Them Hard Drives, Shessi

[dvslats]

Hi DVS,
Regarding my HDD. It is an IDE one of some 5 years old and well used (abused?). About 6 months prior to the crash the dreaded clicks were heard from the drive. This is the sound of the arm hitting the internal stops or the read head touching the disc face, and usually spells a time near to complete failure.
And guess what! Yes, it got harder and harder to boot from till finally it failed. I had previously backed up all the data I wanted from it, so no big loss (actually it can be sometimes read from as a slave drive, so nothing lost).

If you are going through a lot. Change to a different manufacturer, don't go for huge capacity single drives, several smaller ones spread the load and minimise loss when things do go phut. Consider putting in some HDD caddy fans to cool the drives. Defrag and clear out HDDs regularily. Back-up to an external HDD or DVDs, again regularily.
These will reduce HDD failures and minimise data loss. Also reducing the amount stress and heartache when they do go phut! And they do, ask my wife!!! :crybaby:................... :d

Cheers Shessi

Hi Shessi,I started this thread so as to not muddy up TW's with his situation.
To give you some info on my HDD dilemma, what has been killing off my drives are bad blocks on the disk. After roughly three months, I go to defrag and the process hangs. When looking in Event Viewer/System I see the dreaded bad blocks piling up. Running CHKDISK cures it temporarily...but then within a few days I get this again and the amount increases exponentially to the point where XP becomes unstable. I've downloaded and installed a monitoring utility for my motherboard (this is a computer I self assembled) and it showed temperatures of 57°C to 54°C for the HDD. Checking the manufacture's temp specs it showed these numbers at the high end of their recommendations. Since then I've added two more fans. Now the temp is a steady 27°C.
Do you check the temps on your system? If you do...what sort of numbers do you see?
I'm hoping this is the culprit. After four HD's in eighteen months I'm very hesitant on reloading all of the software. That ol' question mark keeps hanging out in the back of my mind...whats left of it. :icon_lol:
Dave

PS: If any others here at SOH have numbers on the temps of their drives, please post them. I'd really appreciate seeing what others have. :ernae:

[OBIO]

My HD's show temps of 35 and 41 degrees Celcius (95 and 106 degrees F). Temps were taken using Everest Ultimate Edition. The way my HDs are mounted, they are in a very hard spot to get air to....but I am working on getting air to them. I have taken the side covers off my system, and have a set of home made plexiglass covers in place. As soon as I get the funds for a bigger power supply, I will be adding a few more 120mm fans, mounted on the plexi covers. Right now, my 250 watt power supply is more than maxed out.....the recommended power level for my system is right at 450 watts. I plan on getting a 650 watt power supply as soon as I have the funds available.

OBIO

[Shessi]

Hi Dave,
When I recently built my latest pc I measured on idle and under load, they came out at 31-35 degs, so 27 degs is pretty good (measurement taken under load?) (what you can do to test them under load is to have a video running, music playing and copying a large file from one drive to the other and back again).
Have you still been getting these bad sectors/HDD failures with the cooling in place?
(Not insulting your intelligence (honest! :d), but do make sure all connections power/data are all seated at both ends. Try disconnecting and cleaning out connections with canned compressed air and re-seating)

To be honest if you are getting bad sectors all the time and on different HDDs, also you have carried out a reformatted HDD clean install of your OS I would consider that it could be the HDD controller on the MB, so MB could be the culprit.
As Obio states as your's, 250w power supply is quite a low output and like he's doing would suggest getting a 500w power supply.

Whether low power could be the cause of bad sectors either through the MB or directly to the HDD?
As you are correcting the bad sectors there is nothing physically wrong with the surface media of your HDD, but low power could possibly cause errors at critical read/write times.

So MB or power supply? I would go for the power supply as you really have to do this update anyway and if it is the MB then you will have the new power supply already.
Try this (@$60-$80 in the States?).

Cheers Shessi

[Typhoon Willy]

Hi dvslats,

It wasn't necessary to start another thread, I was reading about your situation just in case I run into it someday. I always monitor 'computer issue' threads with great interest as there is always something to be learned. I've always been a believer in the old saying that the only dumb question is the one that's not asked. Considering the knowledge base available here in the basement, I think this is a great place to ask such questions.

I hope you will be able to resolve your HD issue without too much damage to the old pocketbook. I also hope that others with similar issues might come forward and take advantage of the resources available here. If nothing else, it may save someone a few dollars (or Euros, etc) by taking their rigs into the shop.

TW

[dvslats]

Thanks OBIO for your numbers. :wavey:
To answer some of the questions...I have formatted one of my crippled drives and then ran chkdsk to reallocate the bad blocks. Loaded XP again. This is with the new fans, running temp 27°C at idle. Included with the new fans is a 650 watt PSU. For two weeks now all has been well. Knock on wood.
Previously I was running a dual boot, but in the computer case the two HD's were one on top of the other. Very little space in between. So it's down to one drive hoping for better circulation.
HDD controller on the motherboard...I never thought about that possibility. If this cooling does not do the job that would be the next and last possible son of a buckboard. And if that's not it I'm going to take up needle pointing. :gameoff:
Hi TW, glad you were not offended. :ernae:
Appreciate your ideas, Dave

[mariereid]

Oh good, I see TW says dumb questions are ok. Dave when you say the defrag program hangs, do you mean it stops running? I think that happens to me. I've tried to to defrag 2 or 3 times, come back 8 hrs later, and it appears to still be "defragging", or it has stopped running. I know this can take a long time, but I think it has stopped running. I have only tried defrag, looking for more fps. I think it's set up to defrag automatically, but I do not think it's happening. Maybe I will try again tonite and see if anything has changed since I put in new card and power supply.

[sc7500]

... can there EVER be too many cooks in a Hardware Discussion ?

I started using a freeware HD program called "Defraggler" recently; MUCH faster than the existing M$ program, very efficient, and quite stable.

Can't hurt to give it a try, gang !
SC

[mariereid]

sc7500 I am running the Defragger now. It`s up to 96% on other pc, took about 2 hrs. so far. The great thing is that I know it's running. The defrag that comes with vista seems to not work. If you program it to run weekly, it says it will. a minute later when I look it says " next.......never". Thanks.

[sc7500]

... honored and pleased to help my fellow Basement Denizens !

If you want to get even more out of your comp, try downloading and using CCleaner once a week !

Best to all
SC
:kilroy:

[dvslats]

Yeah mariereid, with the defragger in Vista you would never know if it had done its job or not. With the third party defrsgging utilities at least it says Ok, I'm Done. :icon_lol:

As far as my hanging defragmentation, it was a total system lock-up. No Ctrl+Alt+Delete for task manager. Had to hold in the power button to shut down the computer. This was always my clue to the drive frying again. After I booted the system again, went to event viewer and sure enough...the red x's with the title Bad Blocks. Then the swearing began. :censored:
At this point today, I can't take watching television anymore. I figuring WTH. Going to start loading my software. Can't let this electronical box tick me off anymore.
Tomorrow I might buy some stocks from WD. Should be half mine now anyway. :rolleyes:
Dave

[mariereid]

Just in case, I read on a site that you cannot or should not defrag solid state drives, SSD. It said it would shorten the life of the unit. How the heck do you know if it's SSD? I have always been afraid of free programs, but the Defragler did defrag. The 1st 86% was fast. I have no idea how long the whole defrag took, I feel asleep. This AM it said it was complete. I will try the CCleaner. Is it a disc clean up program? At least that works on vista, or at least it says it does.

[Dirtman]

try downloading and using CCleaner once a week


CCleaner is a great tool .... I run it SEVERAL times per day.

Also, don't be afraid to run Defraggler every day. This will shorten your defrag times & boost the speed of your PC.

Run CCleaner first to remove the garbage and then defrag.
(cuz ya don't need to defrag the garbage .... right?)

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

.
.

[mariereid]

Hey Dirtman, do you defrag all, or just the "C". My "E" is unused. But, the "D" is almost full, factory image. Should I leave the factory image alone?

[sc7500]

...I read on a site that you cannot or should not defrag solid state drives, SSD. It said it would shorten the life of the unit. How the heck do you know if it's SSD?...

I have a Dell -9 Web Book as an emergency backup comp w/ a 16Gb SSD and a 16Gb SD chip. Running CCleaner first and then Defraggler helped it run 120% faster than "stock" with no obvious long term damage.

It serves to say that the less congested and better organized a hard drive is, the better it will perform. As Dirtman sez, no sense in organizing the Garbagio !!! lol

If you head to Windows Explorer and Right Click each of your hard drives, then select <Properties> - much information can be gleaned from this section.

Best
SC
:kilroy:

[mariereid]

Thanks, again SC, I never looked into the drive properties before. Checked (D) for errors. No errors there! Hmmm.. let's see what trouble I can get into here, heh, heh! I am going to find the CCleaner now, I think it is smarter than I am. Some of the stuff in the properties looks familar, must have run across it when I was trying the defrag stuff.


SC, while at the site I saw a download for Nvidia forceware 190.62. Have you tried this? Is this the latest update from Nvidia or something else?

[sc7500]

According to my sources, NVIDIA Forceware 190.62 WHQL XP / Vista (http://www.filehippo.com/download_nvidia_forceware_xp/) is the most current driver set for nVidia chipsets.

The only thing I can recommend is that you do a backup of the Registry BEFORE you mess with new drivers... in case your set-up doesn't like the new kit, you can roll back to the original working driver.

Enjoy ! :icon29:
SC
:kilroy: