New HDD?

[sinkoman]

Lately, my pc has been locking up at random times. I'll just be doing any old thing, and all of a sudden the entire thing will lock up, I can't see my cursor, can't get into the task manager, nothing. I have to do a hard reboot to get out of the lockup.

Now i'm suspecting my second hdd is going bad, because every time I boot up my pc, it'll check my second drive for errors, and then start deleting stuff, puling up tons of errors, telling me it can't read some indexes, deleting indexes, all sorts of shit.

So i'm wondering, is there any way of telling if it's my HDD going bad? I haven't done a memtest check yet, but I doubt it's my ram. I only seem to be getting issues when i'm doing thigns that involve the second drive, like running programs on the second drive, opening files on the second drive, that sorta thing. I'm still suspicious of it being my hdd, because it's not even 2 years old. It's a really old 56k rpm caviar I pulled out of an old HP.

So if push comes to shove, i'll need a new hdd. I'm also asking for hdd suggestions. I want an 80gig 72k rpm sata drive.

 

[Kamikazie]

what is your price range?

 

[sinkoman]

I was hoping for under 100 USD.

Hows this look?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ice=&MaxPrice=&SubCategory=14&Submit=Property

Oh yeah, and i'm pretty positive it's my hdd now. Just this last lockup, my hdd decided to delete a bunch of program exe's.

 

[Kamikazie]

it has a mind of its own...

 

[sinkoman]

it has a mind of its own...

Either that or this last windows update has gone screwy.

Now that I think of it, this all started after my last windows update...

Anyway, hdd suggestions?

 

[Kamikazie]

ok

whats your choice: internal external

can you go over 80 gb?

 

[sinkoman]

ok

whats your choice: internal external

can you go over 80 gb?

Internal.

And i'd like to stay at 80gb. It's a good size for me, seeing as I don't use much space, and it's very cheap. This hdd that just went bust, back when it was the main hdd on my HP, I never even went over the halfway mark spacewise.

 

[Kamikazie]

maybe

http://www.pricewatch.com/

 

[duffers20]

That 80gig WD Caviar looks fine. 8mb cache and 7200rpm so its all good. Good price for it too and I hear that those WD caviar drives are quiet.

 

[sinkoman]

Ok.

Well, is there ANY chance that it isn't my HDD?

EDIT: I just rolled back to my registry from maybe a week ago, going to see if that changes anything.

EDIT: I just got a BSOD, stop code 0x00...7A with parameters 0xc070A5E0, 0xc00...1, 0xE14BCD94, 0x373378C0. I looked into it, and apparently the problem can be issolated through the second parameter, but I couldn't find anything on the specific output that I got. What I did find though, was that it can be caused by a cracked mobo (I found that a tad hard to believe), bad ram, bad harddisk sectors, bad pagefile sectors, a virus infection (I still haven't done a virus check), disk controller error (I hope that isn't it), bad vram, and a few other things.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prmd_stp_fvlq.asp

God, this is really starting to piss me off. I really hope it's as simple as a dying hdd, but the one in question isn't even 2 years old. I did a memtest run (non bootdisk, a from-windows test) and I got nothing.

 

[duffers20]

When my HD died, I got BSOD's and random lockups. You should back up as much data as possible just to be on teh safe side. Also you could try and reinstall windows, you never know it could be that windows is somehow knackered from a dodgy windows update or some software that you have installed thats conflicting big time with something else. Just a couple of suggestions/ideas before you go out and buy something, although teh main thing is to backup all important data.

 

[sinkoman]

When my HD died, I got BSOD's and random lockups. You should back up as much data as possible just to be on teh safe side. Also you could try and reinstall windows, you never know it could be that windows is somehow knackered from a dodgy windows update or some software that you have installed thats conflicting big time with something else. Just a couple of suggestions/ideas before you go out and buy something, although teh main thing is to backup all important data.

Blah, nothing here is worth much. Maybe a few convos i'd like to keep, but i've already lost my music () and the rest is all just programs like FF and Thunderbird. I'd just have to back up my bookmarks and my BF2 screens and technically, i'm done.

 

[Asus]

Getting a new harddrive would be good. Also it would be a fresh install so if you had corrupt sections on the harddrive or corrupt files/registry, virus' or spyware all would be no more.

 

[sinkoman]

Well, the thing is, it's my secondary HDD that's going dead. It's an old Caviar A pata drive, and i've got all my applications on it. Everything else, like games and my windows install, is on my Raptor.

So, despite the fact that I commonly reccomend reformats for new hardware installs, I was hopping I could weasel through this without a reformat :E

 

[Asus]

Maybe try the tools or the diagnostic app.

 

[sinkoman]

Maybe try the tools or the diagnostic app.

I fail

Didn't even get 8 seconds into the test before it pulled up some major error.

Good thing too, because I already ordered my new hdd :E

I just want to know, when my new HDD get's here, do you guys reccomend that I reformat?

 

[Kamikazie]

I fail

Didn't even get 8 seconds into the test before it pulled up some major error.

Good thing too, because I already ordered my new hdd :E

I just want to know, when my new HDD get's here, do you guys reccomend that I reformat?

which one did you get? and i dont think so...

 

[sinkoman]

I ended up getting the Caviar SE.

Hope it doesn't bust as fast as my old Caviar A

 

[Kamikazie]

I ended up getting the Caviar SE.

Hope it doesn't bust as fast as my old Caviar A

umm fish eggs...


jk
i heard that that brand is pretty good

 

[sinkoman]

Ok, so my new drive should come in on monday, and I have a few questions on how the transitions going to work.

So my first question is, should I build a RAID 0 set for the new drive when it comes in? Currently, the only SATA hdd I have is my Raptor, and it's running JBOD, so this would be my first time building a RAID set.

Would deleting the JBOD set and putting my Raptor into a RAID 0 set delete it's contents? I think i've rebuilt my JBOD set before, without consequence, but I just wanna be sure.

Would putting both drives into a RAID 0 set allow me to access them seperately? As in, there are two drive images in Windows Explorer, and I can double click each, and can install programs on whichever one I chose? Or would it force them both into a single HDD image (AFAIK, that would only happen in a RAID 1 or 5 set, but I just want to make sure).

And lastly, would putting both my 10K Raptor and the 72K Caviar into the same set make the new RAID 0 set slower than my raptors stand alone JBOD set?

I'll ask the other question('s) once I get answers to this one, because I don't want those shadowed out by this one.

 

[duffers20]

Raiding your raptor with the other drive will slow down performance. I would use teh raptor as a system disc with windows apps and games, and use teh 2nd drive for storage. Also raid 0 will only allow you to access the capacity of the raptor on your new drive so you will loose the extra space. If you are really serious about going for a raid array then i would say save for another raptor, but raiding raptors doesn't yield a huge performance increase and it can even slow down performance if i remember correctly. There was a thread about it on here a while ago.

 

[sinkoman]

Ok, it seems I may have hit a bit of a snag.

It says in my RAID manaul, that JBOD is available for only one disk.

Now what ?

 

[Da-Muffin-Man]

Get a Seagate, there quiet, fast, and ive never had a problem with mine in the 3 and a half years ive had it.

 

[sinkoman]

Get a Seagate, there quiet, fast, and ive never had a problem with mine in the 3 and a half years ive had it.

Read the entire thread buddy. My new HDD is comming tommorow, and I want my questions answered.

 

[sinkoman]

YAY! MY NEW HDD IS HERE :E

Now onto the chore of backing up all my programs :frown:

 

[Asus]

YAY! MY NEW HDD IS HERE :E

Now onto the chore of backing up all my programs :frown:

haha
Have fun and hope this one doesn't go splat.

 

[sinkoman]

Ok, somethings gone horribly wrong.

So I unplug both drives, take out the drive cage, replace the old HDD with the new one, put the drive cage back in, and plug everything back in.

I set up both drives in JBOD (dunno if this makes a diff, but it only let my new, 80gb drive go up to 34gb, claiming that that was it's max) try to boot up my pc, but instead of booting up from my drives, my PC tries to boot up from my CD drives.

So I short my cmos and try again, same thing.

Next, I try unplugging the new drive, and plugging the old one back in.

Now, instead of trying to boot from my cd drives, it tries to boot from my HDD (raptor) but it gives me a black screen saying something allong the lines of "windows cannot read from this drive because of a disk error".

So as i'm typing this (diff comp) i'm desperately trying to boot up from the UBCD4Win and hopping my raptor is ok. I'll try salvage the data, and if nothing works, then reformat it.

Please help me!!!

EDIT: Ok, so I got the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows to boot, but none of the explorers shows the disk. I ran Data Life Guard and it says the disk is fine. Under the Device Manager, it lists the disk as an unkown disk, and Checkdisk says it can't directly access the volume.

I'm thinking that maybe the RAID drivers that got installed with windows were on the secondary HDD, and I might have to reformat. I really don't want to do that, because i'll lost all my screenshots and reformatting is a pain, so please.

EDIT: I tried booting up from my Windows XP setup CD again (I tried this already and it told me I didn't have any drives in my pc) but this time I loaded up my raid drivers (last time I skipped it, the F6 to load raid drivers thing) and this time it told me that my raptor was plugged in, and that it was the only drive plugged in (CORRECT!) but it said that the entire drive was unpartitioned

So is it possible that somehow, during the installation of the new drive, my raptor became unpartitioned? The only way I could imagine that happening is if I jostled it and the first platter got hit by the read write arm.

So am I going to have to DEFINETLY reformat?
PLEASE HELP ME ;(

 

[Asus]

Try the drives one by one. Also put your CD/DVD rom on a different cable if the harddrives are IDE. Double check your jumpers.

 

[sinkoman]

Try the drives one by one. Also put your CD/DVD rom on a different cable if the harddrives are IDE. Double check your jumpers.

All but the old one are SATA, and the old one is still on a different channel from my cd/ dvd drives.

I know the raptor and the new drive are fine, but I don't know if there's any way to get out of a reformat here

And according to Western digitals website (I looked at this first thing, thought maybe I had jumpers wrong) neither the raptor or the caviar need to be shorted. It said that if the drive came pre shorted, then leave the short in the same position (site said other positions are for enterprise useage) and if it didn't come with a short, then don't short it.

Ok, since it looks like i'm going to have to reformat one way or another, I need a bunch of help setting up my raid array.

I can either have both drives in a 68 gig RAID 0 array, or each drive on thier own 36 gig JBOD set. It seems that the JBOD sets are limited to the size of the smallest drive ;(

So i'm wondering, is there any way to get all 80 gigs out of my new drive? I wouldn't mind losing the 12 gigs in a RAID 0 array, but I want to be able to access both drives seperately, so I can install windows/games on the Raptor, and all other apps on the Caviar.

Is there something i'm not knowing when it comes to RAID?

EDIT: SOLVED! I moved both drives from the SiL 1334 controller to the NF4 U SATA II controller. I found out that the SATA II controller, while being harder to navigate (think trying to tab through a webpage) allows you to do much more, in this case, it allowed me to create both a 34gig JBOD set and a 74gig JBOD set!

I almost setlled for a 110gig JBOD set with both drives in it, and then just partitioning it off, but then remembered that I wouldn't get the performance from the Raptor if I did that.

Thanks for all the help Asus and Duffers! About that beer I ow ya...

 

[duffers20]

Thanks for all the help Asus and Duffers! About that beer I ow ya...

All part of the service Nah just jk, glad you got it all up and running.

 

[Asus]

WooT it's alive!