Q: I recently got my A8N32-SLI, AMD Athlon64 X2 4800 +, 2GB Corsair RAM, 7900GTX, 2x 150GB Western Digital Raptor HDD (no RAID) system up and running . or so I thought. After a couple of boot up, my system did not start running on the Windows XP screen (the one with the loading bar). I know this because I am a real audible click in the direction of the station to hear the bar would keep going and going and the system would not boot into Windows. It would be good start to desktop when I rebooted the machine. Eventually, I got a SMART error: “3rd master Hard Disk: SMART status BAD, backup and replace.”
Well, no biggie, I thought. Sometimes hard drives go bad. So I unplugged that drive, connected to the other and formatted and installed XP, I could only think of the RMA dead. Well, I was in shock. After a pair of boots from that drive, I get the clicking and Im stuck at boot. Im afraid I will get a SMART error soon.
I checked the temperature of the disk SmartFan, reading 27C. Im not sure if that is good for the disk or not.
It does not seem logical that the hard drives would be influenced by something other than the internal defects, bad cables, or bad power. My 12V rail is less than 12V, 11.8 or something, which I know is more than fine. The audible clicking sound that makes me believe these drives are both faulty, but I have never heard of two drives in one go, let alone so close together other.
I need this fixed asap as I am getting pretty frustrated and have things I need to use this rig for the next few weeks. I will be happy to RMA the hard drives as the actual product is the problem, but I want to ensure that it is not something else.
Re:If you worry about the data, back them up now and get the drives replaced. Otherwise, no pain, no gain until something bad really happens
Re:Thanks for the replies everyone, they've been much more helpful than some of the others I've gotten.
A little update: Last night when the Windows XP boot failure happened again, along with that clicking sound, I let the computer sit there. After about 3 minutes or so, it booted to Windows and the desktop. At that time I used Western Digital's own diagnostic tool, and ran a "Quick Test" which I believe is just a more extensive SMART test. The drive passed the test, and so I rebooted. Came up to Windows and did the test again – passed. I did this 10 times without a hitch. I've now rebooted or done a cold restart (alternating) 15 times and I've gotten to desktop each time with no errors. Very odd. I'm wondering if the hard drive is just playing goodie-goodie but since this issue happened every couple boots I wonder if it might be fine now.
I connected the current drive to the other drive's SATA cable, I didn't actually pull them out. Therefore I don't believe I have a problem with the cable.
My PSU is an Antec NeoHE 500W.
More comments would be appreciated, but once again – thanks for the advice guys!
Re:I'm not 100% sure about this, but I could have sworn I read somewhere where the 10k Sata drives from WD didn't like SMART very much. I also thought the Raptors didn't like the NVIDIA NForce 4 IDE driver. Perhaps disable SMART and give it a shot?
Re:PSU specs? How old is it? Do you run a hot case(silent) ?
The 12V servers the HDD motor. The 5V servers the HDD's logic chip/PCB. 5V spikes
can/will kill logic chips.
Just guessing. *shrugs*
…Galvanized
Re:So you did try another SATA cable? I had a drive appear to crash only to find out it was just a bad cable.
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