Hard Drive Failures

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

Something really odd happened to one of my computers. I was using my computer normally, and then all of a sudden (these things always happen like that), the next time I turned it on, my master hard drive wasn't recognized by the BIOS (and obviously the OS as well). Well my master drive was an IBM 60GXP, which is refurbed, since I sent in my old 60GXP because it crashed on me. I figured it was just another case of the Deskstars crapping on me, so I rheamed them. The system was booting with the Secondary Hard drive however by itself. Now like 5 days later, the second hard drive craps on me. Things are very suspicious now. Here are some clues though.

- I thought the CMOS battery might be dead (but I'm not sure what the telltale signs would be), but I checked the bios and the clock was alright, I'll check again to make sure though.

- I also have not tested these two failed hard drives on other computers yet, but I will be doing that soon.

does anybody have any clue what's going on? The Bios just simply doesn't see them anymore? Please help...I hope somebody tells me it is as simple as the CMOS battery. Thanks in advance.

OS: Windows 2000 (Primary drive)
Windows 98 (Secondary Drive)

Hardware: Abit KT7, Duron 600Mhz (not OC'd)

Harddrives: IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB (Primary)
Quantum XGB? (Secondary)

 

[OverVolt]

Try running with just the IBM drive i have a Quantum that always gives me loads of trouble as a secondary drive such as reboots and BSOD sometimes.

Signs of the CMOS battery dying would be your CMOS clock changng to the wrong time every boot.

Did you add new CD-rom or other device, you never know what weird compatibility issue's some devices can have

 

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

That's the weird thing, everything was fine...and then the next reboot, one hard drive fails. Then I took it out...then 3 days later, the second hard drive fails. If anything, I think the IBM drive is the flaky one...thanks for the suggestion though, any other ideas?

 

[dkozloski]

I went through a siege of flakey and unexplained hard drive troubles and failures until I traced the problem to bad molex connectors on power supplies, especially "Y" connectors. After squeezing down the female connectors with a small pair of needle nose pliers the troubles all went away. Now I carefully inspect all power connectors at assembly, even new ones.

 

[Zak326]

I had problems with 4 ibm hard drives and ul;timately trashed them all and now pretty much use Western Diogital. I just heard that IBM sold their hard drive division to Hitachi, so I guess they must have found the hard drive world too intellectual for Big Blue!:disgust:

 

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

dkozloski,
Dude you are the man. I tried what you said about the power connector...actually let me tell you the whole story. My IBM was busted (or so I thought), and so I decided to try it on another computer, and it didn't work either. So just because I had the computer open I decided to try the other hard drive (as well as another one that was just sitting in the 5.25" slot). And a weird thing happened. During bootup the bios recognizes the hard drive...but then during the splash screen it doesn't and it crashes the system, and when teh system reboots, it doesn't recognize the harddrive anymore.

So I think back about the post, and I decided to look at one of the female connectors, and it did look slightly wide (like it wasn't "tight enough"), so I squeezed it in. And the IBM came back to life, and so did the other hard drives. I suspect the other computer has the same problem. Go figure...it is the same case, and motherboard, but they have different PSU's, but they're both the same age...makes perfect sense...awesome dude, now I have another trick up my sleeve.