new pc questions

[lilith]

so I bought this system last week

amd fx 6300
gigabyte 970a-d3
4gb ddr3 ram

and so far,the actual performance in games and programs has been great but there are some issues that have been bothering me GREATLY

1) when I press the start button on my pc,the pc starts for just 1 second,shuts down and then restarts itself like normal.

I've been told by a technician at the shop I bought the hardware at, that gigabyte motherboards do that as a kind of testing.

is that true? because it's mighty weird and I really think it will affect the rest of my hardware,having it turn on and off like that.

sometimes,it does that 2 times before it finally starts

2)in my last system,I used an IDE HDD as C: which is not supported by the motherboard I bought.
so I got an extra external HDD and backed up all the data of an internal sata HDD I had.

it moved around 650gb in one night,in one go...could that have affected the HDD's health?

I'm asking because just 3 days later,the internal drive came up with bad and damaged sectors and wouldn't boot into windows not even in safe mode.
it also made clunking noises whenever I would try to power on the pc and I do literally mean clunking noises like "clunk...clunk...clunk" and then stopped doing any noise while it tried to boot.
weird thing is that it would go as far as the "windows is starting" screen with all the graphics in the windows logo active and then it would just go to a black screen with the mouse cursor in the middle.
the cursor itself couldn't move and the whole pc needed to restart by pushing the restart button.

3)pretty sure that my internal HDD was dead,I went and bought a western digital caviar blue 1TB.
after the usual formatting,updating,installing necessary drivers and such which included A NUMBER OF RESTARTS like I described above,I've begun hearing that EXACT SAME clunking noise whenever I turn on my pc but windows boots up like normal and things get done faster as this HDD is faster than my older one.

so what's the deal here?
clunking noises,propably coming from the internal hard drive...damaged sectors and inability to boot windows in an old drive...same noises coming from a hard drive I bought like....7 hours ago.

even though that technician told me that gigabyte motherboards do indeed shut down and restart by themselves,it just seems like it's messing up my hard drives!
is there someway I can turn off that "test start" on my motherboard?
or maybe I got a faulty motherboard?

or am I way off here and the motherboard isnt at fault?
could it be my PSU? it's a 500W chieftec which in theory should be enough.
I should also note that I've overclocked the cpu from stock 3.5ghz to 4.1ghz with an aftermarket cpu cooler

could it be that it hasnt got enough power to start like normal? but then it wouldnt start at all!
I'm also using a radeon 4850 512mb

this is so frustrating that I'm afraid to shut down my pc lol ><


I SHOULD ALSO ADD that my old seagate 1TB reported several errors when I checked it with HDtune but this new western digital I got checks out fine in HDtune

 

[markwp]

so I bought this system last week

amd fx 6300
gigabyte 970a-d3
4gb ddr3 ram

and so far,the actual performance in games and programs has been great but there are some issues that have been bothering me GREATLY

1) when I press the start button on my pc,the pc starts for just 1 second,shuts down and then restarts itself like normal.

I've been told by a technician at the shop I bought the hardware at, that gigabyte motherboards do that as a kind of testing.

is that true? because it's mighty weird and I really think it will affect the rest of my hardware,having it turn on and off like that.

sometimes,it does that 2 times before it finally starts

What you are seeing is the bios going through POST - this is a self diagnostic and appears to shutdown, but in truth it is working internally in preparation for loading the operating system

2)in my last system,I used an IDE HDD as C: which is not supported by the motherboard I bought.
so I got an extra external HDD and backed up all the data of an internal sata HDD I had.

it moved around 650gb in one night,in one go...could that have affected the HDD's health?

I'm asking because just 3 days later,the internal drive came up with bad and damaged sectors and wouldn't boot into windows not even in safe mode.
it also made clunking noises whenever I would try to power on the pc and I do literally mean clunking noises like "clunk...clunk...clunk" and then stopped doing any noise while it tried to boot.
weird thing is that it would go as far as the "windows is starting" screen with all the graphics in the windows logo active and then it would just go to a black screen with the mouse cursor in the middle.
the cursor itself couldn't move and the whole pc needed to restart by pushing the restart button.

This paragraph is confusing. Did you backup from your old c: drive (the IDE) to another old drive you had? Did you do the backup on the current pc or on another rig?

3)pretty sure that my internal HDD was dead,I went and bought a western digital caviar blue 1TB.
after the usual formatting,updating,installing necessary drivers and such which included A NUMBER OF RESTARTS like I described above,I've begun hearing that EXACT SAME clunking noise whenever I turn on my pc but windows boots up like normal and things get done faster as this HDD is faster than my older one.

In order to isolate your noises, disconnect all drives EXCEPT your new WD. Make sure all cables are not interfering with fan blades, etc. and restart. If the noise persists, first look for a cable or tag that might be getting into a fan blade (cpu cooler perhaps?) If the sound is gone, reconnect the other drives one at a time until you locate the drive creating the noise.

so what's the deal here?
clunking noises,propably coming from the internal hard drive...damaged sectors and inability to boot windows in an old drive...same noises coming from a hard drive I bought like....7 hours ago.

even though that technician told me that gigabyte motherboards do indeed shut down and restart by themselves,it just seems like it's messing up my hard drives!
is there someway I can turn off that "test start" on my motherboard?
or maybe I got a faulty motherboard?

You should have an option in bios to run the POST test in a "silent" mode - it will still run, but you won't see the changing splash screens. The post test, IMO, should not be disabled.

or am I way off here and the motherboard isnt at fault?
could it be my PSU? it's a 500W chieftec which in theory should be enough.
I should also note that I've overclocked the cpu from stock 3.5ghz to 4.1ghz with an aftermarket cpu cooler

Chieftec is not well known in the US, but it appears to be rated as generally acceptable in EU. Personally, I would never skimp on a psu - to me, clean quality power is worth the additional cost.

could it be that it hasnt got enough power to start like normal? but then it wouldnt start at all!
I'm also using a radeon 4850 512mb

this is so frustrating that I'm afraid to shut down my pc lol ><


I SHOULD ALSO ADD that my old seagate 1TB reported several errors when I checked it with HDtune but this new western digital I got checks out fine in HDtune

 

[lilith]

in my old system,I had 2 internal HDDs

a 320GB IDE used as C: which isnt supported by my current motherboard

and a 1TB seagate SATA used for storage.

I backed up everything in my 1TB seagate sata to an external HDD and then disconnected the 320GB IDE and used my 1TB SATA as C: but it failed 3 days later so I bought a 1TB western digital and am now using it as C:
I have only 1 internal HDD now and 2 external HDD

hope that explains it

so,could it be that my old HDD was already on the way out or is something else messing up my current system?

 

[markwp]

When you backed up the seagate 1tb to external, did you re-format the seagate and then install windows to make it your c:?

Am I correct that you now have the WD as c: with a fresh install of windows, plus the external hdd where your seagate was backed up and a second external?

Did your data survive the transfer to the seagate and were you able to recover the backup data before/when the seagate died?

Are the external drives usb and do they require external power?

 

[lilith]

yes,I reformated the seagate and used that as my C: till it came up with bad sectors and wouldn't boot into windows

the data move to the external HDD seems ok...no errors in the files I have used at least.

I had no data to recover on the seagate after formatting it...just windows,drivers and installed programs

I have the new WD I bought as C:

I also got 2 seagate external HDD connected via usb
only one of the external HDD needs an external power supply I think