HD Failure?

[Wolfram]

OK.......
building a new system and powered it up for first time. Turns out, my Gainward gf4 Ti 4400 is bad and will be RMAed. Got the checkerboard looking gibberish on the screen.
Anyhow, also heard a rhythmic clicking sound from the HD, an IBM 60gb drive. Now this drive is brand new out of the box, hasn't been formatted etc., but since I have no screen due to bad video card, can't proceed any further till I get the new vid card.
Does this sound like a bad HDD? It happened essentially everytime I powered up/reset (about a dozen times total) with only one exception, and during this one time, the HD LED stayed on.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

 

[yakko]

Check your power supply. I had a Western Digital do that because of a loose connector. A bad power supply could also affect your video card. I am probably wrong but you never know.

 

[Wolfram]

Thanks Yakko,
I checked the power supply and it seems to be fine. The video card problem is unrelated in that it had a known problem with the memory chips on the card and so there have been many of these cards returned (though now the problem is fixed according to the company).

Checked to be sure the power connection was good as well.
Any other thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[MikeFeury]

Hi Wolf,

I can't help you, but have had a similar problem for 3 years with a Maxtor 13gig. Mine is more an irregular 'clacking' - loud, maybe 3-4 clacks in 2 seconds, couple of seconds silence, 8-10 clacks for 5 seconds - random like that.

It only happens on soft boots, never on a hard boot. So I have to switch off PC & on again to boot.
Always happens in same place - after the IDing of the 4 drive slots have appeared on screen. IDs properly, then clacking begins, and boot won't proceed.

I posted elsewhere about it at the time, tried all kinds of solutions, no joy - I had just built the PC myself so I knew exactly what was in it. Was probably Win98 at the time, have since installed Win2000, and latest Win98SE - same problem.

The weird thing is it doesn't happen for every soft boot. I've had 1-2 week periods without the problem, lately it's been every time. A real doozy

Good news is the HD has otherwise been fine - no problems.

If you can get a replacement HD, then do - I still feel nervous about mine after 3 years, although there's nothing important on it now Another good thing - it made me a very regular backup user!

 

[MikeFeury]

[edit - sorry for double, got 404 for first attempt to post]