Is my hard drive dying?

[Angelus]

I'm having a problem with one of the HDs on my computer. My computer has recently seemed to be acting "sluggisly" so I got curious and downloaded the Western Digital Diagnostics. I have 3 HDs total, and drives C: and D: are both WD 120GB hard drives. When I run that utility, the second 120 drive (D: drive) doesn't show up at all, all it says is IDE and that its capacity is 0GB. See the pic here:



When I right click on the IDE part, it says Health Status "Warning". I am confused by two things though, first both of the 120GB drives are SATA so I don't know what it's defaulting to IDE, and secondly, I downloaded the DOS version of the diagnostic and ran it on both drives and they both came back clean.

I tried downloading another HD diagnostic tool called DiskCheckup and the D: drive doesn't even show up as one of the hard drives! I can still access the drive but is it on the verge of dying?

[glc]

What motherboard are you using, and which connectors are each drive on?

[Angelus]

I'm using an Asus P4P800 deluxe motherboard and both of the 120 HDs are connected to the 2 SATA ports. From what I remember in the BIOS, there's a setting Configure SATA as RAID and I have that enabled, even though the drives aren't in a RAID setup.

[glc]

That could be your problem. If I remember correctly, you need to configure SATA as IDE on that board for standalone SATA drives.

[Angelus]

I tried setting the drives to IDE instead of SATA and I couldn't boot into the system. It would get to the Windows loading screen for 2 seconds, then automatically restart. From what I gathered from watching the screens on my system is that they need to be set up as SATA in the BIOS, then in the Intel RAID configuration screen, both drives show up as non-RAID drives (there's a section for RAID and non-RAID disks). So I think my current setup is correct.

One thing I realized is that my pagefile is stored on that D: drive, so I'm going to change it and put it back on the C: drive. If the D drive is bad, its possible that the system would slow down if the page file is on that drive, right?

[glc]

No, you set it up incorrectly to begin with. It needs to be SATA as IDE unless you are actually going to be using RAID. To recover, you need to boot into Windows, open device manager, and expand IDE controllers. You need to update the drivers on all master controllers, but choose from a list - and choose Standard Dual IDE. Reboot, make the bios change, then it should boot into Windows. It will then find new hardware - the Intel busmasters.

[Angelus]

I'll try that tomorrow, thanks...I don't think my hard drives are going bad anymore because while I was looking for the serial numbers on the drives, I mixed up the SATA cables and plugged them each into a different slot. When I ran the Diagnostic program again, the D: drive showed up fine but this time the C: drive showed up as 0 GB and with a Health Status of "Warning". Do you think this is a motherboard problem, or simply not a problem at all?

Edit: I'm kind of stuck as to what exactly I should update when trying to update those drivers. Under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers I have: Intel Ultra ATA Storage Controllers, Primary IDE Controller, Secondary Controller. Would I just update the Primary IDE driver? And when I view the list of drivers, the closest thing I have is: Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller...would this be the driver I choose? Thanks a LOT for your help!! I really do appreciate it

[glc]

Yes - standard dual channel IDE controller is correct. When you have the bios set up correctly, your 2 SATA drives will appear on the POST screen as either 3rd IDE master and slave or 3rd and 4th IDE master (I forget which). You will not have to go into the RAID utility to see them.

You may have to reinstall the controller drivers from the motherboard CD if the new hardware wizard doesn't find drivers automatically.