SATA Hard Drive Clunking Problem

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Mav 3000

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Hi All,

I had a 25GB WD SATA Hard Drive which ran without problems for over a year. Recently, it began clunking intermittently causing my PC to hang in Windows.

Fearing it was failing, I bought another - a 250GB WD SATA II Drive to replace it. When I plugged it in, this too began making the same noise when I tried formatting it and installing XP on it.

Fearing it was the PSU (which has had fan buzzing problems for a while), I bought a new 500w PSU.

Now, I have both SATA drives plugged in and working, however they continue to 'clunk' randomly when under load. They don't cause the PC to hang, but it can't be doing them any good!

I wonder now if it is the SATA controller on the MoBo causing the HD's to clunk? It is an MSI 675 Neo-s MotherBoard.

Can anyone shed any light on what this may be? I have nothing of large enough capacity to transfer my data onto, and don't have any other PCs in the house with a SATA connection on them.

Thanks,

Mav 3000
 
I would buy a sata pci card and test out your drives on those, because then you can tell i f the problem lies with your mb or another part of your system.
 
If I connect my two SATA Drives to a PCI SATA Controller, will it just be a case of configuring the boot sequence in my BIOS to point to the new location and them booting up normally?


Is there any other steps involved to make this more complicated or difficult?

A Faulty SATA controller on the MoBo seems likely to me as my third drive - an ISE drive has no problems.
 
Hey,

I have had this happen to me before...

It was the SATA controller sending the wrong voltage to the motor. This caused the drive motor to move at the wrong speed and inconsistently, hence the clunking.

I suggest that you stop using it asap and get a psi SATA card!

Change your boot sequence in the bios to your primary SATA HDD.

Hope this helps,

Brett
 
Hi, I have bought and installed my PCI SATA Card. I installed the drivers in Windows XP with the drives still running from the motherboard and shut down, then booted my PC with the drives plugged into to.


Firstly, I got a whole load of errors saying it couldn't find vital windows files - command.com etc, so I swapped the two drives around on the SATA card. This time, Windows boots no problem. However, it doesn't see the second SATA drive - my newest.

And... they still clunk now and again. Once when the PC switches on, once when it shuts down, and randomly inbetween.

Few questions:

1) My newest HD is SATA II. Do I have to put the 150Mb/s jumper on it to slow it down or will it do this automatically?

2) Why doesn't Windoes XP see the second drive? it shows up in the SiliconImage Bios screen and there is no RAID set.

3) What could still be causing the clunking? So far, my PC has had a new HD (which clunks), new PSU, and a new SATA Controller card. what else could it be?

I'm very near to taking it into a shop and being charged a lot just for them to have a look at it - but would love to fix it myself! I've just totally run out of ideas.
 
Does S.M.A.R.T tell you anything about the health of the drives?
 
SMART says that the fitness of the older SATA I drive is 100% and everything is ok. It reports that the newer SATA II drive is 0% and several items are reading very poor performance - error writing etc.

The original SATA I drive on its own clunks
The new SATA drive on its own clunks
Both drives together clunk - although with both in its hard to pin-point which one, if not both are clunking - it sounds like both.
 
Hey,

Ok, You've done all of the right things.

I would suggest you try and find another machine, even if you have to go to a PC store, and test the HDD's in that machine. Most places should be nice enough to do that for you. (Well at least in Australia).

The only other thing I can suggest is to check you PCI SATA Card drivers, and, well..... Get another motherboard that has onboard SATA, Asus has some good ones for about $90au :wall: .

Have you checked disk management in XP to see if the drive needs initializing?

If you think of anything else let us know.

Goodluck,

Brett
 
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