Sorry for posting this here but I don't know where else to turn. The hard drive on my desktop started clicking three weeks ago and I replaced it because I couldn't even format it and re-install windows. I bought another hard drive and have had it for only two weeks and this one just started doing the same thing today. I can't even enter windows through safe mode because I get a message that some system files are corrupt. My question is what can be causing this? I know power outages can send surges that can damage hardware but I haven't had any outages in the past two weeks. Has anyone ever heard of something like this before? Maybe a virus that can damage hard drives?

The only way a virus could damage a hard-drive is if it made it search for sectors outside of it's realm. Basically making the read/write needle hit up against the wall of the casing.

I haven't heard of these actually being written or rather implemented, but that is how you would do it.


I honestly think you are overheating, or perhaps your power supply is going downtown. Are all your fans working?

edit: Do you have everything hooked into a UPS, or just a surge strip.



http://talontimes.blogspot.com
99gs
95TSI

2 HD's having mechanical failures in that amount of time? Wow, thats some shitty luck.
It has to be something like a heat issue like he said. Of all the computers and drives I've gone through in the past, I've only had 1 with that issue and it was VERY old.
Did you buy this last drive new? Let warranty replace it and make sure you put the new one where there's some space/ventilation around it.

__________________________________________________________
-Tony <--- NOT asian.
'06 Wicked White EVO IX

What brand of hard drive are you buying?

And... lol.. at the virus answer.

Thanks for all the responses guys. I woke up this morning and called office depot and asked if I could exchange the drive since I had only had it for 18 days. Luckily the manager was a cool guy and let me exchange it so I spent most of the day today installing all my programs back onto the new hard drive. I had the pc hooked up to a regular surge strip so I picked up another one that protects it from higher voltage surges. After reading eclipzGST's comment about a possible heating issue I started checking and found that it may have been the culprit. I had taken off the cover to install a new DVD writer drive and didn't squeeze the power connector all the way so that fan wasn't working for a little over a month. The brand of this new hard drive is Western Digital and I hope that it's the last one i'll be installing for a while. Thanks again for all your help guys.

If it fails again, it's possibly the motherboard. I had two here at work that claimed the HD died, when in fact it was the IDE controller on the motherboard. It appeared EXACTLY like a dead hard drive (clicking and everything), except it was because the controller was causing it.

~Luke
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1969 Cougar - 11.91 - 380HP
2007 GSXR 750
1999 OZ - SOLD - 15.26 NA - 14.71 on 75 shot

thank god SSD technology is going mainstream this year. i can't wait to replace my boot drive with a nice 64gig SSD drive. 30% faster boot up, less power draw, less heat, and ZERO chance for mechanical failure. platter drives are like the oldest piece of technology still used in computers today...

now they just need a faster interface. SATA's gonna be the new bottleneck in data access.

-marc