I recently bought a 300Gb Western Digital hard drive, last friday in fact, and since the moment it arrived, its been nothing but trouble.
Having spent whole days investigating the problem, trying out different cables setting it to master, having it on its own on the IDE channel, giving it's own rail of power from the PSU, defragging, running numerous registry cleaning and defragging tools, I've finally decided that the hard drive is at fault.
Having turned on S.M.A.R.T. in the BIOS it transpires that the hard drive in question is in fact on its last legs, how can this be though, I've had it literally for only days and this happens?
I'm obviously going to make a claim for an RMA as from day one it was acting...suspect, loud abrupt clicking noises, complete haults for several seconds etc. all tell tell signs of a dying hard drive, right?
Needless to say, an image is being copied over to another hard drive as I type this...
P.S.
Forgot the image of the S.M.A.R.T. data..
P.S.S
I'd also like to point out that I more than know my fair share about computer hardware and am aware that S.M.A.R.T. can be woefully inaccurate but its backed up by the symptoms I have outlined above, I wonder what y'all think though...