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    Hard drive failures. How and why??

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by radialman, Mar 4, 2007.

  1. radialman

    radialman Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ok, I posted a few weeks ago about my hard drive only running in PIO mode everytime I restarted my desktop. I discovered that the IDE channel on my mobo had gone bad for some reason because it would force the channel to PIO with any drive I put on it. SO I changed out the mobo and cpu (upgraded) and it runs fine now.
    Now I have a second problem on a different mobo (gamer) but it is nearly the same as the first mobo (Aopen AK77-600N for the IDE issue and now a Aopen AK77-600MAX). I swapped out the CPU to send to my brother and installed a sempron 2200 (socket A) and it ran fine(I will be getting a new mobo and CPU in a week). Then I tried to see if I could overclock it a bit and it did not like it so I returned it to normal and it ran fine. The next morning I started it up and the 160gb drive I had installed on the #3 IDE channel (controlled by the Promise controller that also runs my 2 40gb SATA drives) and the 160gb freaked out. It just sits there and clicks madly for a minute then stops. The bios does not pick it up at all, nor the controller. I tried an older 60gb on the same channel and the bios picks it up, but windows does not see it now (nor partion magic, and Westerndigital lifegaurd). I cannot figure out why all of a sudden I have problems with both mobos. I have had no power spikes (everything is plugged into a surge strip). Maybe I'm having bad luck. I just don't like to loose a HD. (nothing critical was on it)

    Rob
     
    radialman, Mar 4, 2007
    #1
  2. Zero

    Zero The Random Guy

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    I don't think that anything has happned to the hard disk itself. When you overlcocked, did you use a PCI/AGP locked motherbaord, and if so, did you activate the PCI/AGP lock. If not, then devices which use the PCI bus, which possibly include the IDE controller, could have become damaged, and they may not recognise the hard disk correctly. If you ahve another computer with an IDE interface, try using the hard disk in there and see if it works.
     
    Zero, Mar 4, 2007
    #2
  3. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    How did you overclock it? Did you jump up the bus speed? Because PCI/IDE/SATA channel frequencies are often all affected by changing the bus speed. You should check the manual for your motherboard, but if that's the case, it's quite possible that running the hard drive out of spec (especially if you did a pretty high overclock) caused some lasting issues with the drive electronics.
     
    Pitabred, Mar 4, 2007
    #3
  4. radialman

    radialman Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well, I just changed the CPU multiplyer up by 2. The other SATA drives that I have are working fine and have no problems.
    I also have tried the drive on my other system and it will not work at all. I'm glad I kept nothing of value on that drive.

    Rob
     
    radialman, Mar 4, 2007
    #4