HD prob

Tazz T

My pc is hanging after being used for around 30mins or so coming up with the message 'can't write to C drive'. Won't then reboot unless it's being turned off for a couple of hours or overnight. Sounds like it could be the HD even though it's less than two years old.

Does anyone have experience of a similar problem and any suggestions of who to see to get it sorted?

Cheers

Xterminator

Run fdisk, and see if your hdd is picked up, or if it claims 'no fixed disk present'.

If the hdd is picked up, then its an o/s problem. You could fdisk , and reinstall the o/s from scratch if you dont have anything you dont want to lose.

If no fixed disk is present, check your bios settings. If hdd is not picked up, (probably is not) then reseat the cables, perhaps trying a different power cbale, assuming theres a spare one.

Make sure the data cable is in at both the hdd end, and the motherboard end. (check the cable end for bent pins etc)
If thas fails finally try the other data cable, usually connected to your cd drive, to make sure its not the cable. See if your hdd is picked up on that cable.

If that doesnt help, you might try your hdd in another pc, or a different hdd in your pc, to see if its picked up.

X

ando

is there any 'stand by' mode ? or 'sleep/hibernate' modes? Try disabling them

BTW, what error does it give when it does not reboot for you?

Tazz T

cheers xterm.

When it doesn't reboot it comes up with the Tiny (manufacturer) screen - no error message.

I've noticed it makes a 'click' just before it crashes also.

TinCool

Originally posted by Tazz T
I've noticed it makes a 'click' just before it crashes also.

Sounds like you've got Racoons in your PC.

lynchie

If it is a maxtor or a western digital drive, you should be able to download disgnostic utils from their site (maxtor have powermax, wd have data lifegaurd). It will tell you if there is a physical fault with the drive.

btw, other hdd manufacturers may have diagnostic utils but ive never used them so im not too sure if they do have 'em.

The_Conductor

This is a regular occurence when hard drives are slowly beginning to die. After a certain amount of usage the heat generated by the drive warps the HDD spindle the audible "click" occuring as the read-write head attempts to make contact with a particular sector.

Advice- buy a new hard-drive and transfer your data across before the drive dies totally.

Further details and a few temporary methods for resucitating ill hard-drives can be found at the following:

http://www.internetvalue.com/onsite/200ways.htm

(This is a mirror of the "200 Ways to Revive a Dead Hard-drive" article from the Technet site)

The_Conductor

Reply to a user with the exact same problem on X-Pert Exchange.

first thing you should decide is, is there anything on the hdd that you ABSOLUTELY need to recover.

Elimentary troubleshooting:

your problem resembles a problem i had with an 8GB IBM hdd. i unplugged the ide cable as it was spinning. because i had also touched the circuit board at the same time, i couldn't be certain if it were due to the unplugging of the cable or due to static.

i never got it going and finally binned it - but not without trying. at the time, the drive was worth around #200. it hurt me a lot.

IF YOU REALLY NEED TO GET STUFF OFF THE DRIVE then you should first try to make sure the drive is tested in a 'known good' PC and that you are using 'known good' cables - THIS IS ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE!! i can't emphasise this enough.

ENSURE the MOTHERBOARD is GOOD and if it uses ONBOARD I/O, then this functions okay.

ENSURE the I/O CARD is GOOD and that it is properly configured, if using one.

ENSURE the jumpers on the drive make GOOD CONTACT and that they are properly set.

ENSURE the POWER CONNECTOR and the PSU is GOOD.

i've had problems with the power supply to the drives in the past giving me 'drive not ready' error messages. make sure the power connector to the drive is good and the voltages are correct! and they are firmly pushed in.

ENSURE the BIOS is CORRECTLY CONFIGURED.

bear in mind at this stage that the drive may have been incorrectly set up in the system BIOS in the first place and any attempt to access it later (correctly configured) will fail (you'll have to set it back incorrectly again to access it)

when you are satisfied, ABSOLUTELY 100% SATISFIED everything else is GOOD, then you can proceed.

at this point, the drive might work and the fault may have been somewhere else ie, the I/O circuitry/board or the IDE cable....i've had cables go down frequently over the years.

Samsung's diagnostic tool. this can be found at:
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/downloads/attach_file/Shdiag.exe

next, you might want to try other tools such as spinrite (now at version 5) from http://grc.com/ and checkit (or checkit pro) from http://www.smithmicro.com/checkit/utilhome.tpl?cart=9960281201531247