3 Drives failing in one day? wtf

sorry for the double post, wasn't sure where to put this:

Ok guys, check this out.. Yesterday, 3 of my drives started clicking on me.... all are IDE.. an 80 gig, a 250 gig, and a 40 gig, so you can imagine how much this hurts... all oif them are pretty full too..

So i'm in windows about to goto the 250 gig, windows hangs a bit when i try to access it, and then all of a sudden i get an error about F:\ (250 gig) being unavailable and it disappeared from My Computer. Soon enough, that happened to my other two drives..

I honestly have no idea what it could be.. I went into the bios and changed the access modes from AUTO to LBA, can't really tell if that did anything..

my only real guess is my power supply not being strong enough?
Its a TurboLink 420Watt with an intake and exhaust fan.

Here is what im running:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ OC'd from 2ghz to 2.5ghz. ( i usually run a vcore of 1.65 but right now it seems that stock is stable )
1GB PC3200 (stock speed)
1 Double layer DVD burner
4 hard drives (3 IDE 1 SATA)
BFG 6800GT OC
Nexus fan controller.
2 standard 80MM fans
An 80mm thermaltake smartfan which draws 1 amp
A 92mm Vantec tornado which dissipates 18 watts (not sure of the amperage)
and the fan controller can go up to 21 watts per channel if that matters

I know that it cant be the drives and its really pissing me off, so i hope this gives u guys a bit of a challenge, but not too much of one.

Mod Edit: Discussion continued in the duplicate thread here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=947694

I would immediately look at the Power Supply. That is quite a bit to run on a non name branded power supply. (No offense)

Those drives could actually be bad. But I would blame the PS.

You could unplug as much as possible and test them one at a time. Maybe they were starved for electricity?>

Good luck either way

Its a TurboLink 420Watt with an intake and exhaust fan.

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yeah... uh... bad idea...

lithium726 said:

yeah... uh... bad idea...

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care to elaborate? if you are smart enough to have the knowledge of this PSU being a bad idea then the smart thing to do would be to tell my why

Generic PSU's are crap and you're playing with fire by using them. I've never heard of Turbo Link and I don't even see them in the list of recommened/unscrupulous powersupply list in the PSU forum.

If your drives aren't being detected at boot up, the first thing I'd do is try another PSU. Otherwise download the HHD manufacturer's utilities and run those. If those come out ok it's something in the OS.

What he means is that cheap power supplies often don't have good voltage regulation or sufficient amperage. Compare the specs on the Turbolink with the specs on a PC Power and Cooling or Antec or another good name power supply and you'll see what I mean.

The problem with inexpensive power supplies is that they tend to have fluctuating outputs which tends to destabalize the parts connected to it. Especially in the case of video cards and processors as they are very touchy on that.

As far as your hard drives are concerned however, I can't really say. Not my forte but defintily look if the manufacturer offers a "test" software which could diagnose the drives.. if they're still alive.

yeah i know what you mean... we built a power supply from scratch in my electronics class... getting that voltage to regulate is a bitch,..

im doin a surface scan right now on my 250gig, no clicks yet... sounds like a good sign to me? i think from now on ill be keeping the side panel off and ill take it from there...

karnick said:

yeah i know what you mean... we built a power supply from scratch in my electronics class... getting that voltage to regulate is a bitch,..

im doin a surface scan right now on my 250gig, no clicks yet... sounds like a good sign to me? i think from now on ill be keeping the side panel off and ill take it from there...

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Good sign I guess. Try and see if you can defrag them or if they lockup when you do.

I feel your pain. Last night my 160GB SATA Seagate started acting up. Right now it's doing a thourough scan disk for bas sectors....and I have a PCP&C. After it's done, it's time for a backup and reformat! for sure!

Oay this may seem lame to you,but. If you hold the power supply buy it's self is it heavy, becuase as strange as it souns a general rule of thmb is that the heavier a power supply is the better quality. You would be very surprised how heavy an antec or pc power & cooling is compared to a cheap power supply. I have seen power supply's kill every component in a system includeing one that would cuase north bridges to actually pop and break a hole in them. But as chances are your data is most important right now I would say back up your stuff. Starrt by tacking everycomponent out of your system you can and pu in the weakest video card you have available to help minimize power draw ad cross your fingers the drives have not been corrupted. There is no substitue fr a god power supply. I still have some PC power & cooling 275's powering systems with a A64 3000 ,1gig ddr ,2-3 hdd's, 2 optical drives
SBlive,and 6600gt and they never skip a beat. I know everyone says OCZ power supply's rock as well but I am 2 for 2 when it comes to failures from their 520's and the systems are not even heavily confiured.

everones so quick to blame the power supply although it doesnt sound like a great power supply the first thing id be checking is ram.

run memtest86 on your ram. Bad ram can cause all kinds of hard drive problems. Just lost a 160gb and 250gb myself to a bad stick of ram. Its still possible you can recover the files though. As im doing right now.

edit: forgot to mention I would do this immediatly and not use the HDs til you do. If its a bad spot in your ram you never know when its going to access it, and it will cause further problems.

test 5 in memtest is a good one

Are your drives on an ATA expansion card? I had troubles with the cheap ass ones that usually come with Western Digital drives. My drives would click, they would appear to be empty or not even there. Once I moved them to a new card or to the onboard IDE they worked fine.

I'd switch to a better power supply.

I think it's sort of a case by case basis when you go with a cheaper psu. Some people, like my friends run 4 pretty pricey servers using nothing but generic PSU's and have never had a problem with them. I ran my P4 2.0 somewhat gaming system with 2 HDD's, 2 opticals, and a video card for almost 3 years on a JNC corp. psu (12 volt rail pushing a mean 9 amps) before the fan on it died so I said F-it and got a name brand. Upgraded to a BFG 6600GT OC, and switched to a Antec 350w PSU that I bought used off ebay for cheap and it runs like a dream.

no ata expansion card.

and what if i tightened the timings on my ram, could this be a reason?

BigTaf said:

everones so quick to blame the power supply although it doesnt sound like a great power supply the first thing id be checking is ram.

run memtest86 on your ram. Bad ram can cause all kinds of hard drive problems. Just lost a 160gb and 250gb myself to a bad stick of ram. Its still possible you can recover the files though. As im doing right now.

edit: forgot to mention I would do this immediatly and not use the HDs til you do. If its a bad spot in your ram you never know when its going to access it, and it will cause further problems.

test 5 in memtest is a good one

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the only reason i could think of losing a hradrive to ram is paging... i really doubt thats the issue...

i dont know what everyone considers heavy in the psu world, but my fortron is nice and heavy compared to my other PSU lol

id say just buy a new powersupply... FSP blue storm 400W sounds fine to me... its a quality unit (i got the 500W version) and is SILENT, i think it uses those nexus fans everyone loves... because nexus makes an IDENTICAL power supply... go figure...

those turbolink psus taht they give you for free are garbage.
its a shame that you would spend so much on a system and keep the cheapo psu that came with the case.
also if you're running a 939 chip, or even a 754 chip, 1.65 volts is alot man.
i ad the same psu and it could barely run a barton and 9800 pro, so i can see why your system woudl be struggling.

Well tight memmory timmings could cuase corruption as well as non standard bus speeds as well as overclocking anything cuaseing coruption as it's being moved around. I agree thet memtest is a great program I prefer memtest 86+ and most maufactures are more receptive to saying the memmory has failed when tested with memtest as well testing it on another system.