I've built quite a few PCs and not met this before. I'm baffled.

Intel quad 9450, Asus PK5C board, Kingston DDR2 PC6400 4Gb, Western
Digital SATA III 1 Tb disks (2), Win XP Pro SP3, Antex 500W PSU, APC
UPS, Western Digital 2Gb Network Storage, network mostly wired and this
machine is using gigabit.

I built it two years ago with two Samsung 500 Gb disks. About five
months ago one disk failed, so I bought the first Western Dig.
Fortunately all data was on the NAS device or my iPod. About two months
ago the boot disk failed so I bought another WD and did a complete
re-install. Today I switched off the computer and used the master power
switch on the PSU. I switched on again and neither disk was detected by
BIOS. I did several power cycles with no effect. I replaced the BIOS
battery while I was at it.

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Peter Scott

On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott

On 10/10/2010 18:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Power or heat related problems would be the first guess. Antec[1] PSUs
are usually pretty decent, however for the price it might be worth
swapping out just on the off chance.

Now the UPS. What type is it? An APC BackUPS won't help much in your
circumstance - you need a line interactive one that can fill in sags and
brownouts as well as slipping and filtering spikes and surges. Some of
the APC RS prefix ones seem to do a decent job in that respect[2]

Heat would be another thing to check. How hot are the drives running?
The MTBF tumbles quite fast once the nominal temperature is exceeded.

[1] I assume you ment Antec rather than the soldering iron manufacturer!

[2] Had a customer out in the sticks suffering repeated hardware
failures. Adding a line interactive UPS about five years back fixed the
problems and they have been fine since. The do get through UPS batts
reasonably often though - looking at the Powerchute logs explain why -
its quite busy!

Thanks John. I hadn't realised that about UPSs. Mine is an RS800 and I
only use about 18% of its capacity. I will look into the line
interactive business to see if mine does that. Your comment about heat
is interesting. It is now working again as I said in another message in
this thread, but with the side off. Only a bit warm right now. I wonder?
I'll leave it open and see if the problem recurs.

Many thanks for your help

Peter Scott

On 10/10/2010 18:28, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott


One little thought, are the disks SATA? If so, are the data cables
firmly attached?

--
Howard Neil

On 10/10/2010 18:37, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 18:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Power or heat related problems would be the first guess. Antec[1] PSUs
are usually pretty decent, however for the price it might be worth
swapping out just on the off chance.

Now the UPS. What type is it? An APC BackUPS won't help much in your
circumstance - you need a line interactive one that can fill in sags and
brownouts as well as slipping and filtering spikes and surges. Some of
the APC RS prefix ones seem to do a decent job in that respect[2]

Heat would be another thing to check. How hot are the drives running?
The MTBF tumbles quite fast once the nominal temperature is exceeded.

[1] I assume you ment Antec rather than the soldering iron manufacturer!

[2] Had a customer out in the sticks suffering repeated hardware
failures. Adding a line interactive UPS about five years back fixed the
problems and they have been fine since. The do get through UPS batts
reasonably often though - looking at the Powerchute logs explain why -
its quite busy!

Thanks John. I hadn't realised that about UPSs. Mine is an RS800 and I
only use about 18% of its capacity. I will look into the line
interactive business to see if mine does that. Your comment about heat
is interesting. It is now working again as I said in another message in
this thread, but with the side off. Only a bit warm right now. I wonder?
I'll leave it open and see if the problem recurs.

Many thanks for your help

Peter Scott



You may find this free utility of help:-

http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...o/index-e.html



--
Howard Neil

In article ,
Peter Scott writes:
I've built quite a few PCs and not met this before. I'm baffled.

Intel quad 9450, Asus PK5C board, Kingston DDR2 PC6400 4Gb, Western
Digital SATA III 1 Tb disks (2), Win XP Pro SP3, Antex 500W PSU, APC
UPS, Western Digital 2Gb Network Storage, network mostly wired and this
machine is using gigabit.

I built it two years ago with two Samsung 500 Gb disks. About five
months ago one disk failed, so I bought the first Western Dig.
Fortunately all data was on the NAS device or my iPod. About two months
ago the boot disk failed so I bought another WD and did a complete
re-install. Today I switched off the computer and used the master power
switch on the PSU. I switched on again and neither disk was detected by
BIOS. I did several power cycles with no effect. I replaced the BIOS
battery while I was at it.

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

The chance of two disks failing at the same instant without there
being a common cause is very small.

Have you tried the disks in another system, in case the disks are
fine but something else with the original system is broken?
Do the disks spin up when power is applied, and stay spinning?
If not, what noise to they make, if any?

What were the symptoms of the first two disk deaths?
(I'm wondering if the PSU is toasting them.)

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 10/10/2010 18:37, Howard Neil wrote:

On 10/10/2010 18:28, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott


One little thought, are the disks SATA? If so, are the data cables
firmly attached?


Yes, thanks. Checked, then unplugged and replugged. My first thought
too. Do you find SATA cables are more likely to come loose? My first PC
with SATA drives.

Peter Scott

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:50:17 +0100, Peter Scott
wrote:

I've built quite a few PCs and not met this before. I'm baffled.

Intel quad 9450, Asus PK5C board, Kingston DDR2 PC6400 4Gb, Western
Digital SATA III 1 Tb disks (2), Win XP Pro SP3, Antex 500W PSU, APC
UPS, Western Digital 2Gb Network Storage, network mostly wired and this
machine is using gigabit.

I built it two years ago with two Samsung 500 Gb disks. About five
months ago one disk failed, so I bought the first Western Dig.
Fortunately all data was on the NAS device or my iPod. About two months
ago the boot disk failed so I bought another WD and did a complete
re-install. Today I switched off the computer and used the master power
switch on the PSU. I switched on again and neither disk was detected by
BIOS. I did several power cycles with no effect. I replaced the BIOS
battery while I was at it.

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Peter Scott

Couldn't resist such a direct and personal call for help. :-)

I've had all sorts of hard drive failure problems due to incorrect
BIOS settings but the standard diagnosis is rogue PSU, followed by
heat stroke.

However as you have the expense of replacement of hard drives covered,
your main problem (and it is the big one) is getting the installation
and configuration back to optimum. There's a very simple answer to
this. Drive images or clones which can be restored in under an hour
onto a new or reformatted hard drive. A sort of digital reincarnation
but returning as the same boring old fart rather than someone new and
exciting.
--
Regards,
Mike Halmarack

Lots of great help there. Thanks to all.

Most probable seems to be heat (got the side off and will monitor and
perhaps cool) or the PSU. I'll certainly try the utility.

Peter Scott

On 10/10/2010 18:42, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 18:37, Howard Neil wrote:

On 10/10/2010 18:28, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott


One little thought, are the disks SATA? If so, are the data cables
firmly attached?


Yes, thanks. Checked, then unplugged and replugged. My first thought
too. Do you find SATA cables are more likely to come loose? My first PC
with SATA drives.

Peter Scott

Well, they certainly don't fit as firmly as the old IDE cables although
you can now buy latching cables.


--
Howard Neil

Peter Scott wrote:
Most probable seems to be heat (got the side off and will monitor and
perhaps cool) or the PSU. I'll certainly try the utility.

Keep an eye on the heat. As fans dry up, get clogged, etc, the temperature
gradually rises. I set up one machine (on 24x7) to shut down when the
temperature of the hard drive exceeded 50 degC. At the time it was about 45
degC. A year or two later I found that it was regularly shutting down . I
ummed and arred and increased the limit to 53 degC. Another year went by,
and the machine started regularly shutting down due to overtemp of 53.
Evidently the fans were getting less efficient as time went on.

Theo

On Oct 10, 6:28*pm, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott

You say both hdds failed, then started working again on the same pc.
So, how do you know the fault was with the hdds rather than the mobo
or hdd leads?

With PATA a dodgy lead can cause such things, I dont know about SATA
though.


NT

On 10/10/2010 20:38, Cicero wrote:

If you're using Windows try downloading 'Speedfan' which will track
various temperatures (CPU, drives, etc.)provided that your motherboard
has the right sensors. You can have several instances of Speedfan going
at the same time so that you can see the temperatures in the systray.


I second that. Excellent utility. Look at the SMART info too, may have
a clue. And check the PSU voltages!

Andy

In article , Peter Scott
writes

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this?

Think: what's the common factor? Think PSU.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:50:17 +0100, Peter Scott wrote:


Any geniuses out there, please help!

Peter Scott

Are you sure that the disks are dead? I've sometimes have seen
situations where the disks seem dead, but are just a little slow to
respond when totally cold (it might be the disk controller on the mobo,
though). Letting the system warm up before a reboot seems to help.

I've also seen disks that start to do this in later life.... Bit like me
really.

R.

On 10/10/2010 22:42, John Rumm wrote:
On 10/10/2010 18:37, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 18:26, John Rumm wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

Four disks failing within two years cannot be right, especially two
failing at the same moment. What on earth could be causing this? I live
in the country with variable mains but the UPS should surely deal with
this. I guess I can get replacements for the WD disks under warranty
but
the worst part is wasting time re-installing all the applications I
use.

Any geniuses out there, please help!

Power or heat related problems would be the first guess. Antec[1] PSUs
are usually pretty decent, however for the price it might be worth
swapping out just on the off chance.

Now the UPS. What type is it? An APC BackUPS won't help much in your
circumstance - you need a line interactive one that can fill in sags and
brownouts as well as slipping and filtering spikes and surges. Some of
the APC RS prefix ones seem to do a decent job in that respect[2]

Heat would be another thing to check. How hot are the drives running?
The MTBF tumbles quite fast once the nominal temperature is exceeded.

[1] I assume you ment Antec rather than the soldering iron manufacturer!

[2] Had a customer out in the sticks suffering repeated hardware
failures. Adding a line interactive UPS about five years back fixed the
problems and they have been fine since. The do get through UPS batts
reasonably often though - looking at the Powerchute logs explain why -
its quite busy!

Thanks John. I hadn't realised that about UPSs. Mine is an RS800 and I
only use about 18% of its capacity. I will look into the line
interactive business to see if mine does that. Your comment about heat

Judging by the RS prefix yours should be ok. The slightly cheaper ES and
CS prefix ones just include surge and spike suppression. The RS ones
include Automatic Voltage Regulation, which is what you want.

is interesting. It is now working again as I said in another message in
this thread, but with the side off. Only a bit warm right now. I wonder?
I'll leave it open and see if the problem recurs.

What is the airflow through the case like?


Seems pretty wild out of the back. One large fan. The Antec case has
lots of holes but I gave up on fitting the front inward fan. Just
couldn't see how to do it. Another go I think. Crystal Disk shows 28degC
on both drives and the drives haven't failed again. I'll look into drive
coolers. Is there a thermal cutout on drives that switch them off if
overheated? Could explain it, but why both at the same time, and why
after a period of power down? All very odd. Oh yes, no dust build-up.

Thanks again

Peter Scott

On 10/10/2010 23:00, Tabby wrote:
On Oct 10, 6:28 pm, Peter wrote:
On 10/10/2010 17:50, Peter Scott wrote:

After a wait and a few more resets and power cycles, the disks are
working again! Being a realist about computers I wonder if this is a
false dawn. I'd still like to know what causes BIOS not to detect a hard
disk. Could it have been the battery? It didn't work immediately, but
only after about an hour. Couldn't be that could it?

Peter Scott

You say both hdds failed, then started working again on the same pc.
So, how do you know the fault was with the hdds rather than the mobo
or hdd leads?

With PATA a dodgy lead can cause such things, I dont know about SATA
though.


NT
You are quite right I don't. I did suspect the board and if the problem
persists that will be the next level of swap. Just it's a bigger job and
I want to eliminate other possibles first.

Thanks

Peter Scott

On 11/10/2010 09:10, TheOldFellow wrote:
On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:50:17 +0100, Peter Scott wrote:


Any geniuses out there, please help!

Peter Scott

Are you sure that the disks are dead? I've sometimes have seen
situations where the disks seem dead, but are just a little slow to
respond when totally cold (it might be the disk controller on the mobo,
though). Letting the system warm up before a reboot seems to help.

I've also seen disks that start to do this in later life.... Bit like me
really.

R.

All very helpful. Thanks. My mobo has an Asus monitoring utility for
fans and temps. I used it at the start, then stopped when all seemed to
be OK. I'll restart it.

So in summary:
PSU suspect
Too little fan oomph, perhaps, so drives overheating
Leads and UPS OK
Mobo dodgy, probably disk controller
Disks are slow starters from cold
Install and *use* utilities

Best wishes

Peter Scott

On 11/10/2010 10:20, John Rumm wrote:
On 11/10/2010 09:46, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 22:42, John Rumm wrote:

What is the airflow through the case like?

Seems pretty wild out of the back. One large fan. The Antec case has
lots of holes but I gave up on fitting the front inward fan. Just
couldn't see how to do it. Another go I think. Crystal Disk shows 28degC
on both drives and the drives haven't failed again. I'll look into drive

That's plenty cool enough... if it were 40+ then I would be more concerned.

coolers. Is there a thermal cutout on drives that switch them off if
overheated? Could explain it, but why both at the same time, and why

Pass - there might be. But I have had systems in the pas that ran drives
very hot, and they did not appear to have any self protection.

after a period of power down? All very odd. Oh yes, no dust build-up.

Yup a bit odd indeed. I guess you will have to watch it and see. A
decent backup regime would take the stress out of the exercise!




It isn't the data that's the problem. I have a NAS which keeps all files
backed up automatically and I burn DVDs as a second level of security
about once a month. It's the drudge of re-installing Windows and all the
apps I use. That's why I didn't keep up with the monitoring utilities.
Didn't want to reinstall them again.

I tried Norton Ghost to produce an image of the program disk but found
it frankly incomprehensible, and I'm not stupid. Anyway I didn't get it
to do what I wanted. I know images are supposed to work and a friend who
ran a commercial network used Ghost for centralised updating. But that
was before it was acquired by Norton. Any suggestions for a good image
backup package?

Peter Scott

On 11/10/2010 10:31, Peter Scott wrote:

I tried Norton Ghost to produce an image of the program disk but found
it frankly incomprehensible, and I'm not stupid. Anyway I didn't get it
to do what I wanted. I know images are supposed to work and a friend who
ran a commercial network used Ghost for centralised updating. But that
was before it was acquired by Norton. Any suggestions for a good image
backup package?

Peter Scott



Try Acronis True Image.

A customer recently wanted to buy the best one so I downloaded trial
versions of every one I could find and tested them. True Image was the
only one that worked. The rest of the others failed to restore the data
on his machine satisfactorily and some of them were a real pain to make
work.

I think they allow a trial version to see if it works for you.

--
Howard Neil

On 11 Oct,
Howard Neil wrote:

Try Acronis True Image.

A customer recently wanted to buy the best one so I downloaded trial
versions of every one I could find and tested them. True Image was the
only one that worked. The rest of the others failed to restore the data
on his machine satisfactorily and some of them were a real pain to make
work.

I think they allow a trial version to see if it works for you.

I recently got a new drive and PSU for this computer. The drive was a WD one.
A WD version of Acronis True Image is available on their website. It worked
impeccably transferring and expanding my windows and linux partitionsthat it
recognised and transferred my linux (Ext4) partition perfectly as an image.

Putting it in, everything, to my great surprise booted up as before. The only
snag was I'd allowed Acronis to re-size my /home partition to greater than
512GB and windows can no longer see it with Ext2FS

The problem turned out to be faulty memory, found by a gparted boot disk I
was going to use before I found Acronis.

--
B Thumbs
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

John Rumm wrote:
On 11/10/2010 10:31, Peter Scott wrote:
On 11/10/2010 10:20, John Rumm wrote:
On 11/10/2010 09:46, Peter Scott wrote:
On 10/10/2010 22:42, John Rumm wrote:

What is the airflow through the case like?

Seems pretty wild out of the back. One large fan. The Antec case has
lots of holes but I gave up on fitting the front inward fan. Just
couldn't see how to do it. Another go I think. Crystal Disk shows
28degC
on both drives and the drives haven't failed again. I'll look into
drive

That's plenty cool enough... if it were 40+ then I would be more
concerned.

coolers. Is there a thermal cutout on drives that switch them off if
overheated? Could explain it, but why both at the same time, and why

Pass - there might be. But I have had systems in the pas that ran drives
very hot, and they did not appear to have any self protection.

after a period of power down? All very odd. Oh yes, no dust build-up.

Yup a bit odd indeed. I guess you will have to watch it and see. A
decent backup regime would take the stress out of the exercise!




It isn't the data that's the problem. I have a NAS which keeps all files
backed up automatically and I burn DVDs as a second level of security
about once a month. It's the drudge of re-installing Windows and all the
apps I use. That's why I didn't keep up with the monitoring utilities.
Didn't want to reinstall them again.

Well my comment about "decent backup regime" sort of hinted that you may
want to consider disaster recovery along side and possibly separately
from protecting your data.

For example, a disk image of your boot partition can be kept on the NAS,
and with the right software on a CD, you can boot from that and restore
the image to a new drive. If you keep your boot partition at a sensible
size, then you can have an image restored in minutes. It does not matter
if its relatively out of date at that point, because you then have the
environment there to get at your proper backups.

I tried Norton Ghost to produce an image of the program disk but found
it frankly incomprehensible, and I'm not stupid. Anyway I didn't get it
to do what I wanted. I know images are supposed to work and a friend who
ran a commercial network used Ghost for centralised updating. But that
was before it was acquired by Norton. Any suggestions for a good image
backup package?

Ghost is one popular solution, and modern versions of it don't seem too
complicated - although they have added extra bells and whistles that are
not just about imaging. Acronis True Image[1] is probably the better
product these days however for driving imaging. A number of backup apps
will also allow backups to be made to image files.

A disaster recovery image can be held on a plug in USB drive if you want.

[1] Seagate MaxBlast 5 is a tool they provide FoC for imaging and
copying drives. Its actually a branded (and cut down) version of True
Image. You can download it as an ISO image and write your own boot CD
for it. Their version is supposedly limited to only function on systems
that include one of their drives (or maxtor or another of their owned
brands). If you run on a system where there is no recognised drive brand
it puts up a dialogue and quits when you OK it. If however you type ALT
+ T, ALT + O at that point ("TO" for Technical Override") it lets you
carry on regardless. ;-)

My solution is somewhat easier. ALL my important data is on a non
windows networked server machine, of which the second disk is pretty
much a mirror of the first. I can reinstall from a boot disk to a clean
disk and roll all the data back in a few minutes.

Windows if I use it at all, is in a virtual machine, where I can
snapshot it, save the resultant mess and revert to it in seconds if
necessary.