Hardrives driven to hard?

[digory]

Dear Gents,
Some time ago I was given a maxtor 40gig as a gift, after installation, it worked great for severl amonths as a slave drive until it just up and quit. Months later, the same friend gave me a WD 80 gig, short time later it died. I replaced it 3 months ago with a brand new Westerdigital 120 GB, and it fizzled on me too. All of which went the same way.
I started getting "hard drive failure immenent" errors on boot up, they'd occasionally boot but more often than not would just be dead.

I ran the Western Digital Diagnostic CD on the 120 gig and gave me the same answer as on the 80 gig. "No drive present"

I'm wondering if the issue could be something other than hardware failure or if anyone has an idea what would or could contribute to such a problem. Viruses? Mobo or power supply causing problems?

I was running Win98Se on teh 40 and 80 GB and WinXP on the 120.

 

[imported_Phil]

What power supply do you have?
Also, what kind of case ventilation? My drives don't break 22C.

 

[Calin]

Heat would be the grateast culprit.

 

[digory]

22c?!
I don'tt hink this thing has ever been under 45c
I've been having some serious cooling issues for a while.
My case is wide open with a table fan blowing into the case t keep it cool enough along with 3 case fans.
I have a 400w PS I couldn't tell you the make or model.
Think the PS may be shot?

 

[imported_Phil]

With what you've described, it could be either. 45C is getting close to a nasty temperature for most drives- you need to sort your ventilation out pronto!

Make sure you have 1 fan in the front, blowing inwards (label side is usually the exhaust side of the fan), and two at the back, blowing out. Don't worry about side panel fans or top vents, etc.

Whichever way you look at it, you need to get your PC cooler, and then maybe look at a decent PSU- brand-name such as Forton, Enermax, Sparkle, PC Power & Cooling, etc.

 

[imported_Phil]

Here's a picture of how I do things - the front fan is to the right, out of shot, behind the two hard disks.

 

[digory]

I don't know how to get it any cooler. I've got, 2 rear fans, 1 up front and the case is open with a 12 inch floor fan blowing into the case. All I can assume is there is a hardware screw up somewhere causing the temp to be so high.

I'm buying a new machine in a month. I'm tired of screwing with this one. Something is seriously wrong somewhere. Most of the parts are here, just waiting for a good price on a new CPU.

I guess I need to see if any of the drives are salvageable.

 

[DesertChicken]

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=75011

found this while browsing for fans. Don't know much about it, but thought you might be interested.
EDIT: try searching newegg.com for hard drive coolers.

 

[digory]

Interestingly, for S#!ts and giggles I hooked up my 120gb as a slave...
and the thing works fine, although the 40 and the 80 are about as dead as can be.

I'm setting up to build a new machine in a few weeks whe I get the parts, maybe I'll try and get a new case for this one as well.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: digory
I don't know how to get it any cooler. I've got, 2 rear fans, 1 up front and the case is open with a 12 inch floor fan blowing into the case. All I can assume is there is a hardware screw up somewhere causing the temp to be so high.

I'm buying a new machine in a month. I'm tired of screwing with this one. Something is seriously wrong somewhere. Most of the parts are here, just waiting for a good price on a new CPU.

I guess I need to see if any of the drives are salvageable.

Does the inside of the case actually feel hot?
Touch the CPU heatsink - how warm does it feel? If it's lukewarm, then I'd say you have a mis-reporting temperature diode. If it's hot or too hot to touch, then you have serious cooling problems.

Do the same for the graphics card and hard disk- what do you notice? It's entirely possible that your motherboard isn't reporting the temperatures correctly. However, if they are correct, then you may want to check if you've over-volting the CPU VCORE, the RAM VDIMM, or maybe you're overclocking?

 

[digory]

Phil, first of all, thanks for all the info.

I don't overclock, too risky. and the voltage is where it's supposed to be. Those were the first things I checked. The heatsink isn't even warm.
The HD, at one point, felt pretty warm, but not as hot as the temp was reading.
Temp said it the case was 130 degrees, but I don't see how that's remotely possible.
I did have some mobo probs some time ago that fizzled out my floppy IDE. So I've been thinking it's a mobo glitch. But that doesn't explain what happened to the 40 gig ad 80 gig other than they were just doomed drives.

This lil EPoX mobo has been great other than a few minor glitches like this.
I'm wondering if flashing the bios would do anything to that temp diode?

Not that I have a floppy to do that with.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

It sounds like your PS is seriously overvolting or spiking. Check the voltage on the three rails with monitoring software and a multi meter if you have one handy.