Hard Drive I/O Error / d347bus.sys

Here's the deal. For the past 2 days 1 of my 3 hard drives has been making a clicking sound. I thought that it was shutting down and starting back up. Quite annoying and definatly not good when the PC is running. Every application would freeze for about 30 seconds and resume as normal. I decided yesterday that I was going to open up my PC and see which drive it was. As I have my case open, I'm still using my computer, so I can just hear which drive it is that is clicking. I know its one of the 2 SATA drives and not the PATA drive. Then without me doing anything, my computer reboots. Great, I have a ghost in the machine! Because it did this itself, I get the XP screen asking me if I want to load in safe mode, normal mode, etc. I at first think nothing of it. So I boot in normal mode. Didn't work. Got to the WinXP screen and wouldn't fully load, then restarted it self. I next to Safe mode. It goes thru the proccesses and I see where it hangs. I get a prompt asking me to press ESC to stop loading d347bus.sys. Not knowing what this file is, I check the net. I find its part of Zone Alarm. I find a way to fix it, but the problem is getting on the drive to actualy do the fix. I try making a MS boot disk, but that doesn't load the SATA drivers, so I can't see the hard drive that the problem is on. I next try using a windows XP install CD, because I know this has a way of getting windows recovery on it. I get the "Press F6 to load SCSI Drives", which I do, and I load up the SATA drivers (or so I think). It tries to start up windows and says it cant recognize any drives (I only have the 1 SATA drive giving me problems connected to my MOBO at this point). Now I might have loaded the wrong SATA drivers, but I'm not sure yet. I'll have to try loading different set of drivers to find out for sure. Anyways, that Idea is bunked. So as a last resort, I load XP on a different Drive, the PATA drive. OK that worked. I get it loaded on there and boot up my machine from this Drive. Now I connect both SATA drives up. Originally I can't see either of them becuase the drivers arent installed. I install them and reboot. Cool that worked. But heres the next problem: If i start up windows from the PATA drive and I have connected the SATA drive that had XP on it as well, XP boots really really (REALLY) freakin slow. If I don't have the problem SATA drive connected, but the other SATA drive connected, there is no problem. So i bite the bullet and have the problem SATA connected and load up XP again. When I go to my computer, everything is slow. I try to access the drive and I get a "hard drive I/O Error" (not the exact error message, but thats the gyst of it). I basically think I have lost all of my applications that were on this drive now (which was all of my applications.. so im quite pissed)

My questions are:
1) What might have been making the SATA drives click in the first place? It might have been that the connectors were loose, but I know its not a problem of not enough wattage.
2) Has anyone else see the d347bus.sys error before? The only way I know of how to get around that is to get into the folder that it is stored (c:\windows\system\drivers) and rename it. Anyone else have suggestions?
3) Can anyone suggest a program to use that would allow me to get into that SATA drive and change the file name of d347bus.sys? I've heard of PEBart, but is that all I need? I've also heard of Knoppix, but thats for linux and since I'm running all my drives on a NTFS system, would it work? What about a XP boot CD that loads SATA drivers?
4) Is my hard drive dead? Should I just try and get a replace ment? I sure hope not!

Just for refference, Here is what my comp's got:
ASUS A8V Deluxe MOBO
AMD 64 3500+ 2.2 GHz
2 - 512 MB DDR400 RAM
1 - 120GB WD SATA HDD (the one with the problem)
1 - 200GB WD SATA HDD
1 - 13GB Maxtor PATA HDD
1 - DVD -+ RW /CD -+ RW Lite-On Drive
1 - CD-ROM Lite-On Drive
x800 XL Radeon AGP graphics
1 -Sound Blaster Audigy 2Z sound card
1 - Hauppaugh WinTV 150 PVR
1 - ASUS wireless NIC card
Win XP professional

 

Here's the deal. For the past 2 days 1 of my 3 hard drives has been making a clicking sound


clicking in hd is NOT agood thing usually means its on the way out --could be why it has problems(slow)loading windows--
do the other drives boot and run fine????

#4 sounds like the option and hopefully you can get the info of the hd b4 it dies
As far as knopix it boots from the cd does not install on the hd- sooo this may be an option for data recovery??

 

Well I attributed that clicking noise to either not enough power getting to the drive, or the sata cable being lose. And the clicking I think was it powering down and then powering back up. So I guess it wasnt a real click, but more of the mechanisms shutting off and then back on.

My PATA drive runs fine (once I loaded windows on it) and the other SATA drive has no problem once in windows either.

 

Powering up and down Hmmm- Just had an older p4 1.7 ghz system do that awhile back and found out it was the ps cable to the hd shorting. messed around with it for a few weeks b4 she melted (ps) ooohh look at the pretty colored smoke

other than that I turn it to the MGs here anyone?....anyone?

 

That would be interesting if it was the PS. My whole system is new, about a year and 2 months old, and some parts are even newer still. Any MG here got some ideas?

 

A quick update: I have connected the failing drive and have recorded the errors. When I first boot up I get this error:
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file H:\$mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failur of your computer hardware of network connection. Please try to save this file else where.
Once windows boots up, I try to access this drive and heres what it says:
H:\ is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

I'm starting to think I'm screwed. I have realized I backed up most of the important stuff that I have downloaded, which is what I really was worried about. The rest I can just re-install. But if possible I'd still like to save anything I can. Is there good software to do this? If not, can the drive be re-formatted?

If that cannot happen, I'm guessing I should get ahold of Western Digital. Now I bought my harddrive from mwave.com. I do not know what the warranty period is on this drive. It is only (since the time I've owned it) 1 year and 3 months old. Should I get ahold of mwave and see what they say, or go right to WD and see if they will replace it? I've never had to deal with replacing hardware before. Suggestions?

 

Do a quick bump to see if I can get anybody to help...

 

From the sounds of it shes a goner -- 1yr 3mo old hmmmm no replacment for that i bet no matter who ya call (or did you buy that expensive err imean extended warranty??)
The good news is hd are cheap nowdays. As far as recovering data try hooking it up as a slave to the new master and see if ya get lucky.


anotheronebitesthedust