Strange HDD problem / Same fault two drives

Hi,


I have a 120gb PATA seagate drive (7200.8) which after about a year started acting like it couldn't access part of the disk. The drive would make a quiet clicking sound for several moments and either a/crash the OS or b/find what it was after and continue as normal. I rebuilt the PC and it seemed ok for about a month before it started acting up again.

Ok, my assumption was at this point this drive was going to die. I feared as such one night when the PC crashed and I could not boot into windows or run the seagate diag tool (without it getting so far and causing that noise) - However the next morning the PC booted fine!?


So I go out and buy another drive (160gb Seagate 7200.8). Setting up the old drive as a slave seemed ok. The old drive made no noises whatsoever - I assumed the fault is sommewhere with the sectors used by the C:\

(ok now the wierd part)

Less than 5 days of having the new drive installed, last night it crashed with the same noise (sounded like it was trying to access something) It really had me worried when I went to reboot and a system file had become corrupted making windows unbootable.

Now I had a image of the C:\ which I used previously so I thought "what the hey, lets just reimage it" and sure enough the new drive now seemed ok... until after about 2 hours later when I was watching a movie on the PC (movie was also on the drive) froze up to the familier noise of the HDD sounding like it was tryng to access something.

I find it incredibly hard to believe I have two drives with the same mechanical error which can be partially corrected with a reimaging.

I realise this is a long shot, but has anyone seen such a fault before? Is it mechanical or software related!? Its strange that a new drive would do this with a fresh image esp since it was only built >5 days ago.


Thanks in advance
K


Other info - could this be pwer related? Occasionally my 6600GT reports that its dropping its level of gfx due to lack of power. Has only happened over the past week or so and only once or twice (I've turned on power monitoring and turned off a system fan this morning to see what happens)

 

Sounds like the image you're using is corrupted. I had a similar problem with my hard drive after I ran Hijack This and it took out a few chunks of my OS.
I just managed to start it up properly long enough to back stuff up, then did a fresh installation. No similar problems since then.
If you're copying and pasting the same installation (what I assumed when you said you used the same image) be aware that copies aren't always perfect and even just a small error can mess things up. Try a fresh installation.
I must admit I thought it was hardware related when I first started reading your post.
My drive would make a clicking sound, the disks would stop, then after another click they would start again. After a few seconds of switching its self on and off the screen froze due to an inaccessible hard drive. Sounds a bit like what you described.

 

Thanks Cade. Hopefully its something simple like that!!!

I rebuilt the pc again a couple of days ago and it seems fine so far with no noticeable noises. The test will be when I load it up with fifa06 and BF2!

(In a way I'm kinda annoyed at buying a second drive when the other one was physically fine - tho as you can see sounded stuffed!)


Thanks again