2 x 250gb sata disks gone south!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Simon
  • Start date Start date
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Simon

Hi guys,
now this is weird, but has anyone seen two disks die at the same time ?
These are on my home computer as well as an ide 80gb drive. They ran off
the motherboard sata contoller so thinking both can't have gone I put in
a pci sata controller card and still the same. Symptoms are the PC will
bootup ok but it takes an age and then the PC is a pita to use as it is
constantly freezing for 5 to 10 secs at a time. Are the disks really
bad, any suggestions for further diagnostics are welcome. They are
maxtor btw.
Oh and I have tried only plugging one in at a time too.
cheers simon.
 
Simon said:
Hi guys,
now this is weird, but has anyone seen two disks die at the same time ?
These are on my home computer as well as an ide 80gb drive. They ran off
the motherboard sata contoller so thinking both can't have gone I put in
a pci sata controller card and still the same. Symptoms are the PC will
bootup ok but it takes an age and then the PC is a pita to use as it is
constantly freezing for 5 to 10 secs at a time. Are the disks really
bad, any suggestions for further diagnostics are welcome. They are
maxtor btw.
Oh and I have tried only plugging one in at a time too.
cheers simon.
Click to expand...
Oh and they weren't in a raid configuration, just H: and I:
 
Simon said:
Oh and they weren't in a raid configuration, just H: and I:
Click to expand...

You can get an effect like that if the 12V rail or 5V rail
is out of spec, particularly if its got a lot of noise on it.
 
Yes, I have seen 2 SATA drives go bad in a day, 250GB a piece, Maxtor.

SATA doesn't need a reason. IDE is more stable. SATA is supposedly
faster and it is cheaper, but none of that matters.

I would as suggested use the Maxtor software to attempt to salvage any
usable life out of the drives. Next time, buy a proven technology.
IDE and SCSI are both amazing.

-Randy
 
Hi guys,
now this is weird, but has anyone seen two disks die at the same time ?
These are on my home computer as well as an ide 80gb drive. They ran off
the motherboard sata contoller so thinking both can't have gone I put in
a pci sata controller card and still the same. Symptoms are the PC will
bootup ok but it takes an age and then the PC is a pita to use as it is
constantly freezing for 5 to 10 secs at a time. Are the disks really
bad, any suggestions for further diagnostics are welcome. They are
maxtor btw.
Oh and I have tried only plugging one in at a time too.
cheers simon.
Click to expand...


Before junking those drives, try them on another system. Just
to make sure. Also, the PSU could be the culprit. I had a cheap 300W
on my Athlon XP 3000+ a couple years ago. I tried adding another 20GB
IDE drive with my existing 40GB IDE, and both drives would fail. If I
only used one, they work fine. Even if I disabled one drive from BIOS,
and left both plugged in, they still failed. Had to have only one
plugged in at a time. I later got a 550W PSU, and both drives worked
fine. Now using a 650W PSU with high amp rails, and have 2 x ATA100
HDD, 1 x CDRW, 1 x DVDRW, 2 x 1.44MB FDD and a power hungry 6600GT AGP
graphic card. No power problems at all.
 
Larry said:
Before junking those drives, try them on another system. Just
to make sure. Also, the PSU could be the culprit. I had a cheap 300W
on my Athlon XP 3000+ a couple years ago. I tried adding another 20GB
IDE drive with my existing 40GB IDE, and both drives would fail. If I
only used one, they work fine. Even if I disabled one drive from BIOS,
and left both plugged in, they still failed. Had to have only one
plugged in at a time. I later got a 550W PSU, and both drives worked
fine. Now using a 650W PSU with high amp rails, and have 2 x ATA100
HDD, 1 x CDRW, 1 x DVDRW, 2 x 1.44MB FDD and a power hungry 6600GT AGP
graphic card. No power problems at all.
Click to expand...

Thanks all for the replies. Larry, I'll try another psu in case, however
it's an antec psu at the moment only about 10 months old. Luckily I have
a customer server here which I have just finished building which is also
an antec sonata with 450w psu :)
simon
 
Simon said:
Hi guys,
now this is weird, but has anyone seen two disks die at the same time ?
These are on my home computer as well as an ide 80gb drive. They ran off
the motherboard sata contoller so thinking both can't have gone I put in
a pci sata controller card and still the same. Symptoms are the PC will
bootup ok but it takes an age and then the PC is a pita to use as it is
constantly freezing for 5 to 10 secs at a time. Are the disks really
bad, any suggestions for further diagnostics are welcome. They are
maxtor btw.
Oh and I have tried only plugging one in at a time too.
cheers simon.
Click to expand...

It's premature to conclude the hard drives are bad simply from the computer
not behaving properly.

You also didn't give enough description of what the system is. What's it
booting from so that you could try them one at a time?

With no other clues given, first thing I'd do is run chkdsk on them. Then
run the manufacturer's diagnostics.

But I suspect you've got some other problem.
 
I'm curious about your problem... pls keep us posted about how it all
works out for you.... Throw one of those drives (or all, one at a time)
in another system...
 
Dennis said:
I'm curious about your problem... pls keep us posted about how it all
works out for you.... Throw one of those drives (or all, one at a time)
in another system...
Click to expand...

.....and if they work in another system it still doesnt mean your
motherboard is fried.... try running just 1 on your mb.. then 2... try
2 sata only, no ide..... I know its an amazing pain in the arse to
troubleshoot, I did it recently too (my problems were isolated to winxp
setup, it was confusing ide/sata drives): http://tinyurl.com/or8pt
 
Dennis said:
....and if they work in another system it still doesnt mean your
motherboard is fried.... try running just 1 on your mb.. then 2... try
2 sata only, no ide..... I know its an amazing pain in the arse to
troubleshoot, I did it recently too (my problems were isolated to winxp
setup, it was confusing ide/sata drives): http://tinyurl.com/or8pt
Click to expand...
Thanks again guys. I'll let you know how I get on. The motherboard is an
abit with an athlon venice 3200 and 1 gb corsair ram. The c drive is a
normal ide hence being able to test one at a time.
simon
 
Simon said:
Thanks again guys. I'll let you know how I get on. The motherboard is an
abit with an athlon venice 3200 and 1 gb corsair ram. The c drive is a
normal ide hence being able to test one at a time.
simon
Click to expand...
Update - tried them in another machine, that sees the drives, however
they are marked as damaged and there are lots of entries in the event
logs about read errors. Also they are reported as having all the space
free, they were about 75% full when they went so it doesn't look good.
I'll get the maxtor diagnostic s/w and give that a go.
simon
 
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