Broken HDD?

[stockholm1984]

Am pretty sure my boot disc drive has given up the ghost, while playing STALKER the other day the system randomly froze with the HDD activity light stuck on. Restarted the system and during the POST screen the storage drive was recognised but nothing else came up on the list (storage drive on SATA1, boot drive SATA2 and DVD SATA3). Initially thought the system had just overheated so turned it off for a bit and restarted where everything worked fine. Turned system off and went to work for the day. Came back and switched it on again and it kept only recognising storage drive and nothing else. Have tried starting up the Ultimate Boot CD but it doesn't recognise the DVD drive as the boot drive is before it on the SATA list. Looks like I'll have to rearrange the SATA cables so the DVD is in slot 1 so I can boot from the disc.

Basically, does this look like a HDD failure or something more serious seeing as it won't recognise anything passed the storage drive in SATA1 when POSTing?

 

[thestepster]

go into the bios and check that its seeing it in there then u might want to download Hirens boot cd and use the hard drive utilities in there to test for bad sectors on that if its in the bios you could try and replace the cable aswell but ive had a couple of hard drives fail on me in the past and they always stuttered b4 they failed

 

[stockholm1984]

It wasn't in the BIOS so had a good mess around with the cables and it seems to be working ok atm at least, has restarted several times and no issues yet so thanks for making me check the cables before going and spending money on a new disc. Have had drives properly go before and like you say they've stuttered and made noises beforehand which hadn't happened this time. Will keep and eye on it anyway. +rep!

 

[thestepster]

cheers mate get hirens boot cd aswell mate its a fantastic tool does alll kinda stuff from the CD

and give ur hard drive a check over jsut to be sure there isnt any bad sectors

oh and another tip mate u dont really have to worry what sata port things are plugged into just change the boot order in the bios or press F8 or F2 (not the same on all mobo's) and that will bring a boot from menu and u can select what u want to from there

 

[thestepster]

linky for hirens to let ya see whats on it

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

 

[mayhem]

there are sevral ways for checking bad hard drive most of the time though its a bad cable.

If you do have bad sectors though they normal will bring up errors no a dead drive.

If you hear a loud ticking then the hard drive is on it way out.

If the hard drive say runs fine then locks up alot when it get warm then that means the motor of the drive is wering out.

You may what to enable smart drive in the bios on a Gigabye when in the bios fress (F2) this will bring up the hidden menu to enable it. Most other mother bords just show it. Its not perfect but some times does work.

Most mother bords for bios press any one of the following keys while booing.

Del key

F2

F10 and some compaq and wired ones you need to access it from boot cd / image off the hard dive.

Allso depending on the hard drive you can get drive tools.

E.g

Samsung, hitachi ect ect

If the drive is dead or on its way out check the date on the drive and get a RMA from the maker of the drive.

 

[stockholm1984]

Thanks for the comments guys, seems to have been a loose or broken cable as everything seems to be fine now I've rewired everything. Like I say, have had drives die on me in the past and they have made various clicking noises and stuttering performance which was why I was surprised when it died as there was no warning.

 

[thestepster]

glad is all well again mate