Hard Drive Damage…2x

Zotzmein · 03-13-2003, 05:42 PM

Six months ago I installed a hard drive on a system. One month later while booting it reported hard drive damage. One week ago I replaced that hard drive. When doing so I did a fresh install of the O/S. I’ve not loaded any software to speak. This morning when I booted the system again said there was hard drive damage. The first hard drive was a 40 gig Western Digital purchased at Office Depot. This newest hard drive is a 60 gig Maxtor purchased at Staples. Besides that difference the first drive used the motherboard’s IDE interface, this hard drive uses a Promise PCI ATA 100 card interface. Both hard drives have been the primary boot drives.

O/S Windows 98 SE with all the updates.
IE 6.0 all updates
Abit BX 6 revision 2 motherboard
512 Megs SDRAM
60 gig Maxtor Hard Drive
Nvidia MX 200 video card
Sound Blaster PCI 128 audio card
LG DVD-ROM
LG CD/RW 52x24x52
Linksys PCI NIC 10/100
Promise ATA 100 controller card non RAID

Regards,
Zotz Mein

PS I used WD testing tools and confirmed that the WD 40 gig drive indeed had hard drive damage.

daveleau · 03-13-2003, 05:48 PM

When you say damage, what do you mean? Bad sectors or SMART warnings?

Zotzmein · 03-13-2003, 05:54 PM

I get a warning every time I boot and when I run scan disk either in DOS mode or through the Windows interface it shows that there is hard drive damage, bad sectors.

The WD 40 gig drive, I could run scan disk and defrag, it would boot fine for a couple of weeks but then boom it would give me a warning on boot up that the hard drive maybe damaged and I would start the process all over. When finished it would report it found sector damage and I could get another week or two reprieve from the damage warnings.

Warmest Regards,
Zotz Mein

daveleau · 03-13-2003, 06:03 PM

Hi Zotz Mein,
Most bad sectors are caused by software malfunctions. Bad sectors can be repaired by a low level format of the drive. In this case, I would suspect a problem in the way the system is accessing the hdds. Since it has happened in both the onboard IDE and Promise card's IDE, I would not think it is the controllers. Is there a new 4-in-1 driver for the BX chipset? Maybe installing that would help.

Are you overclocking? Some drives, especially Maxtors that I have used, have a hard time dealing with anything other than a 33MHz PCI bus speed. This may be an issue, but this seems to be a problem limited to few people because most OCers do not have this problem. I on the other hand have been plagued by it with bad sectors and failed drives. The bad sectors never returned for me on drives once I stopped OCing.

If neither of these helps, I would suspect the processor, mobo or RAM. They could be causing the writing of corrupt data to your hdd.

Your other components are unaffected, right? If that is the case, then I would not suspect a bad PSU.

If you are able, I would scan the drive and note the locations of the bad clusters. Then I would do a LLF and see if the bad clusters returned and if they were int he same place. If they are int he same places, then you have very bad luck and have gotten another bad hdd. I do not think this is the case though. Regardless, a LLF will fix the bad sectors.

311Sam · 03-13-2003, 06:04 PM

Sounds like your pci/ide bus is overclocked.....

Zotzmein · 03-13-2003, 06:24 PM

Neither the board nor any of its peripherals have been or are currently overclocked. I flashed the motherboard to the latest BIOS edition about a year ago. There is no new update to the board and I’m not sure if there has been an update to the BX chip set.

I'll try the option you mentioned and see what's up.

Warmest Regards,
Zotz Mein

PS. A couple of days before the previous hard drive began developing bad sectors Yahoo! Messenger was installed. Yahoo! Messenger was installed two days ago with this new hard drive. Is this just a coincidence or could this application, note are different versions, have anything to do with this situation.

Richard Cranium · 03-13-2003, 06:33 PM

I'd download the utilities from the Mfg's and run the LLF as Dave suggested.

If that don't help, RMA them

Do you have power line problems like mini-outages or high wind knocking lines together ?

Cutting the power to a computer while the HD is writing can cause damage.
I've destroyed fragile HD's by not waiting till they spin down before powering back up.

Zotzmein · 03-13-2003, 08:07 PM

No mini or maxi power outages that I’m aware of and no knocking power lines. I’ll assume, since it’s always my advice that this system is shut down properly, no sudden offs. Once again this board comes through with some great input/advice.

Warmest Regards,
Zotz Mein

daveleau · 03-13-2003, 09:45 PM

Well, considering that software is to blame for the majority of bad sectors, it is conceivable that the IM program could be the problem. After the problem is resolved, you might want to consider Trillian, which is an all-in-one IM program and works with Y! Messenger very well. I have always looked to the OS as being the culprit in creating bad clusters, but I don't see why other software couldn't be just as problematic.

I can find no updated IDE drivers for the BX6r2.

Zotzmein · 03-14-2003, 12:13 AM

Task complete, new scandisk preformed, shows no damage. Just for my own piece of mind, I’m going to undelete Y! Messenger. I personally don’t use Messenger type software because it’s such a resource consumer and I consider it a security risk. A little dose of paranoia goes nicely with my noontime tea.

Warmest Regards,
Zotz Mein