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[DaveyF]

Hi,

I've having some trouble with one of my HDD. It sometimes make a clicking sound then everything freezes for a second and goes back to normal. And then comes two clicks and everything freezes and does not recover.
Can anyone tell me what this means? - is the drive failing, damaged, not getting enough power........

Any help would be very much appreciated.

The HDD is a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120 Gb ATA/133

If anymore info is needed please ask

Cheers
Dave

[SoftStag]

It sounds to me like the hard disk is probably failing. I would recommend backing up all data as soon as possible.
_________________
"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes. I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine

[Markb]

Check out the second utility on this page. This is a iso cd image to create a bootable CD image to run a diagnostic on Maxtor HDDs

[DaveyF]

Thanks for the help,

I've backed up everything now just in case.

What is supposed to happen with the boot disk as I've tried it and nothing happens?

Dave

[Markb]

Is it booting to the disk? You might need to change a BIOS setting to enable booting from the CD. I assume as I have not tried it, that it boots from the CD into some basic OS and runs diagnostic tests on the HDD and will show you a report.

[DaveyF]

Ok, I managed to get the boot disk to work and both HDD (they are exactly the same) are working perfectly fine.

Would the next step be to test the PSU?

Cheers once again

Dave

[SoftStag]

The symptoms you describe still make me think a drive is on it's way out...

2 things it could be:
The PSU (like you suggest) may not be providing enough power. I doubt this, if this were the case I would expect blue screen crashes, and maybe random restarts/power downs. You could try a new PSU to be on the safe side.
Overheating - are the drives well ventilated and have sufficient space and air flow to keep them within their operating temperatures? If they didn't have this problem before and nothing has changed then this is unlikely.

Out of interest how do you have these drives configured? Are they setup as a mirror, or as separate drives?
_________________
"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes. I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine

[DaveyF]

I don't think they are overheating. If anything they are better cooled now than before.

The drives are not mirrored, they are master and slave.

I'll try a spare PSU I have, which happens to be the same power rating and see what happens in the next few days.