Harddrives die/malfunction on my PC, why?

[wWooDd]

For some reason, every harddrive that I have had with SATA has slowly degraded in performance followed by a critical moment when the drive corrupts a mass amount of information. I have a Western Digital that liked to make quite a bit of noise, sounding like the drive was continously shutting down & spinning up, which clued me into buying a new Seagate and backing up. I had that drive for two years. I had my new Seagate for a month before I heard a similar noise in less frequency added that the drive became very unresponsive. I backed up again and sent the drive back to the supplier. Now on my second Seagate - except this one made a noise right off. The only noise I could hear is when I shut the computer off, it sounds like the arm smacking its self against the harddrive case; like if you took your pencil & pulled on end up off the table to let it smack down. It took about thirty days again to corrupt information. This time I had the SeaTools utility to clean up any bad sectors I found and continue using the drive.

Another six weeks has passed since the last issue and yesterday the drive dies with little warning. The only warning signs, which I overlooked originally, were scratch disk issues with Photoshop when I could not figure out why it was being slightly unresponsive. The drive now makes a similar noise as all the other drives did on a regular interval in which I can not do a single thing with the drive. The SeaTools cannot run any diagnostics as the drive makes a noise & becomes unresponsive - some times freezing the utility.

Knowing that if I simply grab another drive I may have this issue again, is there any thing that can be wrong with the computer its self? All my IDE drives work properly and never had issues with them - even ones dating back as far as 2000 that came off high school PC's. My biggest concern is that I did flash my bios once around October and I started to have harddrive issues around January. Could some thing in the flash be causing malfunctioning SATA drives? Or could it also be a physical issue in combination since I do hear physical noises? Since only my SATA drives have been affected, can I be confident in using my IDE drives? My motherboard is an MSI 875p Neo, by the way.

Thanks for any help, it is greatly appreciated!

 

[alzan]

I can't specifically speak to your issue except in agreement: I had 2 Seagate SATAs go out on me within 14 months of use, although they were in a RAID 1 array in a mini-tower case and I think that heat was the real culprit.

You might have a bad power supply, or the 12V rail is bad/shot, if you have a multi-meter you can measure the power coming off the connectors.

You might consider a UPS, a good one will do some power "clean-up" and provide a steadier flow of electricity.

Or it could just be you've gotten a rash of bad hard drives. It might be worthwhile to stick with IDE for now.

I would think if the BIOS flash was the culprit, you'd have started seeing problems sooner than four months.

alzan

 

[chusteczka]

This is most likely either a power supply issue or a heat issue.

There are two possibilities for the power supply issue. It could be irregular power supplied to your building/home due to aging wiring or aging electrical components at the power line. It could also be your Power Supply Unit (PSU). The irregular incoming power can be regulated by either or both of a new PSU for your system case or a UPS with brownout protection.

A heat issue can occur when two drives are stacked on top of each other without a fan blowing over them to keep them cool. For this, you could rig a fan in your case to direct air over the hard drives or purchase a new case with a 12cm fan that directs air over the hard drives in the bottom front of the case.

 

[wWooDd]

I only have one drive in the tower at a time which has a 40mm fan right over it - not to mention the case very cool with a lot of air flow. I only guessed at the time I flashed & initally had problems, how ever if the flash was bad when would I start noticing issues? Right away or could it be over a weeks or two? It was flashed about 3 times with in the four months - the first was unsuccesful and the 3rd was a fix when I had to take the PC to a shop for repair. Usually taking the batter out & reseting the CSMOS brings the harddrives back online for a while. Also, and I experienced this once or twice, a malfunction SATA drive would cause other drives to become disfunctional at the same time - usually only until I unplug the drive & remove the battery. I use the same IDE drives that malfunctioned along with the SATA drive just fine to this day.

Moving on, if I do replace the PSU will the harddrive work or am I looking at damage to the drive due to irregular power - or is that some thing where time would only tell? Secondly, why would only my SATA drives be affected but nothing else - I have no issues with the rest of my hardware or other drives (as I have stated); I would think a PSU issue would extend beyond SATA drives? Then again it is not my expertise.

I have to take a moment to appologize to you guys since this is actually the fourth of fifth time I have been told "it may be a PSU issue" and every single time the problem was temporarily sovled via other means, unknowningly it would just happen agian. Banging my head against the wall, it may be just that in the very end. I seriously did think the first bad Seagate was a fluke but I am proven wrong again

Little less than a month, brand new machine, all new components. Just - last - a little - longer, heh

 

[chusteczka]

I am sure a UPS with brownout protection and a new PSU will solve the problem. I have been through a similar situation myself.

I have no experience with failed BIOS updates but I do not believe this to be the problem.

 

[wWooDd]

Since it is most likely the PSU, would the HDD have any physical damage that I would have to be aware of? Or would the drive simply be malfunction? This coming from the direction that when I do replace the PSU will the drive fail since the last PSU damaged it?

While on the subject, talking about a UPS with the burnout protection, what UPS would be recomended or price range? Am I looking for the simple fact that it has burnout protection or is there a degree in quality and price that I need to look for? I stopped by Newegg and I've seen some pretty cheap UPS, but I always question the quality with prices that low.

 

[chusteczka]

If the hard drive has been damaged by the current/previous power supply, then the drive is damaged and will remain so. It is impossible to tell if the drive will fail shortly thereafter or not.

Here is the UPS I have used. This UPS solved my past hard drive failure problems in a home built in the late 1800's with very old wiring from the 1960's. APC markets the term Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) and this is what I was referring to with the brownout protection. AVR helps correct, or condition, the supplied power when the voltage drops slightly. A slight voltage drop can damage sensitive hard drives.