[SOLVED] Have killed 3 HDDs, help!?

[DGman]

I apologize for the long story but it's over 3 hard drives.

I have lost 3 hard drives to the same problem and I don't know what is causing it. I install the second hard drive, wipe and format for a secondary HDD. After about . . . 3-6 months, the hard drive will have just a spastic moment. I'll be downloading a file from Chrome, or installing something to the hard drive and it will start to have to 'load.'

What I mean by this is that if you select something that was added after this point, the hard drive uses the address bar as a loading screen before you can interact with anything. It does this ONLY for the items added during or after . . . whatever causes this.

The other files are usable but the HDD steadily plummets into inusability because of corruption. I've backed my HDD up twice now and this is the third HDD that has died like this. It's currently suffering the EXACT same symptoms as the past two hard drives.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I just need help on this.

AMD X 4 3.7Ghz Quadcore
16GB of DDR3 (I think?) ram
GTX1060 Graphics Card

Not sure what else I can give to help with the troubleshooting.

 

[luckymatt42]

Is your "use case" somewhat unique? What I mean is that do you do LOTS of file transfers/downloads/installs, like much more than an average user might? (Like you work with large files for movies, or huge amounts of small files, etc.)

I mean, it's obvious it's something you are doing (sorry...), so to diagnose the problem we'll need to know some more details about how the system is being used.

 

[DGman]

Is your "use case" somewhat unique? What I mean is that do you do LOTS of file transfers/downloads/installs, like much more than an average user might? (Like you work with large files for movies, or huge amounts of small files, etc.)

I mean, it's obvious it's something you are doing (sorry...), so to diagnose the problem we'll need to know some more details about how the system is being used.

Oh I definitely know that it's me or something with my computer. That's why I am asking here because I can't figure it out. xD

And no, I play games but outside of a large (maybe one night's worth) batch of downloading when I got this HDD for the first time I can't think of anything that would constitute large.

 

[luckymatt42]

I mean it MIGHT be that there is a hardware defect that shortens the drive life (maybe a component is providing too much or not enough power, etc.).

But otherwise I guess I'm trying to get a sense if you do anything with your computer (for work, home, whatever) that requires lots and lots of disk accesses. I mean if you say "I occasionally game, watch youtube, browse web", that's one thing, but if you say "I run a virtual database server on this machine..." just knowing more how you use the machine will make it easier for folks to diagnose.

 

[DGman]

I mean it MIGHT be that there is a hardware defect that shortens the drive life (maybe a component is providing too much or not enough power, etc.).

But otherwise I guess I'm trying to get a sense if you do anything with your computer (for work, home, whatever) that requires lots and lots of disk accesses. I mean if you say "I occasionally game, watch youtube, browse web", that's one thing, but if you say "I run a virtual database server on this machine..." just knowing more how you use the machine will make it easier for folks to diagnose.

Pretty much watching TV and playing games when I'm home, most of the day I'm working. Other than loading 4-6 games onto it when I first installed it, I had no serious transfers or constant ones that I would know of.

 

[misar]

It seems the OP did not provide an essential piece of information and nobody has yet asked the obvious questions.


What are the make/models/size of the three HDDs?
Where did you get them from?
Were they all brand new or previously used?

 

[DGman]

It seems the OP did not provide an essential piece of information and nobody has yet asked the obvious questions.


What are the make/models/size of the three HDDs?

>> Seagate Barracudas. All of them. Replacements for the first.

Where did you get them from?

>> Above.

Were they all brand new or previously used?

First one was brand new (from Amazon/Newegg) and the other two MIGHT have been refurbished as that is what those tend to be as replacements.

 

[misar]

Not saying the fault is the drives but having three identical models, two of which resulted from return to supplier and could have been "refurbished" (whatever that means), makes it more likely not less.

If the problem had involved three completely different brand new HDDs I agree that you would have to be unbelievably unlucky for all three to fail due to a manufacturing fault.

 

[DGman]

Not saying the fault is the drives but having three identical models, two of which resulted from return to supplier and could have been "refurbished" (whatever that means), makes it more likely not less.

If the problem had involved three completely different brand new HDDs I agree that you would have to be unbelievably unlucky for all three to fail due to a manufacturing fault.

Except that the hard drive I had before these 3 died the same way. That's what is making me think there's something going on with my computer to kill the extra drive.

 

[misar]

Not saying the fault is the drives but having three identical models, two of which resulted from return to supplier and could have been "refurbished" (whatever that means), makes it more likely not less.

If the problem had involved three completely different brand new HDDs I agree that you would have to be unbelievably unlucky for all three to fail due to a manufacturing fault.

Except that the hard drive I had before these 3 died the same way. That's what is making me think there's something going on with my computer to kill the extra drive.

You never mentioned the other one until now.

What you have mentioned is corrupt data but never drives which are noisy, fail to spin, etc. Unless you forgot to mention that as well, you seem to have assumed that the drives corrupt the data. Have you considered that perhaps all 4 drives were perfect and the PC is writing corrupt data to them?

 

[DGman]

Not saying the fault is the drives but having three identical models, two of which resulted from return to supplier and could have been "refurbished" (whatever that means), makes it more likely not less.

If the problem had involved three completely different brand new HDDs I agree that you would have to be unbelievably unlucky for all three to fail due to a manufacturing fault.

Except that the hard drive I had before these 3 died the same way. That's what is making me think there's something going on with my computer to kill the extra drive.

You never mentioned the other one until now.

What you have mentioned is corrupt data but never drives which are noisy, fail to spin, etc. Unless you forgot to mention that as well, you seem to have assumed that the drives corrupt the data. Have you considered that perhaps all 4 drives were perfect and the PC is writing corrupt data to them?

That could be the case too. I'm honestly out of ideas at this point.

 

[DGman]

Does anyone have any ideas? The hard drive is pretty much toast now, having to deal with only my primary. Wish I knew what was killing my hard drives.

 

[hang-the-9]

Try using another SATA cable and another SATA port. Did you actually run drive diagnostics to see what the issue with the drive may be?