Drive shuts off and restarts

[c0ncept]

I have a new 500gb WD sata drive as my primary drive holding Vista, and my old 120gb WD drive that is several years old hooked to my IDE so I can access my old computer's files still. After setting up the new drive, I have noticed that in fairly random intervals, the older 120gb drive will make a click sound and the "whine" sound a drive makes when it shuts off and any files within that drive aren't visible. Then a couple of seconds later the drive restarts and the files become visible again.

Is this a sign of my drive about to fail? I've backed up most of the most important things, but I'm curious as to why this drive appears to just shut off at times.

It was working fine previously as my primary drive in my old computer.

[DonDon]

Yes, that is a bad sign.

Try a different cable and power connector just to rule that out.

Go to the WD website, go to the support area, find the downloads area, and get their Data Lifeguard diagnostic program. Get the version for dos that makes a CD. Make the CD, and reboot to that CD with just that drive connected, and run the long or complete test. Any problems and you will prolly want to replace the drive.

Don

[ALL4AMD]

my 320gb wd drive does that every now and then but only if the system is idle

[c0ncept]

I hooked a different power cable to it and I'll see how it goes.

It's been going 20 minutes or so with no problems, *knocks on wood*.

[DrStrangeBrew]

also make sure the data cable doesn't have sharp bends/kinks in it... i've had problems just w/routing the cable for HD error reporting as well as on DVD drives

[DonDon]

Shutting of the spin motor by itself would not be an issue. But if the files disappearing from windows, that means the drive itself is rebooting, not just going into standby. :(

You can also install Speedfan and check the smart data on that drive to see if anything looks out of line.

Don

[maddude0025]

I had that happen when I first installed Vista. I traced it to the power management settings. I disabled them and it's been running fine.