I would like to preface the actual content of this post by stating that the Cancel button is fucking stupid. I just typed up several paragraphs and accidentally hit Cancel. If I want to cancel my post I'm going to use a mouse gesture or click on the X or do any number of things that I would normally do to cancel anything. :|
OK, so, I just had a problem with one of my hard drives becoming inaccessible while the PC was in use. When it happened, everything hung (possibly because it had my page file on it), so I was forced to reboot. After booting, I wasn't able to access my WD 320GB drive.
Previous HD config:
WD 320 (OS)
WD 250 (page file)
7200.9
Current HD config:
7200.11 (OS)
WD 320 (page file)
WD 250
I'm led to believe that the reason for the hard drive dropping out is because of a bad cable, because my old 7200.9 exhibited the same problem, but with less severe consequences (again, possibly because it did not have the page file on it). Anyway, immediately after the hang, the POST screen showed some garbage (^^6cvvvv1v389802vvvVVvvvv#3v4 or something like that) where the make and model of the drive are supposed to be. Because I figured it was the cable acting up again, I swapped the cable on the 320 with the one on the 250 (mobo-side connections untouched) and rebooted. POST now had the garbage on the 250 drive. Then I moved both mobo-side connectors to unused headers, and POST then showed both HDs properly. Very strange.
Anyway, after booting very slowly and wanting to do chkdsks on all of my drives, Windows gave me a a bunch of delayed write failure messages. Also, my quick launch bar was corrupted in that all of the icons are gone, and if I were to disable it and re-enable it, Windows would say something like "cannot be rebuilt". The bar is still there because I tried to System Restore to fix the bar but it didn't work.
I told a friend about this and he told me to run memtest as well as the manufacturers' diagnostics on the drives. Any other ideas? I'm going to pick up new cables tomorrow to see if I can't fix this issue permanently, but damn I'm steamed. I just formatted last week because of data corruption. At this point I don't know what is corrupted besides my quick launch bar.
EDIT: One thing that makes me wonder about the good/bad cables is that Windows detected my 7200.11 (the OS drive) as a new devices - i.e. it showed "ST310..." in the bottom-right as if it were something that was just installed. I hadn't changed the cable, but I might have connected it to a different header - would that cause a "new device" message?
I also can't boot into Safe Mode properly - at least, in under 10 minutes, anyway. Seems to get stuck on TDI.sys or TDI.dll (can't remember the extension).
I'm not ruling out a bad SATA controller or bad SATA power cables, but both drives were spinning, FWIW.
OK, so, I just had a problem with one of my hard drives becoming inaccessible while the PC was in use. When it happened, everything hung (possibly because it had my page file on it), so I was forced to reboot. After booting, I wasn't able to access my WD 320GB drive.
Previous HD config:
WD 320 (OS)
WD 250 (page file)
7200.9
Current HD config:
7200.11 (OS)
WD 320 (page file)
WD 250
I'm led to believe that the reason for the hard drive dropping out is because of a bad cable, because my old 7200.9 exhibited the same problem, but with less severe consequences (again, possibly because it did not have the page file on it). Anyway, immediately after the hang, the POST screen showed some garbage (^^6cvvvv1v389802vvvVVvvvv#3v4 or something like that) where the make and model of the drive are supposed to be. Because I figured it was the cable acting up again, I swapped the cable on the 320 with the one on the 250 (mobo-side connections untouched) and rebooted. POST now had the garbage on the 250 drive. Then I moved both mobo-side connectors to unused headers, and POST then showed both HDs properly. Very strange.
Anyway, after booting very slowly and wanting to do chkdsks on all of my drives, Windows gave me a a bunch of delayed write failure messages. Also, my quick launch bar was corrupted in that all of the icons are gone, and if I were to disable it and re-enable it, Windows would say something like "cannot be rebuilt". The bar is still there because I tried to System Restore to fix the bar but it didn't work.
I told a friend about this and he told me to run memtest as well as the manufacturers' diagnostics on the drives. Any other ideas? I'm going to pick up new cables tomorrow to see if I can't fix this issue permanently, but damn I'm steamed. I just formatted last week because of data corruption. At this point I don't know what is corrupted besides my quick launch bar.
EDIT: One thing that makes me wonder about the good/bad cables is that Windows detected my 7200.11 (the OS drive) as a new devices - i.e. it showed "ST310..." in the bottom-right as if it were something that was just installed. I hadn't changed the cable, but I might have connected it to a different header - would that cause a "new device" message?
I also can't boot into Safe Mode properly - at least, in under 10 minutes, anyway. Seems to get stuck on TDI.sys or TDI.dll (can't remember the extension).
I'm not ruling out a bad SATA controller or bad SATA power cables, but both drives were spinning, FWIW.
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