I have both a 150gig WD Raptor HD (10k rpm) and a 500gig WD Caviar. Both connected with sata cables, and non-sata power cables (white 4pin). The 150gig had Vista installed on it.
The death of the first drive - 150gig
So randomly this weekend I had an error during boot time. It said I was missing some file, and windows could not boot. It mentioned trying to use the "repair windows" option on the vista install disk. I didn't bother.
After a hard shutdown and restart, windows booted up. Except now the O/S was acting amazingly sluggish. Constantly freezing, etc. The next day, the same thing happened. Except this time, hard reboots didn't help.
I then used a Windows install disk to try to reformat the drive and reinstall windows. It took ages to get to the install screen. This was indication, imo, that the harddrive was broken. After a failed reinstall of windows. I gave up on that drive.
The death of the second drive - 500 gig
I then tried installing to the 500 gig drive... however, stupid as it may have been, while the 150gig was still installed. I figured it shouldn't matter - and I still think it shouldn't. I don't quite remember what happened at this point, as it had gotten quite late (~2am), and I believe the installation of Windows didn't go through.
What did happen though is, the next day I noticed that the 500 gig drive wasn't even being recognized by the BIOS at this point. IE: Instead of displaying the WD Model # next to the sata port #, it displaced it as blank. Normally, if a device isn't attached it says something like "Not Detected". After removing the 150gig from the computer. The Windows Installation popped up extremely quick, compared to with the 150gig installed. However, the 500gig disk did not show up in the available drives list.
So..... I bought a new 500gig to see if that would fix anything, and as you may expect, I was able to install windows flawlessly.
To double check that my old 500 gig was indeed broke, I connected it to the computer as well. However, even though the new 500 gig would boot perfectly by itself... when attaching the second 500 gig, the computer won't start, but I am instead left with a boot error.
Conclusion
I am about to RMA both drives, however I am curious as to what you all think might have happened. It seems like too much of a coincidence that both drives would fail around the same time. I'm thinking maybe my sata interface is broken?
In the case of the 500gig drive, do you think it's salvageable?
Thanks!
The death of the first drive - 150gig
So randomly this weekend I had an error during boot time. It said I was missing some file, and windows could not boot. It mentioned trying to use the "repair windows" option on the vista install disk. I didn't bother.
After a hard shutdown and restart, windows booted up. Except now the O/S was acting amazingly sluggish. Constantly freezing, etc. The next day, the same thing happened. Except this time, hard reboots didn't help.
I then used a Windows install disk to try to reformat the drive and reinstall windows. It took ages to get to the install screen. This was indication, imo, that the harddrive was broken. After a failed reinstall of windows. I gave up on that drive.
The death of the second drive - 500 gig
I then tried installing to the 500 gig drive... however, stupid as it may have been, while the 150gig was still installed. I figured it shouldn't matter - and I still think it shouldn't. I don't quite remember what happened at this point, as it had gotten quite late (~2am), and I believe the installation of Windows didn't go through.
What did happen though is, the next day I noticed that the 500 gig drive wasn't even being recognized by the BIOS at this point. IE: Instead of displaying the WD Model # next to the sata port #, it displaced it as blank. Normally, if a device isn't attached it says something like "Not Detected". After removing the 150gig from the computer. The Windows Installation popped up extremely quick, compared to with the 150gig installed. However, the 500gig disk did not show up in the available drives list.
So..... I bought a new 500gig to see if that would fix anything, and as you may expect, I was able to install windows flawlessly.
To double check that my old 500 gig was indeed broke, I connected it to the computer as well. However, even though the new 500 gig would boot perfectly by itself... when attaching the second 500 gig, the computer won't start, but I am instead left with a boot error.
Conclusion
I am about to RMA both drives, however I am curious as to what you all think might have happened. It seems like too much of a coincidence that both drives would fail around the same time. I'm thinking maybe my sata interface is broken?
In the case of the 500gig drive, do you think it's salvageable?
Thanks!
