Yeah okay. So another HDD. The last one in my PC has apparently just given up the ghost and it's only 6-8 months old. Third one in a year from Western Digital thats quit in such a short space of time and I'm very unhappy about it.
Was playing World of Tanks, PC froze. Now seeing as how occasionally Windows gets kinda confused because one of my USB drivers is kinda dodgy, it sometimes needs a hard reset. Every few months it does it so i never really took any notice. In fact this is the first time it's froze in a while. So i hit the reset button on my PC. But it sat at the Asus logo for about 5 minutes before an American Megatrends thing appeared telling me the HDD was toast. - Fan screaming for whatever reason. THEN it said 'No boot device found' yadayada.
Now the HDD is still spinning up and the HDD activity light is still registering activity. So you can't possibly tell me this thing has supposedly died in a short amount of time. It's hardly done any work for crying out loud. So. I'm going to dig up my board model number and put it on here. I do know it has a UEFI Asus BIOS, though. Does anybody have any ideas? or is the thing actually dead for real - in which case i'm going to go smack my face off the desk.
Thanks for any input guys.
Edit: So after some tinkering. Swearing. Swapping cables around and eventually smacking the damn thing off the desk, i got it to boot. However i did have to reset the BIOS twice, and play around with AHCI/IDE and UEFI/CSM modes to get the bloody thing to start. Now if i shut-down the PC, i need to do the whole process again. So for now i just wont turn it off. In the meantime, anyone have any clue why it's being as weird? is this the HDD or potentially a Mobo component on it's way out. The HDD itself shows up as fine after running a diskinfo check on it. It reported back the HDD condition was 'Good'. and Read/Write speeds around 350MB-400MB/s. - Asus Desktop Mobo, UEFI BIOS with the 1155 intel socket. (can't for the life of me find the model number). 2013-14 ish date purchased. Was getting another error "Boot Device Incompatible, Go to UEFI BIOS > Advanced >CSM Parameters". This thing is just odd. It was fine one minute and now it's giving me these bizarre messages. Not to mention my UEFI Bios interface is just dumb so i'm having problems figuring out what it actually means.
No. It isn't a laptop. This is a desktop - which originally had three WD drives in it. All purchased about the same time and all quit within a short time span.
-Last one supposedly bit the dust today. WD Black, 1TB.
All I can suggest is that you look up your motherboard type using it's serial number and see if there is some sort of history of 'issues' that it might have.
It *might* be your MB is 'killing' your HDD's for some reason.
Failing that, try another brand of HDD, say Seagate for instance ( it seems to be the most popular brand from my local PC shop according to their website).
The exact unit is -> Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 3.5" 1TB 64MB 7200RPM HDD, so you can find it at your PC shop if you are interested.
Other than that the 'Blue' series of WD HDD are the next in line.
Also, what is the environment like near/around your PC? An odd question I know, but lots of stuff can make your PC or components sad.
edit: I did a little gooogle with the info from your OP (Asus Desktop Mobo, UEFI BIOS with the 1155 intel socket) and there are 4 or 5 MB's which match that description.
(03-23-2016, 06:50 PM)Explorer487 Wrote: No. It isn't a laptop. This is a desktop - which originally had three WD drives in it. All purchased about the same time and all quit within a short time span.
-Last one supposedly bit the dust today. WD Black, 1TB.
Say, did you have all these 3 hard disks installed one under another? Was there any space between them? Always keep space between hard disks because their spinning speed makes them vibrate and also creates heat; making them last less.
I did have these HDDs stacked on top of each other with at least 10MM clearence between each one, not to mention they're mounted behind a 120MM fan. So i don't think ventilation is the issue. My PC sorta sits on it's own little table next to my desk and the room averages about 15 - 19 C. Mind you it has two intake case fans and two exhaust so wouldn't have thought temperature should've been a problem. It's slightly dusty in here, i.e normal room type dust but i wouldn't say it's anything worth noting. The power sockets/extension cords are bolted onto the back of the desk well away from the PC itself as i'm aware Static can be an issue from things like adapters/transformers.
For now the problem seems to have resolved itself, i chanced a PC reboot today and it seems to be okay for now however that's not to say it isn't likely to do it again. Managed to find the model number at long last. Tiniest lettering ever but it's the Asus P8H61 Mobo. Asus Board Page I have a feeling this is the wrong board revision version since mine has 6 SATA ports. 4 3G/s and 2 6G/s. Along with supporting RAM above 1666 Mhz (currently running 8GB dual channel at 1666) However it's the same board spec wise with the exception of these two aspects.
Okay so since the 25th when the problems disappeared. They've returned with a vengeance and it's more serious this time. Today i turned it on, and the BIOS screen refused to appear along with the CPU fan screaming itself to death. So. I thought it's unlikely to be the HDD, but i took it out of my PC and plugged it into another PC i knew was functioning correctly to rule it out entirely, and surprise surprise, the HDD was actually fine. On Windows 10 with my HDD on it the old lower spec PC i have kicking around booted in under 6 seconds.
By the time i came back, plugged my HDD back in and hit the power button on my PC, it started up as normal, until it got to the Windows Logo, now this thing was spinning away to itself for a while. Like. 35 minutes almost before it finally came up. Whenever i click something, for example, it takes a good 5 seconds for it to respond. In fact at one point it froze altogether, black screened then went off. Hit the power button again, fan went ballistic and then it booted as normal. Right into the same sluggish shenanigans. I'm actually stumped. Since the other PC going about is an AMD machine, so it's not like i can swap Intel CPUs around (supposing they were the same socket) to rule that out also. Anyone know any in depth hardware diagnostic software or has what I've described indicate imminent motherboard failure? Cheers for the input. Starting to get sick of using my laptop and it's crappy Pentium
(03-29-2016, 06:43 PM)Explorer487 Wrote: Okay so since the 25th when the problems disappeared. They've returned with a vengeance and it's more serious this time. Today i turned it on, and the BIOS screen refused to appear along with the CPU fan screaming itself to death. So. I thought it's unlikely to be the HDD, but i took it out of my PC and plugged it into another PC i knew was functioning correctly to rule it out entirely, and surprise surprise, the HDD was actually fine. On Windows 10 with my HDD on it the old lower spec PC i have kicking around booted in under 6 seconds.
By the time i came back, plugged my HDD back in and hit the power button on my PC, it started up as normal, until it got to the Windows Logo, now this thing was spinning away to itself for a while. Like. 35 minutes almost before it finally came up. Whenever i click something, for example, it takes a good 5 seconds for it to respond. In fact at one point it froze altogether, black screened then went off. Hit the power button again, fan went ballistic and then it booted as normal. Right into the same sluggish shenanigans. I'm actually stumped. Since the other PC going about is an AMD machine, so it's not like i can swap Intel CPUs around (supposing they were the same socket) to rule that out also. Anyone know any in depth hardware diagnostic software or has what I've described indicate imminent motherboard failure? Cheers for the input. Starting to get sick of using my laptop and it's crappy Pentium
Did you try to test the said HDDs with new SATA cables? Maybe the ones used in your Intel PC are causing trouble? Maybe the PSU cables are also causing problems or maybe the motherboard is about to fail. There are many paths to follow.. I would take the PC with me to a service to check it.
I did swap the cables. Though i'd rather hazard a guess at the potential component that's going a bit dodgy than give someone else money to do that for me. See the nearest PC center is 75 miles away. So i've also got to factor in the cost and time to actually make the trip. Not to mention said PC center is absolutely extortionate. There 'IS' a closer one, 30 miles or so however the last time i took it there when i really could not diagnose the problem. They somehow racked up a bill of nearly £150 on parts that i knew for a fact it didn't need to begin with. Not including the labor spent on it. Oh and the fact they had it for six weeks. In the end the only thing i gained out of it was a PC that worked for two weeks before it died AGAIN and i had no choice but to drive it to the professional place 75 mile away who then told me instantly it was a bus controller of some description that was shot. It wasn't cheap either to have that swapped out - but to be fair, it's been fine since then and that was over a year ago.
So eh. Yeah. Not a fan of the service places around here xd - I've been offered an MSI AMD board with an Athlon II X4 CPU on it, while it isn't the most gutsy thing in the world i'll probably just take that for now until i can figure out what the hell is wrong with this thing. The Mobo i've been offered i've been aware of as it's a friend of mine who no longer needed it and he's had no trouble with it at all. (not that it's done any work to be fair). Couple years old now but eh, it's free and i have next to no money to spend on parts for this pain in the neck. Lol.
