Hard Drive Problems

Gabriel · #1 10-07-2002, 01:27 PM

i have 2 hard drive and my slave hard drive which is a 40 gig maxtor make some grinding noises when i boot up and when i use applications.

what could be the problem?
please help!

&

The Tool · #2 10-07-2002, 01:43 PM

Is Hard Drive fixed properly? Sound might be due to vibration

Disk_Contented · #3 10-09-2002, 06:36 PM

Is S.M.A.R.T enabled in the bios? (may point to an impending failure)
Have you defraged the drive lately?

W8 4 Me · #4 10-23-2002, 04:09 PM

heya Disk-Co,
could you explain what SMART is? Why or when I'd want to use it?
Also, I used a couple of benchmark tools recently for the first time ever (using benchmarks) and apparently I have a hard drive problem. My system stats are Soyo Dragon Ultra 645dx with a P4 2.26, 512 ddr333 and an ata 133 maxtor 60 gig drive. When I did the benchmark with PCMark 2002 I rated extremely low with the hard drive compared to other posts from people doing the same. most of the others were over 1000, some over 2000, a few older systems posted mid to upper hundreds and I am rated at 630 ish. The guys with ata 133 maxtor drives were well over 1000..one guy posting 4000+. This disappointed me big time so I looked into things...
I checked my ide port connections and cables, changed them around to test them. Tried enabling the raid in bios and disabling it, etc ( the HDD can be supported on the raid connector as a single ata 133 drive according to Soyo) I also put the HDD back on the other ide connectors... I uninstalled the SIS IDE drivers and checked the benchmark with the XP default drivers with about the same results..reinstalled (the latest) drivers..still the same. Called soyo and he suggested getting Sisoft Sandra.. which I downloaded and ran the HDD benchmark and Sandra seys my HDD is running about the same as a comparable ata 100 drive.
Have any suggestions?

Disk_Contented · #5 10-23-2002, 07:22 PM

Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology.
Should give you an early warning if a drive might fail, so you can back-up.
I saw a two month old forty gig Maxtor that became unusable, S.M.A.R.T had advised a backup, the user ignored it and lost all data.
No doubt an uncommon occurence, but as you have a same spec drive and noise is apparent, worth checking out.
This may account for the "low" performance if the controller is having access difficulties.
Enable "SMART for hard disks" in the bios.
Make sure the HD's are shown as DMA Mode 5 in device manager/ IDE Controllers.
Finally, don't forget that these benchmarks are relative, they are affected by system load, chipset used etc, and can vary widely between systems that on the outside appear to have similar specs. It is not unusual for a "Slower" specced mainboard to outperform a fast one.

W8 4 Me · #6 10-26-2002, 05:41 PM

thx for the explanation bro

I never knew that about SMART. You'd think the motherboard manual would explain these bios options...
Unfortunately Windows is showing my hard drive as a scsi device and I have no DMA mode information or options for a typical IDE drive. I do get the PIO mode in the bios setup screen at boot though. Once I installed my motherboard's IDE drivers, the HDD information changed in Device Manager. Soyo says it's normal and correct to see all my drives as scsi. It may have something to do with the RAID feature of the motherboard?
TTL

onesickpuppy · #7 10-30-2002, 09:31 PM

If your drives are connected on the same cable, and one is a ATA100 and the other is an ATA133, the faster will default to the slower speed.

Also, you may want to check to see how the jumpers are set. Sometimes default is set to cable select, and this can cause problems if the other is set to just master.

Also, if your running an 80 pin cable, your "master" drive needs to be on the end of the cable, not in the middle like under 40 pin cables. It may be trying to detect the drive if its in the middle during boot.

If at all possible, you should always run a slave drive off the secondary channel, not with the master. You'll get much better performance that way.

idq990 · #8 11-10-2002, 04:56 AM

my Western Digital HD sucks....it umm....makes small grinding noises and it is not quiet at all.
it is loud annoying and i hate my hd. i am thinking of replacing that crap that i have that is a noise maker in the computer.
Western Digital Caviar 40GB