My Hard Drive is going bad (I think) - suggestions on replacements?

[Dermonator]

Hi, I'm new here...

I have a couple of questions that I'm hoping all you knowledgeable people might be able to help with.

My 3-yr old PC seems to taking a bit of a nose dive. It started with real jerky and slow reactions to a lot of what I was doing - I thought this was ram, (?) but I'm now thinking it is my main hard disk. This hypothesis was triggered by the heat it was giving off and the intermittent clicking I was hearing from it. In the end, it would not boot- seemed to be stuck in an endless loop , so I ended up having to reinstall windows. Now, all actions take forever - I'm currently backing up all my data (I know - I should have done this before - lesson learned) onto my second drive, and this is posing problems as I've had to reboot many times as the whole system grinds to a halt - I'm also running into issues where some files are not copying due to cyclic redundancy errors, (?) or bad sectors - these are fixed with a reboot - so far.

So, two questions: Do you think it's the hard drive? If so, can does anyone have any suggestions on what I should replace it with? It's currently a 120-gig ultra ATA 7200 - any suggestions?

Thanks

Dermonator

 

[Atomic Rooster]

It does sound like a bad drive. An easy way to test the drive would be to go to the drive manufacturer's website and download their diagnostic utility. You should try that before deciding on getting a new drive.

As for the slowdown after reinstalling the OS, have you installed the motherboard chipset drivers and the video card drivers?

 

[Steemax]

What you can do is download http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
and hit the S.M.A.R.T tab and make sure you have a SMART capable Harddrive.. practicly all new harddrives have it or 100gb and higher harddrives have it.. or thats waht ive seen... anyways bring the drop down down and pick your harddrive and run the test. it will tell you what shape your harddrive is in and what part is breaking down or if its even broken down already..

thats my take on it and yes it does sound like a harddrive issue. If i were u id take out the hardrive that you think is friend and install windows on your second one adn put that second one into master and see if everything runs fine.. thats the only TRUE way of finding out that its from the harddrive unless your second one is also melted.

 

[muz]

As everyone else has said download the utilities from the manufactureeres website and test the drive using that .
If yo do need a new hard drive i would recommend the Seagate barracuda drives with perpendicular recording 7200.10 i have 2 older barracudas 7200.7 and they haven't let me down yet .I tmay also make sense to make sure the new hard drive is cooled suficiently as heat can shorten the life of a hard drive

 

[Dermonator]

Thanks for the suggestions - I'm still backing up and will try the suggestions soon.

Atomic - how do I know if the drivers are correctly installed? (Sorry - I'm pretty much an amateur)

Muz - the one that may be dying is a seagate barracuda!

 

[muz]

Thanks for the suggestions - I'm still backing up and will try the suggestions soon.

Atomic - how do I know if the drivers are correctly installed? (Sorry - I'm pretty much an amateur)

Muz - the one that may be dying is a seagate barracuda!

Well after reinstalling windows did you install any drivers for graphics and chipset . i would try this . get the chipset ones from the board makers website and graphics card ones from there makers website .

As for the drive well mt barracudas are fine but i ensure they are adequetly cooled so they dont get heat damage . Also if they are an older one like mine then you may find the 7200.10 model a lot more reliable

 

[Dermonator]

I simply used the recovery disk that came with the machine - I assumed that that would be enough... no?

 

[muz]

I simply used the recovery disk that came with the machine - I assumed that that would be enough... no?

Well that should but just to be safe go to the computer manufacturers website and download drivers and install them .It is better to be safe than be sure

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Yea, the recovery disk should have all the needed drivers and such. I assume this is a Dell or Gateway system? As muz suggested, it is sometimes a good idea to go to the computer manufacturer's site and get the drivers as they may have updated versions.

A nice replacement drive would be the Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JB 160GB. They are reliable, run cool, and only $48.99.

 

[Dermonator]

Yea, I located the site and will pull the drivers down as soon as I'm done backing up.
It's a Medion system - I think the recovery disk is good, but I'll pull the drivers none the less.