did so, my computer froze up,and gave me a blue screen, reading "out of memory". And so another restart, and some more clicking.

I installed pandora tommorow onto my primary drive (C), and the install went fine. Before I went to play it, I tried to clear up a bit of space on that drive by moving about 3gb of files from there onto the \ drive. Upon doing so, I get the usual click click noises from one of the HDD's, and the \ folder stops responding. I end task on it, and get another out of memory error.

So I turn off computer,and decide its time to face facts, one of the HDD's are dead. note that the clicking only kicks in after the winXP splash screen. Anyway, I open up my case, and disconnect the power to the \ drive. Before the winxp splash came up, my computer did a harddrive consistancy check,and deleted 3 files in the process. And then continued on. Instead of hearing a click click noise after the winxp splash, its a horrible, horrible revving noise, that scared seven shades of shite out of me. It then gave me another blue screen, and the error this time was "Hard error Dumping physical memory"

And so I promptly gave it a hard shutdown, assuming the C:\ drive has had its day. Everything sentimental up to christmas had been backed up on the \ drive prior to a reformat then, so it didnt bother me terribly.

So I ran out and bought a new HDD, and put it in. Installed XP ect. I got all the drivers installed (bar mobo drivers,as for some reason,I thought they were generic.), and connected the power to the \ drive again. Upon boot, The first thing I heard was it clicking. Cuntymints. I also got the "PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK" error, as I hadnt got any RAID drivers installed.

Does this mean that both HDD's have failed?

leeroybrown

A double hard disk failure seems (very) highly unlikely.

I'd test both drives with the manufacturers drive testing tool. UltimateBootCD has links to most of them for individual download. They should be able to diagnose (and quite possibly fix) most HDD problems. I've had quite a lot of success with these tools in the past.

Cal

XP loads fine on new disk. Then old disk added. Then "PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK"

Looks like both disks set to master or slave.

Cal

Tellox

Secondary disk is set to slave. I also assumed the error is there because I've no RAID drivers installed. What I was worried about was it still clicking
Going to try the boot CD's when I get home.

But for now, Im having some problems installing mobo drivers. RAID,being one, as someone told me that there's minor difficulty involved in setting it up. And as its installed on boot, I cant go bugging for help online at that stage. Can anybody clear this up for me?

And secondly, although I installed the VIA Chipset that came with my mobo, it seems to refuse to install the video controller properly. (not: not the video card. The controller itself, listed under other devices). It gives me the exclamation mark in yellow circle, indicating that something isnt right. I installed the AGP Video Controller a few times, to no avail. Anybody got any ideas? I checked the DFI website (mobo is a DFI LanParty KT400a), And they couldnt provide any drivers that I dont already have on CD.

...yes, help. Please.

Paulw

Loud clicking sounds tend to indicate hardware failure on a disk. It's likely the disk heads are having a problem.

Basically, my advice would be to get any data you want off that disk, because I'll bet the disk will totally die soon.

But, it may also be a case that, for some reason, the disk isn't getting enough power, or the cables aren't secure.

Mutant_Fruit

clicking = death.

If possible, boot into dos and makesure all those windows files are deleted off your dying HD. It's possible that the dying HD is trying to load up windows.

Tellox

Just got my computer running properly on the new HDD I got, going to test out my two old ones as slave drives whenever I get the time.

But to my horror, I can hear a low-grade click coming from the new HDD. Its very very occasional, and the HDD tends to generally be noisy. I've heard grinding and scratch-like noises coming from it. Although these are rather quiet. This might be common, but up until now,I usually left the side of my case on.

Is this any cause for alarm?

note that it seems to be stable whenever I hear the click.

leeroybrown

The click is more than likely only the sound of the read heads docking/undocking/moving. Hard drives are surprisingly loud when you don't have them enclosed in the case.

Test the two original drives with the appropriate manufacturer test tool. Get the tool to do a surface scan too (which will take ages) in case the problems were caused by bad blocks on the platters.

The chance of one drive failing is reasonably low. The chances of two failing at the same time is miniscule. My guess would be that either it was a software problem and your partition table and filesystem got messed up or that one of the drives has a problem. Quite often drive problems can be corrected by the test tools (I've done it successfully in the past)