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HD intermittant spin up issue

K

Kahnvex

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 5, 2001
Messages
3,297
Hi guys.

I've got a problem where my WDC 160GB ATA133 HD will just spin up for no good damn reason at all.

Sometimes this locks up the computer, sometimes it just pauses for a while before it goes back to normal. It will do it if I'm doing nothing on that particular dirve or copying files from it to my main drive. There isn't rhyme or reason really. So I unplugged. Backing up 100GB's of crap isn't something I'm yearning to do, sooooo...

I'm just curious, is it a HD problem or maybe a controller problem? I've got it hooked to a serial ata adapter and I've been suing it that way since the day I bought it. The MoBo is an Asus Nforce2 A7N8X v2.0

the drive is less then 6 mos old.


As always all suggestions are appreciated


Thank you,

Tyler Slavens
 
I have that same problem with 2 of my WD 80's. First they just had alot of read write head resets, now they just loose power randomly and the read write heade resync. It's very un-nerving especialy when I am running Raid 0. Have never realy lost any data witch is another oddity. Got a new one to change it out and now the old one that was not doing it just started up about a month ago. Put the first bad one into a external usb case and it works ok, but still looses power. Thinking about buying two raptors now to replace the 2 mains in my case.

Look at the smart chip data. that will tell you whats really up. I have never had mine out of raid 0 and one has reset or (powered up) over 10 times more than the other.
 
in the years to come you will see that harddrives will die on you, because they have moving parts.
 
HDD do eventually give up the Ghost
but some seem to last quite a long time, with care

Kahnvex, make sure indexing isnt turned on
personally I dont have my HDDs set to spin down

PlasmaFire, that is a serious issue
try to isolate it to the HDD itself not the supply or connector
 
I'll check on indexing, thanks.

And thanks for the heads up, I had no idea the spinning platters inside constituted moving parts.

I'm just annoyed because it's a fairly new drive (> 6mos.) I mostly just use it as a massive storage drive, and it really isn't in use all that often as far as constant read/writing like my main drive. The main drive happens to be about a 2year old 120GB WDC and I've never heard it so much as hiccup.

Another question:

Does drive size have anything to do with the life of the drive? This is the first HD larger than 120 I've ever had, and I'm just wondering if I'm better off with 2 120's or something.

thoughts?
 
LOL...this is one case where size DOESN'T matter :D .

Have you tried just simply replacing the IDE cable?
 
Oddly enough, my Seagate 15k RPM Cheetah just started doing this today. Drive is 2 years old (warranty is 5, heh). I checked the event viewer and Windows says its something to do with the controller. To add to that, it BSOD'ed on me a few minutes ago :(

No idea whats up...I'm using the drivers that Windows chose because I haven't found a clear answer for what to use on XP. The controller is a Tekram DC-390U3W running on an MSI K8N Neo2 mobo. I just turned off the Indexing service on the drive so maybe that will have an effect.
 
@Kahnvex - Definately check out the poor connection/power issue.

Perhaps, if you have another PC, plug the drive into it, and see if the problem persists.

I had pretty much the same symptoms [for a long time] on my backup box. I pretty much knew what it was, since my case ran without a side panel (or front bezel for that matter).. It was 'tweaked' PSU lines/Molex connectors - whenever I would work on the box while powered up, or just inadvertantly (sp?) brush my leg against a wire while on, the drives would spin up/down/freeze the computer. Sometimes a nudge on the line would 'unfreeze' it, others it just hard locked.

And with the good deal on the Antec case/PSU @ BB this past weekend, I *finally* put that PSU and thoroughly smashed case out of its misery - and surprise, surprise - NO HD problems as of yet.
 
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