PC freezes, HDD clicks then everything continues

[bobsmith1492]

This has been happening for a little while now... I think it's my OS hard drive but I'm not sure (I have 4 HDDs). The OS drive is a 4-year-old (fall 2006) 250GB Western Digital.

How can I find out which drive is doing this? I don't think SMART is showing any errors.

If it is my Windows drive, is there a good, free program to image the drive so I can drop in a new one? I know about Norton Ghost, but don't have it and don't want to buy it for one use...

Thank you!

 

[Soundmanred]

I just had a 250GB WD go out today.
It was from 2006 as well, must be the end of their days.
Mine started disappearing, but when it was there I ran S.M.A.R.T. tests and it passed all of them.
Now it's dead.

 

[Emulex]

check your eventvwr for errors.

acronis easy migrate will clone your drive to another (usb enclosure or internal or esata) for 30 days - no limits on number of times you use it in 30 days.

you can trial every program they have for 30 days - like true image has clone - so if you've used up your legal 30 day trial of easy migrate - go trial true image . (repeat)

that is a 100% legal way.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Both Seagate and WD offer an OEMed version of Acronis to image your disk, all that is required is that you install the program, burn the ISO, and then have the mfg's brand of disk present in the machine to use.

 

[Emulex]

the disk can be usb? and not the source or destination? if so that is awesome!

 

[eternalone]

WOW this happening to one of my hard drives also I dont think its coincidence its a Maxtor 500gb from 2005 I think.

 

[RU482]

I've had 4 drives fail on me in 10 yrs. 3 Western Digital, 1 Micron

 

[eternalone]

Hey man I just Tested the Hardrive and on an external drive converter with its own power supply to the wall and the problem went away I think it might be your power supply not having enough Juice. Just my 2 cents because that was my problem, so I guess I need a better power supply with more juice if I want to run this connected to the computer without the external converter. Check your power supply switch it up with another with more juice see if that helps.

 

[Russwinters]

Just because the problem magically went away when you changed to a different power source doesn't mean the problem is gone. I would perform additional checks.

Check SMART of course, then run:

http://hddscan.com/

You want to do a few tests. First try a read surface test, the program gives you several graphs to monitor, the most useful one is the "map" view which counts how long blocks are taking to access, anything greater then <20MS is not normal in the read test as it is reading LBAs sequentially so access times should be less then 15ms actually.

On the butterfly read you can expect higher latency as it tests stability during heavy seek operations. You will want to run this next.