Hard drives sometimes work

[Scotch77]

I have 2x36Gb raptors in raid 0 and 2x 40gb WD Hard drives. The 2 40gb hardrives sometimes work and somtimes dont. They just started clicking 1 day out of the blue and now one of them has resoved working but somtimes does not work. The other is dead and just clicks and clicks. I got the needed info off of them, but wnated top know why they were doing this.

Ive tried a new Motherboard(rmaed it anyway), new IDE cable and even pulled out the multimeter to chyeck voltages of the PSU. All were fine, so it has to be the Hard drives and the Post doesnt even pick them up somtimes, so that would rule out windows.

also whats the best Storage Hard drive out at the moment. 200-300gb


__________________
P4 2.4C GHz (@ 3.4 GHZ) Stock Intel Heatsink AS 5------I will never buy AMD
Asus P4C800 E- DELUXE
OCZ PC-4200 1GB 2.5-4-4-8
Liteon SOHW-832S
Antec TruePower 550watt
ATI Radeon 9600XT
----WD RAPTOR 2X36.6 (RAID-0)
----WD 5400rpm 2x40gb
Mistubishi 930SB 19"

 

[defakto]

Harddrives are mechanical parts, just like a car, they will always go bad. It's just a matter of when. As for best drive for that range, check out this stickied thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=873523

 

[dirtydr]

Once they start clicking it is only a matter of time before complete failure.
Many potential causes for failure such as manufacturing defect, abuse during shipping, bad psu, and as defakto said time.

I've no statistics to back it up, but IMO/E quite a few premature failures are caused by jarring the hdd while in operation. I have replaced a number of drives in systems that are under a desk right next to someones feet and noticed small scuffs on the case that would indicate at least a bump if not repeated kicks over time.

The other side of the coin are the drives that have hung off a cable @ every angle, been dropped, had coke spilled on them or worse and just refuse to die.