Hi everyone. This morning after a failed attempt to change the power supply on the family PC, I tried to boot it up but when it got to the Windows XP boot screen the main HDD started to make awful clicking noises so I turned off the computer. Then I tried to boot it another three times and it didn’t even get as far as the XP boot screen, so I decided to turn it on and let it struggle for a while to see if it would boot. After five minutes it slowly got to the log in screen and I logged in and made a backup of everyone’s documents on the second HDD. I have done a hard disk check but it took about half an hour and came up with nothing. At the moment the computer seems to be running OK and I have rebooted a few times to see if it would boot again which it has. But every now and then during disk activity it will either make a slight clicking noise or go quiet for a while then start again. So after all that my question is how long does this HDD have? I don’t really want to buy a new HDD because I don’t think it’s worth spending much money on this old machine. It has been running for almost 2 hours like this and seems to be getting slightly better. Thanks for you help.

Mattwizz3 : )

AMD K-7 600MHz & Asus K7v
256Mb SDRAM
80Gb WDC, 8Mb Buffer
128Mb ASUS Radeon A9550
Cyber Drive CD-RW DVD Combo
Spirit TV tuner

Boot into the recovery console and run CHKDSK /R. Note space between K and /. It may last and hour, a day, a week. I personally would consider it gone and backup and reinstall or clone to another drive.

Thanks for your help per, How do I boot to the recovery console? Its still running, I'm using it right now. I'll run CHKDSK /R and see how it goes but I will keep creating backups every day and just run it to the ground, I also downloaded HDD health so I can see when the seek error rates get worse.

Mattwizz3 : )

AMD K-7 600MHz & Asus K7v
256Mb SDRAM
80Gb WDC, 8Mb Buffer
128Mb ASUS Radeon A9550
Cyber Drive CD-RW DVD Combo
Spirit TV tuner

On the boot you should see an option to boot to the xp O/S or the recovery console. If you don't it is not installed. Go start-help-type "recovery console" search and follow the instructions to install.

Clicking hard drives are very often in the process of dying. However, systems with inadequate power supplies have been known to cause the hard drive clicking. If you are planning on replacing the power supply, do that before trashing the hard drive.

I ran the test in the recovery console and it ran for about 30Min and found nothing, the disk also dosent seem to click much at all now. I also got a few popups saying that the raw read error rate improved. I think it could be a small problem with the HDD, mixed with an inadiquate PSU. I have had a few annoying glitches with this HDD before and the PSU is 145Watt running 3Fans, 2 HDD's, CD-burner, Graphics card, soundcard and two USB devices. I went to some site that had a power calculator and it was around 220Watt. I tried to install a 300Watt PSU but it is too big (physically). I think I will leave it for now and keep an eye out for a cheap PSU.

Thanks for your help.

Mattwizz3 : )

AMD K-7 600MHz & Asus K7v
256Mb SDRAM
80Gb WDC, 8Mb Buffer
128Mb ASUS Radeon A9550
Cyber Drive CD-RW DVD Combo
Spirit TV tuner

Sounds like Ham30 called it.

It sounds like the PSU is way overtaxed,and I agree that any clicking is probably indicative of mechanical failure and soon.

Hi Matt,# your power connections thru plastic
box to all components (from power supply)make
sure they're seated firmly,esp to drive.Run
chkdsk repeatedly(it repairs sctors ea time)-
the noise abates as it improves.Do it til it
doesn't thrash any more,as this will kill it
Thrashing is a symptom of bad sectors,or
interrupted/low power.replace the power supp
before the drive.

craig