Harddrive problem i think.....

[AceForSale]

Hello, I have a 1.9 athlon pc. it has two harddrives in it, C drive has windows which is a 4 year old 30gig harddrive, then i have a d drive which is about 2 years old and thats an 100 harddrive.

My problem is. The computer usually starts with no problem. Its constantly locking up for no reason, especially when i go into windows explorer or any program viewing files.

Its never acted up like this before, I dont dl files so it shouldn't be a virus. Also i ran the virus scan a day before all this and no virus.

When the pc starts sometimes it locks up like 5 times on loading and the rest it says my harddrives (both of them) are not detected.

Sometimes the C drive (30gig) is detected but then the D drive isn't at all.

So i figured well its possible the d drive (100 gig) is going up. but i found when i finally get into windows after about 15 attempts, I try to run norton system works on it or other programs to test the C Drive and it locks up and i hear the HD clicking, physically clicking then it locks up.

It does that too when it locks up. I hear a clicking noise, maybe its skipping tracks or sectors or something. But when i do the system scan with nortan i get that noise then i get an ERROR that wont go away, if you click ok it just keeps c oming back till the pc locks up. The error says "UNKNOWN HARD ERROR"

I'm using Win2000 and i tried to boot a floppy disk to fisk the MBR thinking maybe that was damaged but it wont let me. Gives me errors. I forgot which one but its something like Harddrive not present.

I also twice got a blue screen when restarting saying windows NEW hardware has a problem. Please reinstall the hardware if any added to prevent this problem. But i haven't added anything to my computer in a few months.

I dunno what the hell to do. I'm not sure whats wrong.... HD? Windows? MBR? or motherboard? is it possible the harddrive was just overheating?

Please help,
Thanx,
Dave

 

[Zepper]

Are you using a strong PSU? Oh, Antec 1030 assumes 300W PSU. Perhaps you need something stronger. Look under Compucase (Heroichi PSUs) and Sparkle on newegg.
.bh.
:sun:

 

[chemicalplay]

I agree, a stronger PSU will be better, pehaps 400w should do it, just a cheapie one.

Try checking the Molex Power connectors on the hard drives to check they arent loose, if the power connecter IS loose, then the hard drive will have a read/write error and windows will have a fit, and if the hard drive becomes powered again, then windows will have a hard time understanding what is going on.

If all fails, i suggest getting a new hard drive, a 4 year old one or whatever should be dead by now, it will probably have a mechanical failure one day and you will lose all your data.

What brand are the hard drives? MAxtor? Western Digital? Seagate?

 

[SwampsterFL]

 

[SwampsterFL]

Go into your CMOS and turn SMART detection on (it is off by default). Boot the system and see if it reports any errors during boot. Anything this reports will likely mean a new HDD.

If this shows nothing, then boot the system from your emergency boot disk and select the With CD Support option.

Insert your SystemWorks CD and locate a file called NDD.EXE and run it. Select to do a complete scan of C: and when it asks about doing a surface scan tell it OK. This will tell you about errors in reading the HDD.