dying hard drive?

[Sirje31337]

My system keeps locking up. It seems to only do it when I read/write a lot of data at once on the hard drive. Usually only when I open World of Warcraft is when it does it. The system will get slightly laggy then appear to be fine. Then a few seconds later it will completely halt. It won't do anything and I have to powerdown. I think it may be the harddrive dying but i'm not sure. Is there any hope?

 

[insanarchist]

A couple questions...

1 - How old is the drive in question? Are you the original owner?

2 - Can you hear (or have you heard) any clicks coming from the drive? Generally, hard drives tend to start going out with a 'click of death' associated with it.

3 - Have you run any diagnostic tools? For instance, Western Digital has this tool on their website to check your drive for problems. Also, I would recommend downloading and running memtest to test your memory, as the problem sounds like it might be memory related.

Keep us posted!

 

[M@]

Mine started doing this as well just yesterday. I know it is not the hard drive because I switched it out with a known good one. The only thing I did differently was move the PC to a more isolated environment so i think it may be a heat issue with one of the components or the power supply. I've taken the case off to get more air and am waiting to see if it will lock up. Mine also will lock up while idle.

 

[Stellar]

Well first of all, if you have a serious belief that your HDD may be failing I would immediately slave it to another machine if possible and pull an image from it, or at least the most important data you have and need to keep.

Second, run a diagnostic tool on the drive - they can be found in the Support > Downloads section of your drive's manufacturer website most likely. If and when you find any errors you may be able to replace the drive under warranty.

Good luck.

 

[Sirje31337]

A couple questions...

1 - How old is the drive in question? Are you the original owner?

2 - Can you hear (or have you heard) any clicks coming from the drive? Generally, hard drives tend to start going out with a 'click of death' associated with it.

3 - Have you run any diagnostic tools? For instance, Western Digital has this tool on their website to check your drive for problems. Also, I would recommend downloading and running memtest to test your memory, as the problem sounds like it might be memory related.

Keep us posted!

The drive is about 3 years old.

I ran the WD diagnostic tool it passed.

But the clicks. Every once and a while i'll hear just a single click like when I shut down or if I come back from stand by. I don't think this is a bad click though.

 

[Sirje31337]

I guess I should have told the real whole story. The system was running fun. Just a lot of little bugs in windows so I decided it was time for a fresh install. Backed up the important stuff and formatted. When I got the OS up again it was running fine. So I installed everything then rebooted. Left for work, and when I came back it would go to the windows loading screen then reboot, and loop. I didn't feel like figuring it out so I just formatted again. Now this brings us to where I started.

 

[BlindedByScience]

....will the system pass an overnight run of Memtest86+ with "All Tests" enabled, with no errors? I have had more than one machine on my bench that had "rototilled" it's Windows install because of bad RAM. I'd start there......

Good Luck - B.B.S.

 

[Sirje31337]

....will the system pass an overnight run of Memtest86+ with "All Tests" enabled, with no errors? I have had more than one machine on my bench that had "rototilled" it's Windows install because of bad RAM. I'd start there......

Good Luck - B.B.S.

Well I was doing that last night. But the power went out this morning before I could see if it had any errors. I ran it again and it went through one complete test and passed. I'll try it again tonight.