Someone Please help me with my hard disk, *this could take a while!*

[Hunain]

*The issue is solved, this is a long post, if you want to read it anyways, go ahead, thanks to everybody who helped me!*



Hello there folks, this time I need some help with my hard disk. I simply do not know what is wrong with it! But ill tell you guys the symptoms perhaps someone can tell me the disease and its cure

This could take a while now, you can see my setup from my signature, the hard disk in question is a seagate 160GB ST3160211AS, its a SATA drive. Previously i had an intel 965 board, no issue what so ever. Recently I changed to an ASUS board for overclocking.

Noticed nothing in the start, overclocking going good, from 1.86 to 2.2 and finally to 3.0, then I pushed up to 3.2, when the PC booted up I heard clicking noises, click click, and the PC would take forever to go past the BIOS post screen. Then the Windows Logo page would take forever to finish loading windows.

I switched the PC off, re connected all wiring, switched back on, PC started up fine, but windows loadup page still took like 19 seconds. I then used Acronis to clean the partition C, and then used a backup image to restore windows. All good, working fine.

Sometimes, just out of the blue, I would start hearing the click click sound and windows would hang. I had to switch off the power, after a while, switch back on, works fine again.

I tried using a new SATA cable, A new SATA power cable. Still, after a few days, I heard click click.

Last night I was playing gears of war, I minimized it and opened up another program, when I switched back to gears of war, I heard click click, then I minimzed it again, fine, then again switched back, I would hear click click.

Finally today, i was using the PC when I had a power outage, when I later turned on the PC, I saw the BSOD, switched off, then back on, windows loadup page would again take forever and Bios post screen would take forever to get over with it as well

I unplugged the hard disk, the system would get over with everything normally with the other HDD i have, as soon as I plugged this HDD in, again, everything slowing down, one time i heard regular beeps coming, faint, ping ping ping kind of.

I changed SATA ports along with the cable, still had a problem, finally I went back to using the old cables and the 1st SATA port, booted up, all fine, and now im here posting

If its any help, I switched off all overclocking options, changed both SATA and power cables, used another HDD, none of these things had any affect, the Hard disk in question seems to do it randomly.

I know this has been long, and im sorry, hope somebody can take out the time to help me out here, I have not the faintist idea of what is wrong. Its a fairly new HDD, Ive checked it for errors with windows chkdsk, all good.

Thank you so very much in advance.

PS: even if i take the hard disk to get checked for warranty, i wont be able to point out the issue, they will simply plug it, boot up fine with it and tell me its all good and that im paranoid even if I insist that they keep it and check it, most probably they will return the same drive in the same condition after 15 days. Thats why im looking up to you guys for help, like always

[danroyle]

have you tried reducing the overclock as when you overclock the cpu everything else is pushed a bit harder too.

second a clicking noise could be the needles jumping on the drive

google dying hard drive noises and listen to what you find see what matches your's

third if you take it back to the shop for warranty purposes explain to them when it happens and they should stress/torture test it anyway to check if it's faulty

hope this helps

[Thorsson]

You did set the PCI-bus to 33 when you started OC'ing, didn't you?

[Hunain]

PCI buss to 33....umm...No, i dont remember seeing that option, and now im getting worried, please walk me through it.
PS: I did set the PCIe bus to 100 though. I checked other forums, no one else had a problem with PCI bus locker not present, they simply say setting the PCIe to 100 is the same thing.

[Hunain]

Im currently downloading the seatools, going to check my disk with them, is that any good?

The software said:

1. Why Use SeaTools?

After testing, a large percentage of the drives returned to Seagate for warranty replacement are perfectly good drives with "No Problem Found" (NPF). Returning a drive for warranty service means system downtime and inconvenience for you in packing and returning your drive product. Before you send in a drive, it is in your best interest to determine if a replacement drive is really necessary. This hard disc diagnostic utility will help you make that determination and possibly save you time and money and preserve your data.

I guess its a good thing, ill check and tell.

*update*
Seatools is a very nice utility, It had an acoustic test, it said that clicking sound during data access is normal, I scanned the drive and it had 3 bad sectors, repaired them, lets see, my best guess is that the drive could not access data on the bad sectors and would keep clicking, trying to access it perhaps.

[Thorsson]

Yes it appears that in this BIOS the PCI bus speed is tied to the PCI-E. I'm surprised you didn't get SMART errors if you had bad sectors. I'd also be worried that this was the start of a drive failure. Bad sectors have a habit of multiplying.

[Behemoth]

To be honest, the price of hard drives these days I'd beinclined to go out and buy a new one.

[iranu]

First things first - Back up and data, email, address book, browser favorites/bookmarks. NOW! Just incase.

It does sound like bad sectors on the drive with the heads going bananas trying to access those sectors. I hope that seagate tool has fixed it, are you still getting long boot times and the clicking noise?

Have you got SMART enabled in the bios?

HDs are funny buggers, I've got 2 hitachi 160gb drives. One of them occasionally and randomly goes eeee-er-click. It has run fine for 3 years plus, but I always look sideways and suspiciously at the machine when it does it.

[Hunain]

Ya, just got done with the OS partition backup, moved all important data to the other 40GB hard drive I have since 2 years now, checked it, had no bad sectors and my new 160GB! 3 Already, anyways, backed up all data.

Yes Smart is enabled..

No, now the load times are back to normal, havnt heard the clicking again, seatools said it repaired the disk and passed it, it also said that a 200GB HDD has approx FOUR HUNDRED MILLION sectors and a couple going bad is normal.

The seatools also said that there is no reason to send the HDD back for warranty, it has no "problems".

Well, I hope it all runs good now...

[Hunain]

Just wanted to ask about the repaired bad sectors, what happens? The seatools only say that the data present on bad sectors has been shifted, so what?

Can't other data be written on those sectors? Does the program also put "markers" on those bad sectors so that data is not written on them?

If so, are those markers saved on the disk? Like if I change my OS, will the disk still avoid those sectors?

The bad sectors on my disk most probably occured due to power outages, should I be worried about them being "contagious" and "infecting" the whole disk gradually or are they a one time thing?

Plus the seatools say that the disk is now healthy and no need to send it for warranty, it has no issue, should I be okay with it?