My computer is destroying Hard Drives, anyone know why?

[hiptune]

I had a problem 6 months ago where my second hard drive went dead on me. It seems windows XP filled up the remaining space on the drive some how all by itself untill it wound it right out of commision. I rememeber seeing more data listed in exployer than I had on it but paid no attention. Eventually the drive becomes not accessable, and can't be cleaned or defraged or anyhting.

I called Westeren Digital, and they said it sounded like a bad drive, and they sent another one out.

Well, the same thing happened again. The drive which was storing some avi files was about 70% full, and I noticed it looked 95% the other day all of a sudden. So I deleted some of the least important files. NOw today the drive is not working at all and has gone dead just like that other one 6 months ago.

Windows XP is filling up my slave drive and winding it up and out of commision.

I have two Pent 4s, and this is the same one that killed the other extra drive.

Can someone tell me what is causing this before I burn out another storage drive, and lose date I wanted to save for a future project?

I doubt Western Digital will help again. And I do have an extra 80 gig'r around to install, but I think I have a bigger problem than just a dead hard drive.
Please help!

Thanks, Jeff

[888888]

Wow that sucks. I am very lucky in that I have never had a hard drive "die" on me (crossing my fingers ). The worst I've had is a Samsung hard drive a few years ago that started developing bad secotrs (still works though).

Anyway, Western Digital has a pretty bad reputation as far as defective hard drives and I have read reports of people having multiple WD hard drives die on them. I have however never heard of Windows XP causing the kind of issues you are describing. If nothing else, buy a better reviewed brand like Seagate next time. Also, there may be heat conditions in your case, although you should get warnings for that I think.

Sorry I can't help more.

[Shadow57]

If the drives weren't actually going bad it would seem like
a program is backing up files to a hidden folder.

You can check 'show hidden files' and look for some
large files. That happened here, but our drives didn't
fail, they just filled up.

Karen

[hiptune]

If the drives weren't actually going bad it would seem like
a program is backing up files to a hidden folder.

You can check 'show hidden files' and look for some
large files. That happened here, but our drives didn't
fail, they just filled up.

Karen

Thanks Karen for the reply. I have a feeling something exactly like you describe is what happened. Except that the disc is completely full, so full that it has no room to read itself, and therefor is shot. Completely full like a cassette that ran off the hub at end. And now I can't get to the hidden files and see what did that.

But I have an extra drive to drop in under the hood, and now that you have mentioned hidden files, I have somehting to go on next time. And my gut feeling is that there will be a next time.

My otther Pent 4 has no issues like this one has had twice now.

Jeff

[808smokey]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

[redwudz]

I would suspect a virus or a trojan. You might want to download a few programs. Adaware, Spybot S&D, Spyware Blaster, HiJack This, or others.

I doubt the OS is doing this.

BTW, Western Digital is generally a well rated drive. I have had Maxtor drives go out on me, more than once. Maxtor, at least, doesn't really care what the problem is with your drive, they just replace it. That is their guarantee. I would just send it back to WD once again.

Just general rule of thumb; Don't let your HD get more than 3/4 full. You need a little room for virtual memory, where your OS uses your HD for extra processing space. If you don't have a lot of system memory, you especially need HD space.

IMO, probably the hardest use of HDs is defragging. The HD has to jump back and forth through the sectors and reallocate space fairly quickly.

Anyway, your problem doesn't seem normal. I would try to see what is causing it besides the OS.

Shadow57 has a good point, also. If you have installed backup software such as Ghost, it can use a lot of HD space.

[Shadow57]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

But then Jeff would lose all of his files.

Karen

[bazooka]

Anyway, Western Digital has a pretty bad reputation as far as defective hard drives and I have read reports of people having multiple WD hard drives die on them.

I have two Western Digital drives that are about four or so years old and they are still going strong.

I recommend WD drives.

Unless this is a dual boot system, you do not need an operating system on a slave drive.

[lumis]

this might sound like a dumb suggestion, but are you using any norton anti-virus software?

it has that norton protected recyle bin, and you've got to "double-delete" files if you're deleting stuff with the shift+delete command and think you've really deleted stuff. i hadnt used nortons in years, and this was one of their new features..

i used norton internet security & norton anti-virus for about 2 weeks, it screwed my computer hardcore.. i tried uninstalling, but everything was still running at a crawl.. i wound up formatting & doing a fresh install of xp.. everything is zipping along great now.

[hiptune]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

Yes, tried to reformat it and message says "cannot format:

[hiptune]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

But then Jeff would lose all of his files.

Karen

I would give up all those files to get this hard drive back alive. I can recapture them. Time would be lost, but I have the tapes of those avis.

No reformating, and no defragging, no disc clean up, no nothing, except a weird serial number, or model number that means nothing comes up in explorer, and does not follow Western Digital codes, or so they said last time this happened.

[hiptune]

I run my internet through a router, and that includes a hardware fire wall. No Norton or any other things running that I know of. And I run addaware often.

So I think one of my editing software programs is saving some files, or some notes on my editing. Some of them do that. I have seen those files before, but figured that they were very small. Something duplicated, and Karen is on the right track I do believe.

Thanks for all the great ideas about what this could be.

Its depressing slightly, as I have a video card problem on one machine (I think, as the cursor locks up while clicking and dragging things if I move too fast), and have a dvd-ram-rom drive on the other that konked out, and does not register any more. I had a TCB-1000 that did nothing when I turned it on right out of the box, and that was returned to fix. So I have had a hell of a time keeping two sinple Pent 4s with XP and burners with dual hard drives.

2 nice computers I built myself, and gee......many defective parts, dying HDs, dvd reader quits, TBC that does nothing right out of the box. Oh and that is not counting my Epson R300, we all know what happens with those printers eventually. It has been a bumpy ride alright.

Anyother ideas are very welcome. I need all the help I can get, as I am not sure if Western Digital should have to replace this, or should I even ask?

Jeff

[Faustus]

powersupply can kill drives dead

[Shadow57]

Anyother ideas are very welcome.
Jeff

One more idea.

If you're using Internet Explorer to access
the internet, do you delete your temp files?

You would go into...

Tools---->Internet Options---->
Temporary Internet Files---->Delete Files

We had a computer here that almost stopped completely.
We found 10gb of files in the Internet Temp folders!



Karen

[fmctm1sw]

I was going to mention two things I already see. Power supply or virus...

[lumis]

i can understand a power supply killing a hdd, but not filling it up with data.

[808smokey]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

But then Jeff would lose all of his files.

Karen

If the drive fills up with crap and is unusable then I would reformat it, the "bad drive"

[hiptune]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

But then Jeff would lose all of his files.

Karen

If the drive fills up with crap and is unusable then I would reformat it, the "bad drive"

As I already said, this drive can not be accessed. It does not take a reformat, defrag, install, anything. It became so full that it can't even look at itself. Like a VHS tape that comes off the end reel.

There is nothing readable to reformat.

End of the line for this drive.

Jeff

[bazooka]

did you try and reformat it?

format c: works for me!

But then Jeff would lose all of his files.

Karen

If the drive fills up with crap and is unusable then I would reformat it, the "bad drive"

As I already said, this drive can not be accessed. It does not take a reformat, defrag, install, anything. It became so full that it can't even look at itself. Like a VHS tape that comes off the end reel.

There is nothing readable to reformat.

End of the line for this drive.

Jeff

Are you trying to format c from the c drive?

[hiptune]

No, this is drive D:, the extra storage drive, not the main OS drive.

[bazooka]

You need to format from the A drive.

That is why the format command would not work.

Get a dos bootup floppy and type in the format command.

[hiptune]

The A drive is the floppy drive. It cannot be reformatted.

First you asked me about trying to reformat the C drive, then I told you no, it is the D drive with the problem of being "out of order".

And now you are talking about the A drive?

Please read the thread, the C drive with Windows XP is fine. The D drive (used for extra storage of avi files), is now full and the OS can't even read anything about it, not its size, model #, nor any files on it. It can't even defrag it. The drive likely can't even spin anymore it became so full.

I guess I could totally erase my C dive and reformat it, and reinstall XP and everything. But that would not bring my D drive back to life. Now would it. So please don't suggest all that work when it would do nothing to solve this problem.

I do not care about this drive anymore. I now am only concerned with protecting a new drive I will install. As this is the second time this happened.

Jeff

[RoopeT]

Looks like you need a low level format, that's what the comment including a: refers to. There's probably low level format tools available from Western Digital (I don't know, to me they're the worst HD supplier as I'm concerned about noise level over anything else). So you need to download a low level format boot floppy image, create a floppy of it (at this stage I'd open the case and completely disconnect your master drive and switch your slave's jupers as master & connect as master) -> then, boot from this floppy containing low level formatting software and really sweep off everything there useed to be.

[bazooka]

The A drive is the floppy drive. It cannot be reformatted.

First you asked me about trying to reformat the C drive, then I told you no, it is the D drive with the problem of being "out of order".

And now you are talking about the A drive?

Please read the thread, the C drive with Windows XP is fine. The D drive (used for extra storage of avi files), is now full and the OS can't even read anything about it, not its size, model #, nor any files on it. It can't even defrag it. The drive likely can't even spin anymore it became so full.

I guess I could totally erase my C dive and reformat it, and reinstall XP and everything. But that would not bring my D drive back to life. Now would it. So please don't suggest all that work when it would do nothing to solve this problem.

I do not care about this drive anymore. I now am only concerned with protecting a new drive I will install. As this is the second time this happened.

Jeff

You are misunderstanding me.

From the dos command prompt, type in a:
When it switches to the a drive, type in format c:

You need to have the dos boot floppy in the floppy drive.

[808smokey]

The A drive is the floppy drive. It cannot be reformatted.

First you asked me about trying to reformat the C drive, then I told you no, it is the D drive with the problem of being "out of order".

And now you are talking about the A drive?

Please read the thread, the C drive with Windows XP is fine. The D drive (used for extra storage of avi files), is now full and the OS can't even read anything about it, not its size, model #, nor any files on it. It can't even defrag it. The drive likely can't even spin anymore it became so full.

I guess I could totally erase my C dive and reformat it, and reinstall XP and everything. But that would not bring my D drive back to life. Now would it. So please don't suggest all that work when it would do nothing to solve this problem.

I do not care about this drive anymore. I now am only concerned with protecting a new drive I will install. As this is the second time this happened.

Jeff

You are misunderstanding me.

From the dos command prompt, type in a:
When it switches to the a drive, type in format c:

You need to have the dos boot floppy in the floppy drive.

That's what I was referring to. I was just a little lazy in my typing. Sorry

[Delerious]

I can't tell from your profile, but are you overclocking? I had a few problems with hard drives on an older motherboard that wouldn't let me lock
my PCI bus at 33.33 MHz. Running too far out of spec isn't good.

J

[glockjs]

Western Digital

[Skith]

If this is happening after heavy access, heat (temp) can be an issue. I had a WD drive shut down once from heat (ext enclosure). The drive just gave an error and vanished. I had to pop open the case, (it was hot to the touch) and let it cool. Reconnected and it worked again. So make sure your case has good cooling. IMO any large HD should have some sort of air flow across it, especially WD drives, you could cook an egg on those (don't try).

[gmatov]

To quote a tech site I read, "Pack the computer in the original box and send it back to us, you are too dumb to own a computer."

That's a joke, though some of you will jump on me for it.

Get to an a:\ prompt, best with a Boot Disk, choose "Start computer with CD ROM support, allow it to run its course, will give you an a:\ > prompt.

From here you simply type "format: (insert drive letter here)

"This will erase all data on the (insert letter here ) drive. Do you wish to continue? y/n

Type "y" and sit back, that drive or partition will be formatted.

DOSS doesn't give you the protections that the OSs do, or the errors, such as "This appears to be an external drive", or "Windows cannot format this drive."

It just does it.

Go get a 98 Boot disk if you need to.

Cheers,

george

[bazooka]

To quote a tech site I read, "Pack the computer in the original box and send it back to us, you are too dumb to own a computer."

That line always cracks me up.

There are some that should not ever have a computer like my father in law.