Computer help required

[Tankstand]

Howdy one and all!

I have this annoying glitch in a hard drive that crops up just when it can pi$$ me off the most! Like saving autocad drawings etc.. It started again today but the last episode was two weeks ago and then maybe a month before that!?

What happens is my primary hard drive, when accessed (sometimes) will momentarily cut out and then spin back up again! This causes the system to cark it!

I have a clean system virus wise and all drives are defragmented monthly and there is plenty of space on the drive which is a 40Gig WD.

Any and all thoughts appreciated!

[ubeaut]

Don't chance losing everything. Get a new hard drive and maybe use that one for back ups, storage etc. A new 80 gig drive won't set you back very much nowadays and is going to cost a lot less than trying to recover lost files or even worse not being able to recover them.

Cheers - Neil

[Ashore]

Follow Neil,s advice but get a 120 gig hard drive or bigger , even if you have to partition , quality drives are under $100 at computer fairs.
There are enough IT guys and gals on the forum to tell you how to reinstall your operating system and copy the files you want without me stuttering through it

Rgds

Russell

[echnidna]

How much free space is on your current hardrive?

[Ianab]

If you hear it spin down and restart thats a bad sign, disk is probably on it's way out.
You could check the power cable that goes into the disk, I've had a bad connection there cause problems, but 9 out of 10 times it's the drive beginning to fail.

Like the guys say, backup all your data now and get a new disk in there.

Cheers

Ian

[keith53]

If you hear it spin down and restart thats a bad sign, disk is probably on it's way out.
You could check the power cable that goes into the disk, I've had a bad connection there cause problems, but 9 out of 10 times it's the drive beginning to fail.

Like the guys say, backup all your data now and get a new disk in there.

Cheers

Ian

I don't need to add anything here. Ian says it all. It will be easier to do it now than if the drive karks itself forever.

Cheers,
Keith

[craigb]

Yep a new hard drive is the go.

I bought an 80 gig Seagate for $80 last week.

Seagate have a nifty program that you can download that will copy all your files onto the new drive and make it the boot disk for you.

It's called DiscWizard.

Probably the other manufacturers have something similar.

[Tankstand]

Thanks for the heads up guys!

Looks like a new drive is the go.

How much free space is on your current hardrive?

G'day echidna, approx. 5.3Gig spare at the mo.

[Termite]

Yep, what Craigb said, I used DiscWizard just before Xmas to install a new HD, piece of cake. May I suggest a new Seagate 120Gb 7200.9 series, they are going for about $96.00 at the moment.

[RufflyRustic]

Hi, I'd also suggest consider buying some extra ram after you've replaced the harddrive, if the budget and motherboard will allow it. My first thought was bye-bye harddrive, my second thought was maybe memory issues, but this could be caused by the hard drive problem, so get the HD first, see how it all goes and then maybe consider the additional ram.

cheers
RufflyRustic

[craigb]

Hi, I'd also suggest consider buying some extra ram after you've replaced the harddrive, if the budget and motherboard will allow it. My first thought was bye-bye harddrive, my second thought was maybe memory issues, but this could be caused by the hard drive problem, so get the HD first, see how it all goes and then maybe consider the additional ram.

cheers
RufflyRustic

Plus RAM is as cheap as chips, excuse the pun, these days.

I got 256M for 50 bucks the other day.

The new drive and the extra memory did wonders for my old machine.

[Tankstand]

Thanks Ruffly for the advice but I already have 1Gig of RAM!

My system is a P4, 3GHz with 3 hard drives (Video editing)

May I suggest a new Seagate 120Gb 7200.9 series, they are going for about $96.00 at the moment.

Thanks Termite, Might be the way to go as this is the second WD to give trouble!

[Auld Bassoon]

Howdy one and all!

I have this annoying glitch in a hard drive that crops up just when it can pi$$ me off the most! Like saving autocad drawings etc.. It started again today but the last episode was two weeks ago and then maybe a month before that!?

What happens is my primary hard drive, when accessed (sometimes) will momentarily cut out and then spin back up again! This causes the system to cark it!

I have a clean system virus wise and all drives are defragmented monthly and there is plenty of space on the drive which is a 40Gig WD.

Any and all thoughts appreciated!

G'day Mate!

Slap in a new drive (don't bother with less than 150Gb these days), and get a copy of Norton Ghost or similar (unless you are using a RAID setup), and image copy your primary drive to the new one (in a partition if you choose). Shut down, and reconnect the new drive per the old one, and with a bit of genuflection in Gates' direcction, should be able to start up.

Could also use the Seagate wizard as mentioned.

The current drive sounds as if it's very rapidly approaching its sell by date....:eek:

BTW: in my main machine, I have 2 7200rpm 80Gb drives with 8Mb buffer (both WD) and 2 160Gb Seagate drives (also 5Mb buffer), all serial ATAs, with RAID 0 for the primaries & RAID 1 for the secondaries. WDs have been fine for over 12 months.