Hard drive keeps failing

rgrebby

rgrebby

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Richard
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I have a 500GB disk where all my work was on. my computer failed so I bought some new drives and move my stuff across.

Now, I have a good backup and I had the old 500gb in as well, just as an extra backup. Although before putting in a new PSU this drive kept on failing now and then. basically locking the PC up.

Is there anything I can do to scan this disk to see if it is no good?
 
Yes. Download Smartfan and install it - it contains a SMART analysis tool that will read the info from the disk and give you a rough idea of what sort of health it's in.

Personally speaking though, if I was under ANY doubt, it'd go in the bin - storage is cheap these days and not worth the risk in my opinion.

Cheers,
James
 
ah i think I have it. it doesnt seem to do anything apart from tell me that my hard disk is a little warm..
 
Are you saying since putting in a new PSU the drive started to fail or was it before?
The best way to scan a hard drive is to get a cd called http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Basically burn this free iso to a cd and boot from it. It contains many useful tools for checking parts to any pc and drives etc.
I use it alot as it's lightweight and easy to use. I use it alot at work.
 
rgrebby said:
Is there anything I can do to scan this disk to see if it is no good?
Click to expand...
Try HD Tune and see what sort of results that throws up.

What make is the drive? Some of the manufacturers have their own diagnosis tools that you can run and they're usually a reliable barometer when it comes to errors.
 
You need to make sure that it's not the ide/sata port on the pc board failed or failing, or the cable or power supply.

As for checking the hard drive, the manufacturer provides their own downloadable utility for this.

To save a lot of time, take a look at the hard drive itself. If it has the name Maxtor on it, just chuck it straight in the bin. :lol:
 
Oh yes i agree with MisterE on the maxtor thing. Had so many of them fail on me it's just plain annoying!
 
Are you sure it's the HD that's the problem? I've never heard of a drive failure locking a pc up.

You said your pc failed. Did you buy a new pc or get the broken one repaired? You said you put a new psu into the pc, if the old one failed it could have damaged some of the hardware in the pc, so don't rule out memory, motherboard, cpu, graphics card, soundcard or anything else connected to the motherboard. Also a cheap underpowered PSU could cause lockups in a pc.

On top of all that, driver problems or software conflicts could cause a lockup.

You can ignore all that if the drive is making more noise than usual, such as grinding, clicking or rattling noises when the pc tries to access it.
 
I have an external drive that causes my machine to hang after a while, usually whilst navigating around in explorer - I plugged it into another USB port and its behaved since - plug it back into the other port and it craps out again.

If I plug a different external drive into the same port it works fine :cuckoo:
 
It never occurred to me you could have been talking about an external drive. :bonk:

If it is an external try another port on the pc.

A tip for anyone with an USB device that causes problems when plugged into front ports on a pc, put them in a port at the back of the pc. The ports at the back of a pc are soldered onto the motherboard and will deliver enough power, the ones at the front of the pc are connected to a plug on the motherboard and can sometimes be slightly underpowered and that can introduce instability.
 
its an internal SATA drive.
I upgraded some parts since I figured I might as well when I ordered the new HD's
I tried the old 500gb in the new setup and it wouldnt work for long. I have not had a good run with it since adding the new PSU.
Before adding the new 850W PSU I was using a 550W, AMD X4 9980, GF8800 GT, 4gb 800Mhz ram, SB Audigy EX2, 4 SATA Hard disks and a VD drive.

I do have the 125w CPU and not the earlier 140W version but I still think that the 550W PSU was struggling which is why I bought the 850W one.

Most annoying thing, my old Mobo had 6 SATA slots plus 2 for raid, this one only had 4 so I cant have as many normal disks :(
I might go ahead and do a raid setup for the boot disk, or maybe my main work disk. Just not 100% on how to set it all up.
 
rgrebby said:
Most annoying thing, my old Mobo had 6 SATA slots plus 2 for raid, this one only had 4 so I cant have as many normal disks :(
Click to expand...

I've bought PCI cards with IDE ports on them to add more drives. I'd guess you can get them with SATA ports on them by now.
 
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