3XS Black Widow Extreme - Storage HDD Failure?!?!?

[drharvey12]

Hi,

I've got the below system:

Corsair Obsidian 800D Chassis
3XS Custom CPU & GPU Watercooling
Intel Core i7 980X overclocked to 4.2Ghz
Asus Rampage III Extreme
6Gb Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz
2 x NVIDIA GTX 480s in SLI
Corsair 1000W HX PSU
1 x 120gb SSD
1 x 1tb Caviar Black HDD

Was just finished playing GTA4 and had exited to windows. Went into steam to load up Dragon Age Origins and nothing seemed to happen except the HDD light stayed on full and sounded like it was working pretty hard. Opened up task manager and no processes were running. Tried to restart the system. Windows wouldn't shut down so I hit the restart button. Upon rebooting an error flashed up too quickly for me to read and once booted into windows my storage drive is missing and all the links to my games are invalid!!!

Have looked in the Bios and only the SSD and my Blu-ray drive are detected.

Has anybody got any ways of checking to see if the HDD completely dead or somehow been uninstalled without having to take the drive out and try it in another system?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi

i will call you in next 5 mins to discuss

Regards

Ben

[Ben @ Scan]

Spoke with the customer and am arranging an onsite for a replacement drive

[drharvey12]

Thanks for the quick callback Ben. Hope to hear from Netsolve shortly regarding fitting the replacement drive. Just a quick question which I have regarding the replacement drive.

Does anybody know how this will affect the registry on the SSD boot drive???

I had Steam and all my other games saved on the storage drive which has failed. I'm assuming that the windows registry will be on the SSD drive as this is where windows is installed and this registry will have links to the location of the all the stuff on the now defunct old HDD. I'm just worried that installing the same programs as before but on a new HDD will cause errors or duplications in the registry.

Should I use a reg cleaner to remove them or can I just leave everything as it is, install the new HDD and put Steam and everything else onto the new HDD without doing anything to the registry on the SSD bootdrive???

Thanks all for any advice you can give.

[Edit: Just read the error that flashed up prior to loading windows and it is: MBR ERROR 2. Seems to relate to the master boot record and whilst it doesn't stop me booting into windows ok I'm guessing this isn't good??? Is this likely to persist once the new HDD is installed??? Thanks again for any help]

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi drharvey12

You can install Steam to any folder and it will run fine, I have mine on a Z: drive

The MBR Error 2 is due to the drive failing and usual appears if you have Acronis installed or another backup program, if you are using Acronis (I am not at work so can't see your invoice)

Uninstalling and reinstalling Acronis after the drive replacement should sort it

Regards

Ben

[drharvey12]

Thanks Ben for all your help yesterday. Got Windows 7 reinstalled ok in the end and the drive which arrived yestersay afternoon has been fitted and seems to be working perfectly.

Very impressed that it was less than 24 hours from speaking to you initially about the faulty HDD and receiving the replacement part and getting it installed and working.

Just played Starcraft 2 and L4D2 off the new drive. L4D2 had every possible option maxed out and it runs perfectly.

Will continue to test over this weekend and will let you know on Tuesday whether the engineer is needed or not. Looking unlikely though at the moment

Just started Dragon Age - Ultimate download. Should take 15 hours or so

[Update: Hi Ben, just to let you know that having installed most of the games from Steam back onto the new HDD and played 7 or 8 hours of multiplayer L4D2 it seems to be working absolutely fine. I therefore won't need an engineer to come out. Thanks for all your help getting this resolved so quickly.]