Two defective hard drives?

[Wildapes]

This is really strange. A few weeks ago I formatted and partitioned a sata drive so that I could dual boot vista and XP. After I had installed Vista on the sata drive I started to get a strange clicking noise followed by what sounded like a powering up noise, quite similar to when you first switch on your PC. I ran vista fine for a few weeks. Even played Oblivion through just fine for hours and hours, something I was unable to do on XP since it would freeze when entering/exiting doors. Vista eventually started to exhibit strange behavior. My onboard network controller would randomly stop working and I would get random BSODs. I was unable to uninstall and reinstall my nvidia video card and motherboard drivers and my Vista installation eventually became hosed since I was unable to boot into it or safe mode at all.

I ran various diagnostic tools like orthos on the CPU (which passed 17+ hours) and WD's hard drive diagnostic tools in windows. All of them passed just fine. I suspected the NB chipset might be overheating since the my onboard networking controller was malfunctioning in vista so I replaced it for a pure copper fan. I even added 2 120mm intake fans to the front of my SilverStone TJ07 case. My temps are about as cool as possible with a fan setup (NB chipset is 38C cpu is 26c etc) Anyways, I began to suspect my XP hard drive was malfunctioning because oblivion would freeze (and still continues to freeze) when I entered and exited doors. Basically whenever it would load a new area. I didn't have this issue on the Vista drive so I thought surely it must be my 5 year old 60gb C: drive that was dying.


Trying to track down the issue, I ran a hard drive diagnostics test in DOS mode. I ran a test on the C: drive, it passed fine in both the quick test and extended test. I sat for 15 minutes with my ear next to the hard drive trying to reproduce and listen for the click and power up noise. Absolutely nothing. So I ran the test on the Sata drive, which had contained Vista, and bam, just as soon as the test begins I get the loud clicking noise that I had experienced before. I ran the test through and the clicking noise repeated perhaps 3-4 times during the 15 minute test. Once when it started, once about halfway through and once when it stopped.

Here's where it gets tricky though. I partitioned the sata drive specifically for vista and data backup and never experienced this issue until I installed vista. I'm wondering if maybe the partition is some how causing the drive to stop while it switches to the next partition thus causing the click and power up sound. Could it be defective, or is the partition to blame?

Now onto the 60gb IDE drive. This is my main boot drive. I've used it for years with XP. When oblivon was released I began to experience an issue where it would freeze up whenever I'd enter or exit a door. I figured it was some kind of problem with the game so I just quit playing it. I made a few hardware changes in the mean time installed vista on that sata drive and decided to play it again and it worked perfectly. I could play for 8 hours straight without issue. I wanted to try it in XP so I could get some performance improvements, so I moved my saved files over to xp and it froze within 10 seconds of exiting the first door. So I'm not sure if this hard drive is malfunctioning as well.

I'm really not sure what to do here. I'm kind of broke at the moment. About ready to pull the trigger on two Seagate S-ATA 300 drives but man, I really can't afford not to fix this issue. I'm between projects right now (went a while without any work, which is why I'm broke...), now working on a few as we speak so it's imperative I have a working pc and that I get this fixed as cheaply as possible.


Here are my PC specs
Opeteron 170 (dropped it to 2.6ghz from 2.8ghz. Othros passed 17+ hours)
DFI LanParty expert with better chipset fan
2 7800GTX 512 cards in SLI
G.Skill PC 250mhz 3-4-4-8 ram
1 WD 60gb IDE drive (XP/Boot drive) 1 WD 120GB IDE (slave) 1 WD 260gb Sata (Partitioned and used to have vista on it)
Chaintek DRU-710 sound card
Fortron Epsilon 750w PSU
Silverstone TJ07 with two added 120mm intake fans in kama drive bays

Any help at all would be tremendously appreciated.

 

[cprince]

So, what did the diagnostic software said for the two hard drives? I think you should return the SATA drive if it continued to make that clicking noise. Partitioning the hard drive should not matter because it's all logical.

 

[Wildapes]

The diagnostics have all passed perfectly fine several times. The sata drive is like 1-2 years old. I need to figure out if the 60gb ide drive is defective as well since it (or something else specific to XP) causes the game to freeze during new area loads.

 

[Wildapes]

Damn, I disconnected the sata drive and I'm still getting the click noise. What else could it be?

 

[cprince]

I think that the SATA drive is about to fail. Drives wouldn't normally click like that.

 

[Wildapes]

Like I said in the above post I disconnected that drive and still get the click/spinning power up type noise. It almost sounds like when the PC comes out of suspend except I have all the power saving features turned off.

 

[Wildapes]

I booted off a Ubuntu LiveCD (so the hard drives weren't being used) and I'm still getting the noise. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Wildapes]

Well you guys have been a tremendous help. Can anyone perhaps suggest a forum better acquainted with hardware troubleshooting?

I'm sorry that I sound rude but just look at the replies I've gotten so far.
I said that the diagnostics passed several times in the original post and he says my drive is failing right after I said I removed it.

 

[dealmaster00]

Originally posted by: Wildapes
Well you guys have been a tremendous help. Can anyone perhaps suggest a forum better acquainted with hardware troubleshooting?

I'm sorry that I sound rude but just look at the replies I've gotten so far.
I said that the diagnostics passed several times in the original post and he says my drive is failing right after I said I removed it.

dude - your posts are like 4 hours apart. you can't expect instant support - give it a day or two.

As for your clicking problems - you've gotta isolate the problem - i.e. take out a part in the PC each time until the clicking stops. Or just open up the PC while its running and try to figure out where the clicking is coming from.

 

[Wildapes]

Well I said I isolated everything i could think of. I removed the sata drive, I removed the IDE drive and used a Ubuntu live cd and I'm still getting the sounds. It happens so sporadically that if I were to try and listen to where it were coming from I'd have to lie down and have my head next to the PC for several hours.

 

[myocardia]

Once you figure out where the clicking is coming from, then you'll have a starting point. Start by unplugging all of your case fans, then run it with the side panel off, so it won't overheat, and you'll be able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from.

 

[fujduong]

This might seem like a silly idea, but would by any chance would there be a stray wire floating about near one of your fans. It seems like an obvious oversight, but we've all done it.

 

[Wildapes]

nah I figured it out. Apparently I must have reset my bios somehow in the past few weeks and had a power saving feature on. It was switching off the hard drives everything 15 minutes or so. O bought some kama drive bays high CFM fans, a new chipset cooler, rewired and cleaned up my case and tightened up my memory timings with a 10mhz OC trying to figure out what it could be. I guess I got something out of it because I dropped my temps a decent amount (admittedly, overlooking something like this was incredibly stupid)