Hard drives burning out extremely fast?

[sarcazzMhz]

Through the last 3 months i have been through about 8 hard drives. I have no clue why. I have built a new tower, all new parts, nothing salvaged from the old tower, and the results are the same. Is it possible that the power from the outlet is fluxuating and causing my hard drives to burn out? my time also sometimes resets and i find it late or early. do these indicate anything familiar? and would buying a backup battery/usp solve this issue? I'm desperate to get to the bottom of this, any help would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks much
-Sarcasm

 

[edfair]

Any special sort of failure? Smells, smoke , etc?
What kind of drives? Something grounded? Length of mounting screws? Or maybe power supply/M/B not grounded properly.

When the drive dies, does it still show in the CMOS, or can the BIOS still identify it? Does it spin when power is applied.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[sarcazzMhz]

Any special sort of failure?
>unmountable boot volume

Smells, smoke , etc?
>nada. just LOUD clank sound every time i start up/shut down, and very audable spinning-up sound.

What kind of drives?
>Western Digital, tried 40/60/80GB.

Something grounded?
>grounding appears to be fine, though the board *can* flex in the tower, which depending on the weight of cables attached to the back could cause it to flex away from the grounding screw.

Length of mounting screws?
>*shrug* they came with the hard drive.

Or maybe power supply/M/B not grounded properly.
>MB grounding *can* cause this then?

When the drive dies, does it still show in the CMOS, or can the BIOS still identify it? Does it spin when power is applied.
>yes to both.

 

[firewolfrl]

what OS are you using? What File system?
What partitioning tools are you using?
are you using Partition Magic and Diskeeper?
if you are there are known issues concerning the two programs when they work together.
is the partition on the drives corrupting or is it the drive itself (unable to get the data on drive)?
the Bios settings have alot to do with the stability of the drives.....check your RAM settings.
......Bad Ram?.....

 

[edfair]

Time for the WD diagnostics. Sounds like head positioning problems. I'm not aware of any board problems that would cause this series of failures in the manner you describe.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[MrTek]

Hello. If I read this right, the same thing happened in two seperate cases? Two seperate power supplies, system boards, etc?

The only things left that would be common would be power, and vibrations. It would take some pretty good vibrations to take out multiple drives, so unless you are in an area with a lot of heavy construction, the only think I could see would be power.

Are any other electronics in your house affected? Any other componants in the system fail? Hard drives can be damaged by power, but unless you are consistantly running below normal level, I would expect to see other failures too.

UPS might help a great deal, but if your power is fluctuating that much, I would at least have an electritian or the electric company out for a look.

Heat can cause failures too, but I would expect cpu and or system board failures, before repeated hard drives.

All western digital drives? All from the same source? All new?

There has to be a common thread somewhere. My money would be on power, as I said above, but I have never heard of that many failures one right after another.

Hope this puts you on the right trail.

Jim R

 

[sarcazzMhz]

Thanks much for the replies guys, i am extremely frustrated, have built many *many* computers, and only my own seem to do this. to follow up:

happened in two seperate cases?

Yes.

Two seperate power supplies, system boards, etc?

*everything* was changed, because i could not pinpoint the problem.

Quote--The only things left that would be common would be power, and vibrations. It would take some pretty good vibrations to take out multiple drives, so unless you are in an area with a lot of heavy construction, the only think I could see would be power.--

Nope. its resting on my clean floor under the desk. no fuzz, no carpet, sitting on a coarse rug with no fuzz or dust on it. Same spot with both towers, exactly the same.

Are any other electronics in your house affected?

None that i am aware of.

Any other componants in the system fail?

None.

Quote--Hard drives can be damaged by power, but unless you are consistantly running below normal level, I would expect to see other failures too. --

In the bios the variance is extremely slight, *maybe* give or take .15 to .20 above/under reccomended, and what does not make sense is it is the same in every outlet, well, at 8 of them, in the house. indicating that the switch box in this house is probably the origin of the powers shaky balence.


All western digital drives?

Yes.

All from the same source?

No. some from newegg, some from local stores

All new?

Yes. All wrapped and stickered from the factory.

Thanks again for the responses, will keep this updated

 

[firewolfrl]

are you using the same CD type drives?
(I had a DVD that crashed my computer...it fed the dumpster god)
software that can alter the MFT can cause this problem.
I never did hear if the drives completly failed or not?

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

im going to agree with mrtek... back when i started with computers my first system killed a total of 3 hd untill we figure out it was not a power surge but a power brown out..(tied in to the same circut as a window AC system) would highly recommend a good UPS not only works as a surge protecter it also protects against drops in power...just imagine a harddrive spinning at 7200 rpm writing data when it gets a 10 to 15 voltage drop...not pretty

 

[edfair]

Actually reminds me of another. What voltage setting on the PS. Had some wierd Compaq problems, where 3 would work on 220v setting and 1 wouldn't when plugged into 110v.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[bcastner]

srcazzMh,

The backup/UPS sounds like a good idea to smooth out the power to your machine. I agree though with MrTek above that heat should not be ruled out as a factor for 7200 rmp drives. If you can mount them so that they are not part of a drive sandwich in your machine it would be a good idea. Often just getting a slightly longer cable will expand your mounting place possibilities.

I recently went through two Maxtor Diamond Plus 9 hard disks in a month on one machine before I repositioned the replacement hard drive so as not to be part of a drive sandwich.