Hi, For the past 12 months my PC has had an intermittent problem with locking up and the only way out is to hit the restart button. Before the freeze up I can hear chirping or clicking noises coming from my slave HDD, a 200gb Western Digital. Today, I found my PC had froze again, but this time after I rebooted the slave hdd did not show on the BIOS screen, as if it was disconnected. I fiddled around with the power connection on the hard drive(re-inserted, etc) and rebooted again. The hard drive is now running OK. Is this a problem caused by the power supply or the hard drive? My PSU is a 650w unit and more than covers the PC's hardware power consumption. Any ideas would be great. Thanks.

I would guess the drive is slowly dying. Make sure you have a reliable backup of the data the drive contains. Life's more painless for the brainless.

"....I can hear chirping or clicking noises coming from my slave HDD, a 200gb Western Digital." That's not normal. Check your hard drive. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... If the power connector from the PS fits loosely, try a different one if you can. If it was your PS you would probably have other problems as well, and that wouldn't cause the sounds you hear from that drive.

Thanks for the replies. The connector for the hard drive is quite loose, but after trying the other available ones, they are loose too! I'll run a check for bad sectors and see what that comes up with. Thanks.

"The connector for the hard drive is quite loose, but after trying the other available ones, they are loose too!" The female pins in the power connectors can spread a bit if they have been unplugged/plugged in a lot, but it would be extremely unlikely all would be loose enough to cause a problem. The male pins on the drive can't have that problem. What I mean is it should not be so loose that vibration or a mere touch to the power connector or power connection wires cause the connector to move or come out. "I'll run a check for bad sectors and see what that comes up with." That won't necessarily find anything. Use the manufacturer's diagnostic utilty that I pointed to info about.

I'm amazed that you have loose power connectors. Every one I've seen was a bear to pull loose. If you are careful you can tighten up the power connectors. Take something like a safety pin and try to close up the connectors on the plug. Take your time and bend a tiny bit each time.

After performing a scandisk and also using the manufacturers tools to diagnose the problem, nothing has been found wrong with the drive. If it wasn't for the strange noise it makes prior to freezing up, I'd say it was a bad connection as the connectors are really loose... I'll try and close the pins to make a tighter fit and see how it goes, hopefully it'll cure the problem. Thanks for everyones help.