Harddrive failure on new build

[mudhead]

Greetings...
I wrote in another thread of some odd noises coming from by new Seagate HD. No nasty noises, just ones that didn't seem right. As if the head was seeking something on the drive, though the HDD light showed no activity. Long story short, the system started to hang as I installed more software, and generally became more unstable. Yesterday on boot I got a primary disk failure message......oh joy. I rebooted, and the system came back, but it wasn't "right". I ran seagate's hdd diagnostic program on it, and it indicated "physical defects severe enough to require replacing drive."
My concern is whether I could have done something during the initial set-up to cause this condition. CMOS was set for auto-detect, which looked correct, and I have not done any "tinkering". Had a bit of a problem formatting (had to go thru procedure a couple of times for it to be successful), which I would think now was caused by a bad drive. This is my first build. I spent a lot of time reading, and asking you folks questions, and I am a bit deflated at the moment. Mudhead

[LawyerRon]

Quote: "My concern is whether I could have done something during the initial set-up to cause this condition."

Not that I'm aware of.

Sounds like you just got a bad drive and it needs to be replaced.

[DFastLane]

Don't get too down - bad drives happen...

I upgraded a customers drive a few months ago that only lasted two months before it started hanging up. It developed bad sectors where the system and registry files were located. Usually if they hold up a couple of months then they'll stay with you for a while.

Just always be careful when handling a new drive. Watch out for static and don't use a magnetic screwdriver when installing it.

You may can not boot to the drive, but if you have some data on it that you'd hate to lose, then try booting with another HDD or floppy and see if you can still access the drive. I had to do this on the drive mentioned above to pull off some quickbooks files that weren't backed up.

[morriswindgate]

Yeah, don't get down, I have had all sorts of stuff that failed out of the box (Funny but the most common out of the box fail I have had is Sony brand Floppy Drives). The good news is most of the stuff will last a very long time, once it gets past 24 to 50 hours.

[RayH]

There is enough failure out of the box, that I'm gun shy about getting parts mail order! But I live in San Francisco and there isn't any need for me to do so. I can usually find a similar deal locally.

[mudhead]

Thanks for replys folks.......I'll post again when I get things straightened out.....Mudhead