Very strange problem

[DK1110]

Alright I really need some help with this one. About a month ago I put two new hard drives into my computer, 2 120gig Maxtor drives, set up as raid-0 drive. Everything worked perfectly for about 3 weeks, but things just got completely messed up.

One morning I clicked the computer out of standby mode and it locked up. After waiting about a minute I hit the reset button. When it got to the windows loading screen the HD started thrashing and I got a horrible screeching sound coming out of the speakers. It took about 5 minutes to boot up into windows and even then everything was slow. So I turned it off, waited a while and turned it on again. Now basically everything works except the HD sometimes clicks when it access' data, freezes and then resumes in like 10 seconds. It's like a cdrom skipping and finding its place again. Also I get this screeching/static sound everytime the HD is in use, it matches up with the light on the case flickering. Oddly enough it only comes through the analogue speakers, I have a receiver hooked up through the digital out and I get no static there.

So basically I have no idea what happened but I'm thinking somehow my harddrives and possible the motherboard got damaged. Could a power spike or something like that have caused this? Did standby mode have anything to do with this? I could use any help you guys have to offer, so thanks in advance.

 

[daveybrat]

sounds like one of those maxtor hard drives in your raid configuration is going bad. A clicking noise is usually a early symptom that will get worse with time. I'd go to www.maxtor.com and download their powermax diagnostic utility. It'll create a dos boot disk that you can test your hard drives with. Do the advanced test on both and see if they are going bad.

 

[DK1110]

Alright I tried the powermax thing and it reports both drives as error-free. The problem with this thing is that it isn't consistent. Sometimes I can barely use windows properly, every time I open a menu it freezes, other time I can play World of Warcraft for hours and not get a single hitch. Frustrating.

 

[stevty2889]

Could be a weak power supply, what do are your full system specs?

 

[DK1110]

My specs are:
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon 3000+
1 Gig DDR 333 Mhz Ram
Ati 9800 Pro 128meg video card
2 Maxtor 7200rpm SATA drives (set up in raid-0)
430watt Antec power supply
Got a dvd-rom and a dvd-burner in there too.

 

[stevty2889]

I would try running memtest on your memory. Is it being overclocked or is it running at 333mhz? It does sound like you may have a dying hard drive, just odd that it's intermitant.

 

[DK1110]

Alright I ran memtest and it turned up 1256 errors on test #5 (on one pass). The memory is running at 333, nothing on the computer is overclocked (to my knowledge). Could faulty memory really be responsible for erratic harddriver errors and hissing sounds?

 

[stevty2889]

well I wouldn't think it would be causing the sounds, but yeah, since the data in the memory can get written to the hard drive, or request info from the wrong part of the hard drive, it can cause all kinds of hard drive corruption if the memory is having issues. If you have more than 1 stick of ram, you can try running memtest with a single stick, to see if you can isolate a bad module.