Hard drive crashing problem

[JOEBEME]

Hi,

I am not sure if this has been asked already, but it is a pretty unique problem, so I doubt it. Anyway, before I get to the problem, here are my specs:

Asus K8V SE Deluxe
Amd 64 3200+
Nvidia GeForce 6800 AGP
1 Western Digital 10gb IDE 5400 RPM (windows was installed on this, but it crashed)
1 Western Digital SATA 34GB Raptor (windows installed currently)
1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB SATA
1 Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JB 320GB IDE Ultra ATA100
1 Maxtor 250 GB 7200 RPM IDE
1 Maxtor 200 GB 7200 RPM IDE
NEC DVD-RW
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR Ram
Thermaltake 430W PSU

Now, before you say "Wow, thats a lot of hard drives," three of them crashed on me in the past week. The problem started like this:

Last weekend I was downloading a patch for World of Warcraft to the Maxtor 200 GB, which at the time was connected to an external usb 2.0 case enclosure, with the intention of playing the game after it was finished.

Since the patch was 359 MB, the download took a bit so I decided to listen to some music from that same hard drive. I clicked on a song and I got an error message saying "Cannot read: (forget the name).mp3." I knew this was fishy because I had listened to the same song earlier in the day. I tried another song, same thing. In addition, the patch download stopped and gave me an error of "Cannot write to disk," or something along those lines.

At this point the computer completely froze and I was forced to restart. Upon returning to Windows Xp, when I tried to access the drive, it reported an error of "The disk drive F is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" I chose 'No' because I knew there was data on it! When looking at the properties of the drive, it reports the file system as being "RAW," with 0 bytes used or free. I bit the bullet and accepted that my hard drive had crashed.

This problem has happened to me before, so I knew to use my Winterals (ERD Commander) to recover the data. I scanned the drive and successfully recovered 99% of the data to the 320 gb Western Digital Cavier.

Everything was running fine until yesterday. I bought the Seagate 250 gb SATA 150 to replace my 200 GB Maxtor that had crashed on me. So I shut down the computer, in hopes of installing my new hard drive. I connected it to computer and everything was set to go. I powered on the computer and heard this clicking noise and noticed that my computer was froze at my bios screen. By process of elimination, I found that it was my 10 gb Western Digital hard drive, which at the time had my Windows Xp installation.

At this point my temper went through the roof, so I calmly proceeded to take the 10 gb hard drive, opened my front door and threw it into the street. After getting back to my computer, I figured I could use the Western Digital Raptor to install windows on, since it would probably significantly improve my performance (Great, maybe this would turn into a positive experience).

I turned the computer back on today and noticed that it was freezing at the bios screen again. I did a quick check to make sure everything was plugged in... it was. I disabled the "full screen logo" for the bios, so I can see exactly where it was stopping. Well, it was detecting my 320 GB hard drive, but stopping right after that. So I disconnected that drive and it proceeded to the windows installation. I successfully installed windows EXTREMELY fast on the raptor drive, got all my drivers installed, and proceeded to see what was wrong with the stupid 320 gb hard drive.

I plugged it into my USB 2.0 enclosure, windows detected it and I figured that everything would be OK. Well, I was wrong, DEAD WRONG. I went to access the hard drive and received the following error: "The disk drive G is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" Same as the origianl hard drive crash.

So thats three hard drives lost in a matter of 7 days. I don't "abuse" my computer in any way. I leave it on 24/7, but have the hard disks set to turn off at 20 minutes after being idle. Do you have ANY possible idea of what can be wrong or anything that I can possibly try? I am at my fingertips even writing this post because I am afraid that I'll lose the current hard drives that are working (34 gb raptor, 250 gb sata, 200 gb maxtor). I would appreciate any help or tips of what I can try. Thank you for your time and support.

Joe

[YARDofSTUF]

Considering its alot of power, unplug one of the hard drives you dont need to boot, then plug in the 320 in to the usb, see how it does, or plug it in to the ide, and a molex, maybe it coulbe be the usb/external unit.

10GB drive has to be old, thats not surprising to see that one fail.

Also double check jumpers.

[JOEBEME]

I tried plugging a separate hard drive into the usb enclosure and it worked fine. I tried your suggestion and it still says "The disk drive G is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" and reports it as being "RAW" with 0 bytes free or used.

[YARDofSTUF]

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

Download the data lifeguard diagnostics, I dont know if it needs the drive on ide or not, never used it.

[JOEBEME]

I ran a quick test on the 320 Gb hard drive in the USB enclosure and it came up with the following:

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD3200JB-00KFA0
Serial Number: WD-WCAMR1537381
Firmware Number: 800.J580
Drive Type: USB
Capacity: 137.44 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 01:33:16, April 08, 2006

The first thing that concerns me is that for capacity, it says 137,44 GB.

[mnosteele52]

The first thing that concerns me is that for capacity, it says 137,44 GB.

This happens with XP if no service packs are installed due to it's 32-bit LBA support, you need to install SP2 for XP.

[YARDofSTUF]

This happens with XP if no service packs are installed due to it's 32-bit LBA support, you need to install SP2 for XP.

Then why is he able to see his 200 and 250 gig drives?

[mnosteele52]

Then why is he able to see his 200 and 250 gig drives?

Maybe the brand of drive? I'm not sure, but XP with no service packs doesn't support drives larger than 137GB.

[Amro]

Things that come to mind:
- Possibly a bad PSU
- PROBABLY a bad enclosure
- Possibly a bad motherboard
- Possibly just a terrible coincidence where all of your drives were going at once

Download the UBCD and run DFT advanced scan on all of your remaining drives to see if they're good or not. It's accurate.

[JOEBEME]

Just as an update, I had SP2 installed when they crashed.

[nightowl]

it almost sounds like a powersupply issue.....do you have your system plugged into a UPS? How old is your PSU on this computer, try another PSU, they are pretty cheap these days.

[JOEBEME]

The PSU is fairly new, maybe 3 months old. The system is not plugged into a UPS.

[JOEBEME]

Just another update, I just replaced the psu with an antec 500 w psu and a new motherboard.

[Amro]

still problems, i take it?

[JOEBEME]

The problems continue! So I installed a DFI nforce3 250gb motherboard and an Antec 500W Smartpower psu. I put the 36 GB raptor drive, the brand new 250 gb sata drive, the 200 GB ide and a 250 ide drive. The computer posted, detected all the drives and I began the windows xp installation on the 36GB raptor. The installation went smooth as silk. I installed the nforce driver pack, followed by a required installation. Everything looked fine up until I got an error that said, "SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE. PLEASE INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ENTER." I double checked and everything was still plugged in and there were no disks in the DVD drive. I rebooted and repeatedly got the same error, so I installed windows xp again. Everything seemed to be running fine again until I rebooted. Again I received the "SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE..." I have absolutely no idea of what to do. I have begun looking into new systems since I am losing faith in this computer system. Any suggestions would appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time and help.

Joe

[Unholy]

I have had "The disk drive is not formatted" happen to me once happen to me once or twice after a fresh in stall of windows. I just used a Partition Recovery software in my case Acronis Disk Director Suite to recover the partition. I don't think any of your drives actually "crashed" except the clicking one just something happen to the partition.

[JOEBEME]

As im sure most of you know, dealing with computer problems can lead to insanity. With that said, after working a few hours on a computer problem, would make me legally insane. Anyway, a very strange turn of events just occurred. I finally got Windows XP to boot up and continue to boot up upon multiple restarts. However, when I took the CD out and started to install drivers from a burned cd, the computer just rebooted out of nowhere, and proceeded to the dreaded "SYSTM DISK FAILURE..." I tried restarting it a few times and I kept getting the same error. It just occurred to me to try to put the xp cd back in the drive just to see what would happen if i booted up with the cd in the drive. Windows booted normally as if nothing was wrong. Do any of you know what to make of this or have any suggestions to by on-going problem(s)?

Thanks,
Joe

[JOEBEME]

Just to keep everyone updated, I found out why it was doing that "SYSTEM DISK..." It has something to do with the SATA drivers and the windows boot.ini, although I still don't know exactly how. I read somewhere to start the windows recovery console and to type "fixboot" and "fixmbr." At first I couldn't get it "fixboot" and "fixmbr" to have any effect on the hard drive. However, after getting into windows I noticed that the boot drive was drive "D:." I went into the computer management console under disk management and set my boot drive to 'active,' followed by a reboot. It didn't give me the "SYSTEM FAILURE..." error this time, but instead gave me a "Missing NTLDR" error. I copied over the files using the recovery console and restarted it again. I saw a quick error message and beneath the first line was something to the effect of "using boot.ini from C:\windows." I didn't care though, it booted to windows without the cd in the drive! So I started installing the nforce drivers when all of a sudden the computer just randomly restarted. It booted up windows again and this time i did nothing on the screen and it rebooted by itself again. I still have no idea what is going on with this computer, but I am going to bring it in to a computer repair shop tomorrow. I feel like I have to write a book to list all of the problems I have had over the past week...haha. Any ideas? Thanks for your continued help.

Joe

[mnosteele52]

It sounds like something other than a bad drive, there is no way you can have that many drives fail at the same time. Personally I would remove all the drives but one, then update the BIOS and then do a clean install of XP on the one drive you have installed. Then install the latest drivers for everything then install the others drives one at a time.