3 Drives failing in one day?

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karnick

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 3, 2004
Messages
183
Ok guys, check this out.. Yesterday, 3 of my drives started clicking on me.... all are IDE.. an 80 gig, a 250 gig, and a 40 gig, so you can imagine how much this hurts... all oif them are pretty full too..

So i'm in windows about to goto the 250 gig, windows hangs a bit when i try to access it, and then all of a sudden i get an error about F:\ (250 gig) being unavailable and it disappeared from My Computer. Soon enough, that happened to my other two drives..

I honestly have no idea what it could be.. I went into the bios and changed the access modes from AUTO to LBA, can't really tell if that did anything..

my only real guess is my power supply not being strong enough?
Its a TurboLink 420Watt with an intake and exhaust fan.

Here is what im running:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ OC'd from 2ghz to 2.5ghz. ( i usually run a vcore of 1.65 but right now it seems that stock is stable )
1GB PC3200 (stock speed)
1 Double layer DVD burner
4 hard drives (3 IDE 1 SATA)
BFG 6800GT OC
Nexus fan controller.
2 standard 80MM fans
An 80mm thermaltake smartfan which draws 1 amp
A 92mm Vantec tornado which dissipates 18 watts (not sure of the amperage)
and the fan controller can go up to 21 watts per channel if that matters

I know that it cant be the drives and its really pissing me off, so i hope this gives u guys a bit of a challenge, but not too much of one.
 
Unless there is some extreme heat in your case, it seems highly unlikely that 3 ide hard drives woudl fail at the same time. It could be your mother board. Do you have a known good hard drive laying around that you could swap in there and see if it works?
 
i actually dont but the thing is when i reboot the drives are there again, but it just doesnt seem like theyre 100%.. i unplugged the 80 now, and i got into windows with the other drives there, but something tells me i havent 'fixed' the problem
 
karnick said:
Ok guys, check this out.. Yesterday, 3 of my drives started clicking on me.... all are IDE.. an 80 gig, a 250 gig, and a 40 gig, so you can imagine how much this hurts... all oif them are pretty full too..

So i'm in windows about to goto the 250 gig, windows hangs a bit when i try to access it, and then all of a sudden i get an error about F:\ (250 gig) being unavailable and it disappeared from My Computer. Soon enough, that happened to my other two drives..

I honestly have no idea what it could be.. I went into the bios and changed the access modes from AUTO to LBA, can't really tell if that did anything..

my only real guess is my power supply not being strong enough?
Its a TurboLink 420Watt with an intake and exhaust fan.

Here is what im running:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ OC'd from 2ghz to 2.5ghz. ( i usually run a vcore of 1.65 but right now it seems that stock is stable )
1GB PC3200 (stock speed)
1 Double layer DVD burner
4 hard drives (3 IDE 1 SATA)
BFG 6800GT OC
Nexus fan controller.
2 standard 80MM fans
An 80mm thermaltake smartfan which draws 1 amp
A 92mm Vantec tornado which dissipates 18 watts (not sure of the amperage)
and the fan controller can go up to 21 watts per channel if that matters

I know that it cant be the drives and its really pissing me off, so i hope this gives u guys a bit of a challenge, but not too much of one.
Click to expand...
:eek: How much current (in amps) does that Turbolink PSU provide? You need to journey to the faraway place that is the Power Supply Forum. Read their stickies and post if need be, tell them DougLite sent you ;) I'll bet those drives work fine after you get a new better PSU.
 
i went to check out how much current it can provide and the damn label isnt there bc the sides are modded windows.. ill go check those psu forums

edit: and the case temp is usually cool, this room is air conditioned, but sometimes i do hvae my fans low when i game because i forget to turn them up.. how hot is too hot? and if they stay cool now can that keep them running, or can i have done permanent damage
 
Damn thats a lot of porn to loose. Yea check the power supply and the motherboard. I have seen motherboards take out hard drives before. Hell thats why I hate VIA. I had a kt133a board kill 2 hard drives.
 
Your power supply wattage is strong enough, but if it's fluctuating too much it can take out hard drives. Dropping 3 drives in one day is likely either a motherboard or power supply issue.
 
plug one drive in at a time and run a dos bootable dianostic utility such as Data Lifeguard from Western Digital (might only work on WD drives, but I think all companies have an equivalent). This will let you know if you have a hardware failure in the drives.
 
tdg said:
Your power supply wattage is strong enough, but if it's fluctuating too much it can take out hard drives. Dropping 3 drives in one day is likely either a motherboard or power supply issue.
Click to expand...
Since this is a Turbolink unit we're talking about, it's rated at 25C operating temperature. At its real operating temperature of around 40C it'll be more like 300 Watt at best. I don't even want to imagine the noise on the rails.

If these HDDs are dead as in 'put them in another system and they still don't work', then it's 99% certain that it's the PSU's fault.
 
I would say PSU too. I had a IBM Death...Deskstar die on me and I put it in a freezer for a week until my friend could lend me a gutted external HD to plug it into and it worked fine and I managed to save everything. If you need the data you might want to try that.
 
i worked at a computer store locally here in town for a while and we had those aluminum chenming dragon cases that come with turbolink 420W PSU's. i can say with absolute certainty that those power supplies are complete crap. well over half if not 75% of those customers came back with various probems that all ended up being the power supply. get rid of that thing post haste and replace it with a good PC Power and Cooling unit, FSP or some other good power supply.
 
Another vote on the PSU being a piece of crap and most likely the bain of your problems. Often times, the power supply is the most overlooked component in a PC. A $30 price tag for a 500W cheapo looks more appealing than a $100+ 500W. But what isn't realized is that better & beefier build PSU will supply better power and more stable rails to your components in the PC. Underpowered HDDs and such can suffer problems from getting fed too much or too little power, as well as a massivly fluxuating power source.

Check the PSU first... but also make sure that your system is maintaining a **reasonable** internal temperature.
 
l337zax said:
Another vote on the PSU being a piece of crap and most likely the bain of your problems. Often times, the power supply is the most overlooked component in a PC. A $30 price tag for a 500W cheapo looks more appealing than a $100+ 500W. But what isn't realized is that better & beefier build PSU will supply better power and more stable rails to your components in the PC. Underpowered HDDs and such can suffer problems from getting fed too much or too little power, as well as a massivly fluxuating power source.

Check the PSU first... but also make sure that your system is maintaining a **reasonable** internal temperature.
Click to expand...

Better yet your HDs are maintaining a reasonable temperature. SpeedFan or Everest should give you temps.
 
Also check you have the >137gb limit enabled. I know that will only work with one of your drives, but I had sailed past the 137gb limit and spent about a month there before my drive started to fail mysteriously and lost a lot of data.

At first I suspected the PSU but turned out it was Windows being crap.
 
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