Multiple hard drive failures...what could be causing it?

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Jake Maverick

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Mar 27, 2014
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This has been going on for about 6 weeks now. Just don't understand what has been going on....this is a high spec computer, AMD bulldozer 6 core chip....and i've had a whole bunch of hard drives fail on me one after the other :-( & not cheap one's....I've had several 2tb and 1 tb drives go down on me....managed to replace some on ebay, had to get a 1.5tb as funds are really tight....and that one had very low usage, only 20 hours on the clock or something...but last night the health just dropped str8 down to 15% on it with no warning...so disconnected now....i had only just finished recovering all my data to it :-(

I had suspected the sata card, but i've replaced that 3 times now also. But now I'm wondering....could a faulty motherboard or psu be killing my drives? I built this computer several years ago and never had a problem with it until recently....the psu is a good one, best i ever had...600 watt with detachable cables....wasn't cheap! but was 2nd hand when i got it but been in use for about 4 years now....doesn't seem to be any kind of detectable problem there? I am quite poor anyway and already spent all my money so not going to be able to fix now in the forseeable future....but any advice on what could possibly be causing this would be very much appreciated?
 
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I'm just going to leave this here
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i've long had the suspicion that newer, higher capacity drives dnt last as long....it's the old joke, all electronic equipment has the auto destruct chip installed to make them die two days after the warranty expires....but it's certainly not in the manufacturer's interest to make them last forever!
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Looking at the backblaze drive data, WD and Seagate seem to have issues keeping their larger drives going. HGST seems to have a better track record with >1TD drives. Anything can fail at any time however. I thought the drives I got had good warranties, but when I looked it up they weren't. Typing in the serials and Seagate says they are OEM drives and contact whoever I bought them from. They were either used, or from Amazon who says 1yr only. Poop.

and eggs and baskets you know? I can't really afford 4 TB drives....but if that dies you lose a lot! least if i got my data spread over 2 x 2 tb drives....i'm only likely to lose half in one go...is part of my reasoning...i hope u bought two...i never RAIDed, but i wd consider doing that
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RAID isn't a backup solution though. RAID was developed for the "five nines" uptime that companies need to keep their websites online. (99.999% uptime.) If Amazon or another retailer lost their web server due to a failed harddrive, they would lose LOTS of money. I don't need that kind of reliability. What I believe in is keeping important stuff on multiple drives. Anything truly important is kept on more than one drive. Everything else can be redownloaded from steam, etc. Usually when I upgrade my drives I turn my old drives into my backup drives. This lets me unplug the drives from the system, so even if a locker virus or lightening strike wipes out my drives, the really important stuff is still around. I've lost two 4TB drives, but I'm not worried about the data that's on them. 90% of it can be replaced or wasn't important enough to be saved.

8 ports on a mummyboard? wow, dat must've cost ya.....u get a fault withthat controller though u may end up scrapping the board? ;-) way i see it....the slots are there for a reason so it is good to use them ;-) and a 4 port mummyboard and a pci-e sata card wd cost u half as much i'm sure.....i'm frugal as i have to be i know....
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Wasn't that bad, around $150 I think. 6ports on the chipset, and another two on a built in second controller. Those handle my optical drive, I'm not sure where my hot swap bays are anymore. Hopefully you get this fixed, failing PCs are really a downer.
 
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Hosestly you've done the right thing,that psu 100% NEEDED replacing,everything you listed off ebay was just as dire.

The evga w & b1 ?? They're not what id buy personally but you can at least trust them not to kill stuff.

You're buying second hand or refurbished drives ?? In all honesty I certainly wouldn't ever do that unless it was from someone I know personally.
You have no idea how much hammer these drives have had,Its an absolute cinch to change smartdata info if you know what you're doing - akin to rolling back the milometer on cars.



 
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yay...psu arrived today, just installed it....booted up...not attached my other hard drives and completely finished off....but couple of things already though...first it's a lot noisier....i guess that's just the psu, nothing i can do on that....doesn't sound like anything wrong with it though.

but booting into XP still takes ages...it gets past the log in screen, then seems to hang for a minute before taskbar and rest of it comes up? i've just optimised everything...but it still doing it, can't figure why....had thought maybe not getting enough power so it was taking a lil longer....but now i'm bit stumped?

still bit more to do....and i will reply to the above in a bit, when i'm fully built up again....;-)
 
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oh my god, drives only been plugged in for five minutes...and one of my 2tb drives just lost 1% in performance already...power on time for this drive is 94 days 15 hours.....what else could be doing this? :-( still rates as excellent with more than 1000 days remaining...but i am not convinced :-(
 
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now it's down to 98%...and it's taking lot longer to transfer files across and locks up when i try to switch between/ view contents of drives whilst it doingit :-( i just can't figure what else cd be causing this...
 
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just checking the log and it was saying uncorrectorable sector count CRC type errors...is this indicative still of a power problem? anyway it could be the motherboard that is doing this? not that i can afford to replace that at any time soon.....:-(
 
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thanks.....but not as if i have a lot of choice! needs must as the devil drives....but I'm very curious as to what you say RE smart data....didn't know that was possible....how does one do that?

i've also been looking into possibility of repairing faulty drives....now i know you can buy special boards and software, different for every manufacturer, for circa. £1000 ish per manufacturer....which will let you get in and de-pop a head or two- effectively turning say a faulty 3 tb drive into a perfectly functioning 2 tb drive.....i can't afford to do that but anybody know anything more on that? ;-)
 
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Looking at the backblaze drive data, WD and Seagate seem to have issues keeping their larger drives going. HGST seems to have a better track record with >1TD drives. Anything can fail at any time however. I thought the drives I got had good warranties, but when I looked it up they weren't. Typing in the serials and Seagate says they are OEM drives and contact whoever I bought them from. They were either used, or from Amazon who says 1yr only. Poop.

>> yep, does not sound good. Best drives i found always been HGST and Hitachi drives. but also on the warranties...u have to send them back? another reason i won't buy new drives...as I won't do that without taking a nail gun to them....don't know about you but my secret files are secret and worth far more to me than the cost of the drive....;-) I know i need to double up on anything and keep copies...but i just can't afford to do that! but i do have an external esata box that will hold four drives...if i can ever afford the drives....
>>
RAID isn't a backup solution though. RAID was developed for the "five nines" uptime that companies need to keep their websites online. (99.999% uptime.) If Amazon or another retailer lost their web server due to a failed harddrive, they would lose LOTS of money. I don't need that kind of reliability. What I believe in is keeping important stuff on multiple drives. Anything truly important is kept on more than one drive. Everything else can be redownloaded from steam, etc. Usually when I upgrade my drives I turn my old drives into my backup drives. This lets me unplug the drives from the system, so even if a locker virus or lightening strike wipes out my drives, the really important stuff is still around. I've lost two 4TB drives, but I'm not worried about the data that's on them. 90% of it can be replaced or wasn't important enough to be saved.

>>> yep all true, RAID wd be a bit OTT...

8 ports on a mummyboard? wow, dat must've cost ya.....u get a fault withthat controller though u may end up scrapping the board? ;-) way i see it....the slots are there for a reason so it is good to use them ;-) and a 4 port mummyboard and a pci-e sata card wd cost u half as much i'm sure.....i'm frugal as i have to be i know....
Click to expand...

Wasn't that bad, around $150 I think. 6ports on the chipset, and another two on a built in second controller. Those handle my optical drive, I'm not sure where my hot swap bays are anymore. Hopefully you get this fixed, failing PCs are really a downer. [/quotemsg]

that's not too bad at all...i was chuffed with having five satas on mine, + 4 more on the sata card...and my other sata card gives me an external esata with mulitplier, for the sata box....that i can't really use yet as i dnt have drives for it....$150 does sound quite cheap to me though, but exchange rates fluctuate a lot....;-)

just can't believe that this new psu hasn't fixed it....:-( I'm absolutely screwing now....:-(

 
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oh another weird thing that has just started happening...trying to move files from a flash drive to hard drive, cut and paste the files....'cept it won't do that! it keeps trying to do the entire contents of the entire drive? + it keeps creating links to said files on the flash drive...i.e. that file name + .lnk on the end :-( was suspectingit was something to do with Wine (I also use linux) but Wine isn't on that flash drive? i'm wondering if i got some weird ass virus now.....
 
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Crc errors are 99.99999% of the time physical platter errors - for me personally once that happens the drive is pretty much binnable.

I knownive alreadt said this but Im not seeing the sensibility in buying refurb drives at all for data sensitive appication.

You can buy a 3-4tb toshiba drive new now for $70/£70 .

Fast , reliable - what are you actually paying for those refurbs??

& yes smart data can be reset , it requires hardware or a pcb swap & I cant think of a single reason to do it that isnt unscrupilous or illegitimate.
 
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ta madmatt

disconnected the drive now...i just hope i can get another drive quick and copy my data off again before it totally dies... :-(

takes some hunting, but typically u can get a 2tb drive for twenty odd quid....typically they go for abt 30 second hand all in, but with bit if hunting 22-23 kinda mark....and i am really poor :-( they have lasted me a fair few years though- i have been lucky! i'm guessing this one was probably damaged bythe old psu and i hadn't realised yet/ it hadn't shown up....

still bit perplexed as to why it hanging for a bit before booting into windows though TBH...just worry it's indicative of something else and the psu was fine all along...

i wasn't going to go as far as swapping pcb's about anyway though, but thanks for the info ;-)
 
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it's simply what has built up over several decades, is all....it does all add up! ;-) i know i have some duplication and i need a clear out on them for sure...

i'm just wondering on my ssd now.....says it all perfectly healthy, but justthat lag time logging into windows that wasn't there before....cd it be damaged and just not detecting?
 
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Cold store it, i.e. dump the infrequently accessed stuff onto a hdd that is good at that time, disconnect it, and leave it like that until you can keep 2TB of HDD live on good solid drives, else you will often have this issue.

Or dump it onto a variety of online services.
 
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ok....still struggling with this but i don't think the new psu is killing any more drives....still struggling to find replacements.....but rather than start a new thread, this is a related question.....just spent the last few hours copying a tonne of data from a 1.5tb drive to another drive of same spec....I noticed a few files are corrupted....no i know abt terracopy and use that often.....but i want to do now, hopefully, is find a stand alone program that will verify all the files....and give me an easy list of all the one's that have become corrupted? is there such a thing?

i know terracopy will tell me....but i can't easily ouput that to a text file/ easy list and there is no way to separate out the one's that are ok from those that aren't.....can anybody help? ;-)
 
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I just can't undersatnd why I'm now still having system problems. I just changed the PSU....neither window 7 or xp64 should be able to even 'see' that I done that? :-(

Typically on XP64 it is working fine if i start and close down quickly...if systemis up and running for a while it hangs on shutdown, have to cut the power. Also I could be watching a film for roughly about 20 minutes before the program crashes quickly leading to complete system hang....now I have been running full AV scan and few other things, that did find a few things....now i can get to about 37 minutes before it does that...

Windows 7 seems ok'ish just a bit slow....i use salamander but typically when i go to play a movie it's a bit slow before it starts and salamander becomes unresponsive for a few seconds before the file plays....but it does play all the way through without any problems.

Now just checking the Event Viewer in XP64 and i'm getting repeated errors for 'PerfNet', don't even know what that is....but I imagine network related? + I get repeated warnings for 'Userenv', so I'm still non the wiser?

I just can't figure why suddenly this has become an issue since switching the PSU...thought possibly maybe the SSD has become damaged in some way and it's file corruption....but all my programs and scans say the ssd is 100% ok.....so starting to go a bit bald here now... :-(
 
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Typically on XP64 it is working fine if i start and close down quickly...if systemis up and running for a while it hangs on shutdown, have to cut the power.
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Wait, your system "typically" does this? This is not normal system behavior. While it's very possible for a PSU to kill a drive, it sounds like you have a host of other hardware issues if you have issues on two different OS. It could be the issue is because you installed them on dying used drives, or it could be something worse like a dying motherboard or heat. All I can suggest is to start checking anything you can think of, and start replacing things with new parts.
 
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still a strange one, managed to tweak a few things software wise and it's been behaving lot better....not getting those problems and if id crashnot so often.....but today i'm getting BSOD errors, couple of times....so i'm starting to suspect the mummyboard :-(

OS was not installed on a dying drive, still 100% healthy SSD
 
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