Hard Drive Problems

[lpc300]

Hi all,

My new build had been running great. Then, tonight, something odd happened. In the middle of internet browsing, the HDD light came on, stayed on, and I heard a repetitive clicking sound. This continued for over 2 minutes. System didn't freeze. nor did there seem to be anything unusual happening. All temps were good. The clicking abruptly stopped and the HDD light went out. Went back to browsing, things seemed to be reacting normally, and a couple of minutes later, the same thing occurred. This time the system froze and I needed to reset. When the POST screen came up, after identifying my drives, an error came up saying "error loading OS". This time I shut down, waited 30 seconds, and restarted. Things booted up fine. Decided to run a virus scan. Opened NAV 2001 (with updated definitions). As soon as it opened the same scenerio occurred, with the system freeze. Rebooted again. Once I had bootup, ran NAV again. This time got through about 41%. Got the clicking, system freeze, and a BSOD. Error was 'Kernel Data Unpage Error at BFFC37E4'. Also ftdisk.sys was mentioned. When I rebooted, the POST screen froze when detecting drives. The HDD is a brand new Maxor 60 gig (my first Maxor...always been a WD man). Mobo is an ASUS A7N8X-X. CPU is AMD 3000+ (no overclocking). 512 mb PC3200 RAM. OS is Win2K SP4. Only thing I did recently was install VNC 4.0 (virtual networking so I can 'see' friends computers to help them with problems). Wanted to try it out, first.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[lpc300]

Update: now the system won't boot at all. It freezes right after the Win2K screen. I'm now going to try in safe mode.

[lpc300]

Further Update: Finally I was able to boot up. Before the process completed, chkdsk popped up and tried to fix drive E: (forgot to mention, I have a WD 60gig hooked up as a slave drive...the drive is about 3 years old). Things froze at 62%. I reset. Chkdsk ran again. This time it completed, repaired some bad sectors. Things booted up. Everything ran fine...until I clicked 'My Computer' and then clicked 'E:'. As soon as I did, the clicking started. Things slowed down tremedously. I was able to close the dialogue box and now things are running smooth again. Could it be the secondary drive? Thoughts on what is happening?

[glc]

Download Powermax from Maxtor and DLG Diags from WD, and make the bootdisks. Run diags on both drives. It sounds like the WD is going bad, but you need to test both drives.

[lpc300]

Thanks for the response, GLC. I disconnected the WD (both IDE and power cable) as an initial test. System ran fine. Downloaded both diagnostic utilities. Reconnected the WD. First I ran Powermax on the Maxtor. No errors. Then I ran DLG on the WD. No errors. I ran the extended test on both. The clicking sound hasn't returned...yet. I think that the sound is a prelude to HDD failure, but wouldn't the diagnostic utility have caught that? Any other thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[Markoman01027]

My IBM HD would make clicking noises(yes, a sign of it's going to die soon) and the HD diagnostic utility did not find any errors.

[RJ]

The clicking sound hasn't returned...yet. I think that the sound is a prelude to HDD failure, but wouldn't the diagnostic utility have caught that?

Yes it is a sign of failure, however the diagnostic utility doesn't catch it. My IBM 120 GXP used to make that noise too for over half a year, and then it failed. I now have a WD1600JD, but still, my second hard drive is also an IBM. It's a 60 GXP, and I still hear the clicking sound. The diagnostic tool doesn't report any errors, but I think (and I really hope coz it has warranty till next month) it's gonna fail soon.

Personally I wouldn't trust that drive. My 60 GXP for example is just a video capture drive, nothing important on it. If it fails I just have to capture a video again, and that's it. I think it's gonna fail soon, and I wouldn't put important data on it.

RJ

[glc]

Clicking can also be an indication of file system corruption - which you fixed with chkdsk. Still, if possible, I'd copy the files off the WD and zero fill it before I'd trust it any more.