OT Help! My PC is eating hard disks

[Peter Scott]

I've built quite a few PCs and not met this before. I'm baffled.

Intel quad 9450, Asus PK5C board, Kingston DDR2 PC6400 4Gb, Western Digital SATA III 1 Tb disks (2), Win XP Pro SP3, Antex 500W PSU, APC UPS, Western Digital 2Gb Network Storage, network mostly wired and this machine is using gigabit.

I built it two years ago with two Samsung 500 Gb disks. About five months ago one disk failed, so I bought the first Western Dig. Fortunately all data was on the NAS device or my iPod. About two months ago the boot disk failed so I bought another WD and did a complete re-install. Today I switched off the computer and used the master power switch on the PSU. I switched on again and neither disk was detected by BIOS. I did several power cycles with no effect. I replaced the BIOS battery while I was at it.

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Peter Scott

[John Rumm]

Power or heat related problems would be the first guess. Antec[1] PSUs are usually pretty decent, however for the price it might be worth swapping out just on the off chance.

Now the UPS. What type is it? An APC BackUPS won't help much in your circumstance - you need a line interactive one that can fill in sags and brownouts as well as slipping and filtering spikes and surges. Some of the APC RS prefix ones seem to do a decent job in that respect[2]

Heat would be another thing to check. How hot are the drives running? The MTBF tumbles quite fast once the nominal temperature is exceeded.

[1] I assume you ment Antec rather than the soldering iron manufacturer! [2] Had a customer out in the sticks suffering repeated hardware failures. Adding a line interactive UPS about five years back fixed the problems and they have been fine since. The do get through UPS batts reasonably often though - looking at the Powerchute logs explain why - its quite busy!

[Peter Scott]

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott

[Peter Scott]

Thanks John. I hadn't realised that about UPSs. Mine is an RS800 and I only use about 18% of its capacity. I will look into the line interactive business to see if mine does that. Your comment about heat is interesting. It is now working again as I said in another message in this thread, but with the side off. Only a bit warm right now. I wonder? I'll leave it open and see if the problem recurs.

Many thanks for your help

Peter Scott

[Howard Neil]

One little thought, are the disks SATA? If so, are the data cables firmly attached?

[Howard Neil]

You may find this free utility of help:-

[Andrew Gabriel]

The chance of two disks failing at the same instant without there being a common cause is very small.

Have you tried the disks in another system, in case the disks are fine but something else with the original system is broken? Do the disks spin up when power is applied, and stay spinning? If not, what noise to they make, if any?

What were the symptoms of the first two disk deaths? (I'm wondering if the PSU is toasting them.)

[Peter Scott]

Yes, thanks. Checked, then unplugged and replugged. My first thought too. Do you find SATA cables are more likely to come loose? My first PC with SATA drives.

Peter Scott

[Mike Halmarack]

Couldn't resist such a direct and personal call for help. :-)

I've had all sorts of hard drive failure problems due to incorrect BIOS settings but the standard diagnosis is rogue PSU, followed by heat stroke.

However as you have the expense of replacement of hard drives covered, your main problem (and it is the big one) is getting the installation and configuration back to optimum. There's a very simple answer to this. Drive images or clones which can be restored in under an hour onto a new or reformatted hard drive. A sort of digital reincarnation but returning as the same boring old fart rather than someone new and exciting.

[Peter Scott]

Lots of great help there. Thanks to all.

Most probable seems to be heat (got the side off and will monitor and perhaps cool) or the PSU. I'll certainly try the utility.

Peter Scott

[Howard Neil]

Well, they certainly don't fit as firmly as the old IDE cables although you can now buy latching cables.

[Theo Markettos]

Keep an eye on the heat. As fans dry up, get clogged, etc, the temperature gradually rises. I set up one machine (on 24x7) to shut down when the temperature of the hard drive exceeded 50 degC. At the time it was about 45 degC. A year or two later I found that it was regularly shutting down . I ummed and arred and increased the limit to 53 degC. Another year went by, and the machine started regularly shutting down due to overtemp of 53. Evidently the fans were getting less efficient as time went on.

Theo

[Cicero]

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If you're using Windows try downloading 'Speedfan' which will track various temperatures (CPU, drives, etc.)provided that your motherboard has the right sensors. You can have several instances of Speedfan going at the same time so that you can see the temperatures in the systray.

Cic.

[John Rumm]

Judging by the RS prefix yours should be ok. The slightly cheaper ES and CS prefix ones just include surge and spike suppression. The RS ones include Automatic Voltage Regulation, which is what you want.

What is the airflow through the case like?

[John Rumm]

A very useful utility I would recommend:

not only knows how to read temperature sensors of all types, but also includes the capability to interrogate the hard drives SMART data record. Hence you can see if potential problems are looming on disks.

[Tabby]

You say both hdds failed, then started working again on the same pc. So, how do you know the fault was with the hdds rather than the mobo or hdd leads?

With PATA a dodgy lead can cause such things, I dont know about SATA though.

NT

[Andy Champ]

I second that. Excellent utility. Look at the SMART info too, may have a clue. And check the PSU voltages!

Andy

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Peter Scott writes

Think: what's the common factor? Think PSU.

[TheOldFellow]

Are you sure that the disks are dead? I've sometimes have seen situations where the disks seem dead, but are just a little slow to respond when totally cold (it might be the disk controller on the mobo, though). Letting the system warm up before a reboot seems to help.

I've also seen disks that start to do this in later life.... Bit like me really.

R.

[Peter Scott]

Seems pretty wild out of the back. One large fan. The Antec case has lots of holes but I gave up on fitting the front inward fan. Just couldn't see how to do it. Another go I think. Crystal Disk shows 28degC on both drives and the drives haven't failed again. I'll look into drive coolers. Is there a thermal cutout on drives that switch them off if overheated? Could explain it, but why both at the same time, and why after a period of power down? All very odd. Oh yes, no dust build-up.

Thanks again

Peter Scott