Multiple Hard Drive Failures

[Earwax]

I helped put a computer together for a friend of mine last year. He had a 60GB WD hard drive in his original system. The system crashed a lot and stopped booting. It frequently gave an "NTLDR Missing" error during boot-up.

My friend decided he didn't want to buy a new hard drive for his new system, even though I told him I thought it was a good idea.

Anyway, the new system never worked quite right. It always required a windows XP boot CD to start up, and eventually, after he upgraded to a new 120GB WD hard drive, it stopped working altogether. I just finished trying out all three of his hard drives on my system.

The newest 120GB drive booted up at first, but when I tried to access files on it in XP, it crashed my system, then wouldn't get past the disk checking utility when I rebooted. The old master drive he used with his old system would cause my computer to fail during bootup (hung at POST screen). Another drive he had in his computer strictly for storage booted up but was not detected by windows and made a strange hissing noise. So in short, none of the three drives are functional. What I'm wondering is:

Could the original 60GB drive from his old computer have somehow corrupted the other two drives? Or is it something else completely?

I did try numerous configurations with all three different drives and was unable to use them at all.


Thanks in advance

 

[alm4rr]

Manufacturers please
Did you swap out PWS?
Mobo age make model?

Also, check these links:
http://www.microsoft.com/resou...n-us/prkd_tro_bohs.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/techn...skit/prmb_tol_zldj.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/techn...skit/prkd_tro_blyy.asp

 

[Earwax]

All three hard drives are western digitals. They were in an IS7 mainboard. I don't remember what board he had orifinally with the old drive, just that it was a mini-atx. The PSU was brand new for his new system. I'll have to take a look at it to see who makes it. He may have gotten a cheapo PSU+Case combo, though I advised him not to. I'll double check.

 

[Gravity]

PSU and surge protection sound like the culprits here.

Cheap psu's are the sux0r.

 

[Earwax]

Hi Again,

This saga is ongoing. It's an IS7 mobo, it has an enermax psu. A good PSU if I remember correctly. I believe the motherboard was purchased last december, making it less than a year old. I recently connected my friends old hard drive back into my system, I got the following messsage at bootup:

Sec Slave Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. Status = BAD
Backup and Replace

Windows tried to perform a scan before starting, it hung. I restarted, skipped the scan, and was able to copy files off of the drive.

My friend also purchased a new hard drive, and attached it to the system (without telling me). This hard drive worked fine. He left it on over night, and the next day the system was sluggish. Now when he tries to boot up he gets the error: Unmountable Boot Volume. Also, while copying files from his hard drive to my system, I got a "cyclical redundancy error" on a few of them.

Seems to me like the boot sectors on all of his disks are somehow getting corrupted. The question I need to resolve is, is this a PS problem or a Mobo problem? This couldn't be a virus could it? As it would have to be somewhere on the mobo since he tried a completely new hard drive by itself and got the same result. I just find it odd that the PS would consistently corrupt the same portion of the hard drive every time. It seems like it could just as easily be an IDE controller malfunctioning. But I'm out of ideas.

Any suggestions? I'm tempted to ship both the PS and the mobo back to the manufacturers, just to play it safe. But if I can rule out the mobo as the culprit, that would save a lot of time.

Thanks

 

[Earwax]

Actually it's an AI7 mobo. I replaced his power supply, which was an enermax 365. With one of my own, also an enermax 400 I believe. Used a new IDE cable, new power cable, and new surge protector, new hard drive, and it has been stable now for 2 days under some stress tests...