Help needed with IDE hard drive

[sganro]

As the title suggests, im having trouble with one of my IDE hdd's. The problem was that my computer kept freezing every couple of hours, or sometimes it would go a day or two. Each time it would lock up the hdd light on the case would stay on like the hdd was getting punished.
After numerous reboots, windows started doing its boot up scan of one of my hdd's. (just to clear things up, i have one hdd with windows on it which i boot off, and 2 other storgae drives that dont have windows). The scan that windows was doing was on one of my storage drives.

Anyways i unplugged the storage drive that windows kept doing boot scans on and with it unplugged no more freezing. If i plug it back in it boots up without doing the scan and runs with the hard drive having full use, but then after a while it freezes again. I have defragged it and it comes up clean - also the windows scans didnt show bad sectors or anything - but it keeps playing up. At the moment it has all my music on it and its really pissing me off not having it plugged in.

What i want to know is, should i rip the hard drive out and throw it off the highest cliff i can find and get a new one to replace it, or can it be brought back to life

Any help would be greatly appreciated

EDIT: oh and if this makes any difference, the hdd would be about 2 and a half years old, and has never had any problems before

[JD]

try swapping the ide cable over, i think that may be failing.

either that or its the fatal head crash, but lets hope not.

[Spaced]

Hi Mate,

I agree with JD it is most likely an issue with your cable as this is the most common cause of hdd faults. If this does not fix your problem write down your hdd manufaturer and model no found on the top of the hard drive. I'll then link you to the hdd checking software.

D

[sganro]

cheers guys, i will try a different cable tonight when i get some time.

Spaced, i will let you know how that goes and whether i need the hdd checking software or not

[Spaced]

No worries mate,

for Seagate and Maxtor follow this link
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...00dd04090aRCRD

and for Western Digital follow this link
http://support.wdc.com/download/

What you do is download the software and you should get an iso file you burn to a blank cd. You boot of this and use the tests. Make sure you data is backed up and read the instructions as some tests may require overwriting data :/

[VZTHUNDER]

also
if you can boot to a windows xp install cd and opt for the recovry consol
and type CHKDSK -r
this will scan for errors and fix them

[stocky]

how many devices are running off your computers power supply, and how powerful is it? one of my drives ran very slow or just would work at all until i unplugged a few fans in my case, so it may be a power issue

[pow3rslave]

what brand model is the hdd? if it's seagate, they do some teh pwn recovery/error checking utilites.

edit:
just read spaced's post. but yeah, that's what i'd go for.

also if it's a maxtor drive, they're ghetto.

[VZTHUNDER]

yeah
how powerfull is your psu

[Bilbs]

if the cable doesnt work you could try fdisking it (deleting partition, and making a new one) then re format it. If that dont work, just paper weight it, and get a new one, cheap as these days, you can get a 250gb for like $100 at some places.
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/...ducts_id=18433

[sganro]

Thanks for the help guys

I played around with it this afternoon without much luck

Tried the hdd in another comp, and it still played silly buggers so i think i will turn it into a new gun target.

It was a 120gig i've had for about 3 years anyway so im not to worried about it. Will just get meself a new 250gig

[pow3rslave]

if there's data on there you really need to get, there's apparently a trick you can use where you put the hdd in the freezer for a bit, then pull it out and use it, i think you only get one shot at it.
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...over-data.html

and this is an ok article from the same site about other hard disk recovery tools.

if you use the freezer option, you should put it in a zip lock baggie, or else it'll get condensation all up in it.

[Bax]

freezer option is only really for a drive that you can't get anything out of at all.

from the sounds of it you can access it all be it temporarily.

I've heard the freezer option only gets you a few minutes of hard drive life if your lucky, from a mate in the it industry.

I'd go for the usb hdd caddy, see if you can pull any info off it. or take it to a shop, see if they can ghost it. then upgrade.