IDE hard drive dying?

[Chameleon]

Hi

I upgraded my pc recently, including the installation of a large SATA drive. Once all was well, I planned to plug my old ide hd in too, copy over what files I needed, then format it for use in some way later, as a second drive.
The thing is, when I plug the ide drive in, it gives this funny low level beep as the pc is booting (not booting from the ide drive, just in the pc as a 2nd drive, configured master or slave it does the same. The beep isn't a bios error beep, it's a different kind of beep coming from the hd itself), then it repeats this funny whirrr, beep thing on a regular cycle. Now and then windows invokes chkdsk on the drive, finds lots of problems with indexing, registry signature, other random stuff and pretends to fix them. The drive sometimes appears ok as a device in windows, others not. The drive can sometimes be accessed ok, albeit quite slow at transfering files, other times it won't read from the drive at all and removes it from the available drives list. Just the last day or two, the boot up process is halting (f1 to resume) due to a problem initialising this drive. It says to backup and replace it!!
This drive was working ok as my main HD prior to my upgrade. I have to admit that it is possible I was careless with possible static when handling it, but don't remember a specific spark, fiz, funny burnt smell. Are these simply symptoms of a knackered drive?
The system is based upon the Asus K8V mobo. The temperamental drive is a 20g seagate.

tia for any advice.

 

[sibanac]

could be the ide controler or bad connection in the cable aswell.
If you have a spare cable and another drive with no you could test that out (with the chance of screwing the other drive up aswell)

I'dd get all data you want to keep off that disk and stop using it

 

[Dubbs]

IT sounds like a faliure to me. It's trying to spin up but then stopping. The usual advice applies:

Try different HD with same cable/controller
Try HD in different board with different cable
Try looking on web via Google/Seagate to find out what that beep is about

Not heard of a HD making it's own "beeps" before. Maybe it's the sound of a head crashing you can hear? More of a chirp than a beep

 

[Zephirus]

I have a 40gb western digital drive that "beeps" occasionally, i believe it's the head doing something strange, and it sounds a bit like an old winchester parking and seeking. Drive works ok though... however it sounds like yours is borked.

 

[Chameleon]

Thanks for the tips.
I have tried other cables, but will now try the drive in the pc downstairs and another drive on that cable/controller too.
I suppose it could be the ide controller. It's the only driver which I did not update to the latest when installing the new kit. This was because when I updated this driver to the latest one from the asus site, windows would reach the user login screen, then reboot itself repeatedly. I had to roll-back to the previous driver before I could get windows to boot. I had forgotten this till now. Will try another version of the ide driver, as iirc it is using the standard windows one atm. I know little about this and had assumed that it would simply not work at all if it was a driver issue.
These new 64 bit systems are very impressive, as is the sata drive, but the motherboard and it's drivers certainly need a little tweak here and there, as this system has required a great deal of 'messing about' to get things working.

Thanks again. I'll post again if I make any progress.

 

[Custodian]

The Seagate site has free diagnostic tool if ya wanna test the drive.
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html

 

[Danya]

I have a 40gb western digital drive that "beeps" occasionally, i believe it's the head doing something strange, and it sounds a bit like an old winchester parking and seeking. Drive works ok though... however it sounds like yours is borked.

My seagate scsi disk beeps when it spins up (it seems to have a small speaker as it;s not a "bad" beep).

 

[Skyler]

I recently added a large Maxtor SATA to my PC and I have heard a similar kind of feint 'beep' from one or two of my disks... wether it's the SATA or one of the older ones I don't know but I am getting problems... My SATA is reporting a steady increase in bad sectors as time goes by and chkdsk runs frequently... the other week it was so bad I was unable to boot as it kept screwing up files key to windows so I've got in the habit of scheduling a chkdsk everytime I shut down for the night.. a pain and I will return this drive but I am just lazy...

Your drive sounds a little screwed.. I really am starting to hate HDD's... they seem so unreliable..

 

[Chameleon]

Well I moved the old HD into the pc downstairs last night and the same thing was happening when plugged in there - whirr, chirp/beep, chirp/beep, chirp/beep kinda thing. It slowed the system bootup, then upon entering windows, the drive isn't listed. I think that's what's called buggered then!

What bothers me now is this ....... the drive was absolutely fine before the upgrade, it wasn't showing any signs of problems at all. Clearly something must've happened to it while I was changing the hardware, which can only have been something quite sudden and seriously damaging. How did this happen? Hows does a HD get damaged like that? Is it as easy as touching the wrong bit or putting it down on the wrong surface? I'd like to avoid the expense in the future. I'd appreciate any feedback on this.

Skyler - my new drive is a maxtor SATA drive. It worked perfectly well from the outset. All the noises have been coming from the old drive. The maxtor one seems fast and reliable ...... I'm really pleased with it. If you've tried the suggestions above too (cables, controller drives, other pc, etc), I'd definately send it back mate.

 

[Danya]

Modern harddrives have onboard monitoring for hardware faults. Check this handy online tool: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/asp/tools/en/smart.html