What's happening to my hard drive?

[zpe]

Well, my hard drive just did something strange on my xp machine.

I was extracting files from a RAR archive when suddenly the hard drive spinned down and spinned back up. Windows then chugged a long as if nothing happened. This is my second time. The last occurrence was about 2-3 weeks ago. That time the hard drive was idle.

I'm think the hard drive lost power temporarily. The way it sounded, it was as if I had just put the computer to standby and woken it up right away, except the only thing that went on standby was the HD.

What would cause this to happen? I think the hard drive is dying because it's 5 years old, but this would be such a strange way to die. I was expecting bad sectors or some clicking, but nothing like this. Also, I just replaced the power supply since the old one just died. Could a dying PSU screw up hard drive circuitry in such a subtle way?

If my hard drive is dying, how much longer will it last?

 

[IEC]

Back up any important data ASAP and then run some hard drive diagnostics (the drive's manufacturer should provide some utilities on their website)

 

[Rottie]

Back up everything PRONTO don't wait until it dies you will be sorry later on.

 

[zpe]

I used Western Digital's tools and checked SMART status and did a surface scan over the entire hard drive. Those are the only 2 tests and both passed. No bad sectors detected and nothing bad from SMART.

 

[mindless1]

I suspect that when you swapped the PSU, stress unplugging or plugging power connector has caused a electro-mechanical failure of one of the following types:

1) New PSU connect does not make good contact, take connector out and examine pins, slightly bending them in to smaller diameter. Also examine drive pins, if there is a lot of residue on them clean off with towel moistened with alcohol and let dry.

2) HDD power/data connector plastic strip itself now has a broken pin, or cracked solder joint. Replace pin and/or reflow solder joint.

3) PCB now has cracked solder joint on a surface mount part or a hairline crack. Examine under strong light for cracks, reflow any questionable solder joints.

There is also a chance the PSU is dropping below some critical threshold voltage to which the HDD is most susceptible (fans, CPU, etc can tolerate more drop from 12V to nn.n? volts, BUT I would've figured you had already checked that PSU had acceptible output since you had just changed it and even again encountering a problem then wondering about it.

If your old PSU was dying, yes that can damage the HDD as well as many other parts, but it doesn't very well match the symptoms of it temporarily stopping then spinning up working again.

How long it lasts depends on what mood my crystal ball is in today, and what's really wrong. If it were just a cracked solder joint that only causes power cycling one every two weeks it could run for the remainder of it's expected lifespan like this, but that expected (average) lifespan is already elapsed at the 5 year mark.

5 year old drive is a liability in itself and of very little value while you time and data are of value, therefore I suggest just replacing it but agree with prior replies, it's best to be conservative and copy off the data now rather than gamble.

 

[dingetje]

i agree, having a 5 year old hd in your machine is playing russian roulette with your data....but i guess you can use it as long as the data on it has been backup up

 

[zpe]

Ya, I checked the pins and connectors when this first occurred, but nothing seemed unusual.

I found this bit of information interesting.

techarp.com

Myth #9 :
If your hard drive keeps spinning up and down, that is because the power supply sometimes has enough power to spin up the hard drive and sometimes, it cannot provide enough power and the hard drive spins down again.

Truth :

The spin-up, spin-down activity is actually a symptom of the hard drive's recalibration process. The hard drive recalibrates to account for changes in temperature (which changes the position of data bits on the platter).

It also recalibrates when it cannot read data off the platters properly. Therefore, if your drive does that a lot, it could be a symptom of a dying hard drive. Do note though that hard drives are often programmed to spin down to save power, and only spin up when there's work to be done.

However, it's unlikely for insufficient power to cause such symptoms. If insufficient power is supplied to hard drives that do not support hot-plugging, they will power down and cause the computer to hang. Even if full power is restored, the hard drive will not resume normal operation. You will need to reboot the computer.

I've never heard of this, but I guess it solves my mystery.

 

[mindless1]

Drives do not spin down and spin up to recalibrate.