WAAAGH something is dying in my computer!

[Mendel]

I casually came home for lunch today and find my girlfriend playing "Heroes of might and magic". after a while I hear a loud THAK THAK THAK THAK from teh computer room. I go there, instantly turn of computer and start running around hands waving in panic. Then turn computer on again... THAK THAK THAK THAK off again... SHIT! I yell...Then I calm myself down, then panic again, walking zigzag between kitchen and pc room, frustrated about possibly losing a lot of gamesaves and whatnot, calm down again and casually go to eat, never uttering a word...

Then I manage to say it out loud: "My harddrive might be broken."

Then there is the "Oops honey Im sorry" - "No its not your fault" - "But I was playing with it" - "It does not matter" kind of small talk phrase where I must maintain my calm while furiously thinking about backup plans and whatnot...

After eating I go back to my pc and turn it on again... Pleasant surprise, no more thakthakthaking... boots to windows, finds all 3 hard drives, they can be read from and written to... I played some time whistling and generally having a good effort trying to forget anything special ever happened...

I took a rubber and made rubber feet out of it for my harddrive to distance it from my cdrw for better airflow under the drive as I'm guessing heat might be a factor here.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed and will report on how it develops.

edited note: Im not actually asking anything, just sharing

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

You should probably look at it with some SMART monitoring software. It may have been a warning telling you to back all your stuff up to a new drive. I once had a similar problem with an overheating hard drive, but I found a bag of frozen peas made a heatsink good enough to keep it alive while I copied everything to a new disc.

Try looking at HDDHealth It's freeware.

 

[Mendel]

Thanks! Wouldn't have thought of that myself. I shall try it once I get back home again... In fact I think I shall leave early today as this matter presses my mind, somewhat interrupting the ability to work... now to try to tell THAT to my boss...

 

[Mendel]

it says "There are no known problems with this hard drive" with all my hard drives

In S.M.A.R.T section, one of the drives has a red line though that says:

C2 Temperature value 121 treshold 0 worst 76 inc -33

So possibly the drive was just giving a weird warning noise once certain temperature was reached?

Im still betting its just starting to lose its "ball bearing" or something like that... and will stop working or at least start corrupting data soon... hope it lasts until 20th day when I get my paycheck and can afford some backup device...

 

[Tim Murray]

could be a fan, no?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Could be summer? I just clocked back to 10x200 and 360/340 on me 9700 pro 'cause the house is a tad warmer in summer. (Damned daystar! )

 

[rainz]

could be a fan, no?

Yeh .. prolly a Fan or a HD .. no choice .. nothing else can make this sound. The best like Bouncing Zabaglione Bros said .. try to monitoring everything.

RainZ

 

[rainz]

Could be summer? I just clocked back to 10x200 and 360/340 on me 9700 pro 'cause the house is a tad warmer in summer. (Damned daystar! )

Well do like me Dig .. Air Cond. !

RainZ

 

[karlotta]

sometimes, the floppy will loose its mind and just keep seaking then go away, its very disturbing. Dont no what exe/dll is looking in it but it does show up every so often then goes away. This has been on win98 to xppro, on severl machines/setups. u can just unhook the floppy and test that way. also did you have a defrag prog on like diskkeeper?.

 

[Mendel]

I think we can safely discount floppy since i haven't had a physical floppy drive since 2001. edit: or a floppy drive for that matter.

Defrag is an interesting question, there was no real defrag program going on but now that I think of it, doesn't winxp have this sort of a "mini-defrag" service that automagically turns on and executes in background every once in a while?

There is a slight chance of it was just something hitting my 120 mm chassis fan but thats unlikely since it would have probably been then hitting it later too... Besides, it really did sound like it came from harddrive...

Regarding hdd health, what is a T.E.C ?

 

[rainz]

Start \ Programs \ Accessories \ System tools

- Disk defragmenter

Btw remember if needed ! bag of frozen peas rules !

RainZ

 

[Mendel]

Umm I have been using something called perfect disk for my defragmenting purposes but anyways I think windows insist on doing some casual mini defrag & scandisk sessions for like something under a minute long and takes very small amount of resources... but then again this is only hearsay combined with what i sometimes find running when i go to task manager...

Anyways in case you were wondering I'm well aware of what defrag does and don't think a hard drive can get so fragmented it would produce a sound like what I was experiencing. Thanks for reminder anyways, its been few months since last defrag... Peas sound like a good idea but i have only french fries... oh well.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Defrag is an interesting question, there was no real defrag program going on but now that I think of it, doesn't winxp have this sort of a "mini-defrag" service that automagically turns on and executes in background every once in a while?

You're probably thinking of the file indexing service.

Regarding hdd health, what is a T.E.C ?

T.E.C. date - Threshold Exceeds Condition - supposed date when this attribute achieves threshold value, in other words probable date of end of HDD life. Prognosis of this date based on the factor "Speed of attribute change" (described above), so don't be surprised at variations of T.E.C. date, especially immediately after S.M.A.R.T. attribute change.

 

[Mendel]

Could be summer? I just clocked back to 10x200 and 360/340 on me 9700 pro 'cause the house is a tad warmer in summer. (Damned daystar! )

Clocked back to 360/340... *BACK* to 360/340? SHEESH!

I couldn't clock that high on the coldest winter nights when I gotta wear pullovers and give my dance mat a go to keep warm...

On the other hand mine is just a nonpro but it usually runs quite happily flashed as a pro and goes to speeds above that and stays stable better than my friend's actual pro. That's during winter... I have tried keeping it as a pro *now* and just about hour of race driver 2 is enough for a vpu recover. Now running it at 270/258 (that's the lowest setting powerstrip can do)

I also got my p4 3GHz running at stock speeds again and my ddr400 memory downclocked to ddr 333. I was quite happily playing for few days and nights enjoying stability again as a result of these underclocks and new fan system... that until THIS happened...

 

[Mendel]

Now it says my hard drive temperature is critical. Should I really consider 46 degrees celsius (115 degrees fahrenheit) something to worry about?

 

[rainz]

Now it says my hard drive temperature is critical. Should I really consider 46 degrees celsius (115 degrees fahrenheit) something to worry about?

This is insanely high for a HD yes ... mines are around 25~30C ... yours is around a CPU temp. ( But no idea if it's risky at this temp. )

RainZ

 

[digitalwanderer]

Well do like me Dig .. Air Cond. !

I put in a new central unit a year and a half ago and it cranks good, but I just can't keep the whole house as cool as my 'puter room gets in the winter.

 

[Mendel]

oh well, i shall have to do something about it then... maybe starting with better placement considering airflow... Elsewhere I have heard some creepy tales about these maxtor hard drives so now Im back to worrying again...

 

[Dio]

I wouldn't have said 46 was 'insanely high' although definitely on the warm side. In a typical case (i.e. without extra fans), 7k2 HD's will run between 30 and 40 degrees.

Note that HD Health may be wrong. According to it this machine's drive temperature is 2 billion degrees, but I see no fusion occurring.

 

[Mendel]

moved one samsung hard drive from the warmth of its on top of a cdrw to the cold breeze of bottom of the case, right next to the fan... Hope it doesnt interfere with the airflow too much so that my cpu and raddy keeps their cool... anyways its running at 34 degrees celsius now so there was a considerable drop. As for my other 7k rpm maxtor drive, im not sure i can help that one... nearest T.E.C is tomorrow it seems...