My hard drive just recently started locking up. My PC would slow down immensely, when I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL the CPU usage would be at around 98%, I would reboot to fix it and it would be back to around 3%, but my hard drive would make a 'click' noise (the EXACT same one it does when I shutdown, and it makes the noise just before the PC turns itself off) After rebooting I went on my web browser, and within 30 seconds I got a (Not Responding) in the title bar, and another click noise, and another lockup. When booting up the next time, I got a blue screen of death, which I would get whether I booted normally, safe mode, or last used configuration. After inspecting the inside of my PC, I noticed the data cable on my SATA hard drive was slightly loose, one side of it was sticking out by a couple of millimetres. I put it back in place, and booted up off another hard drive with XP on it, as I have experienced a similar bootup problem before and fixed it by doing this same method. When the PC loaded up, Checkdisk fixed a bunch of errors on the hard drive that was being faulty, and when I restarted and booted off that hard drive that was being faulty, a few more errors were fixed in Checkdisk, and my PC was back to normal, and has been running fine now. I am just curious, would a very slightly dislodged data cable cause an error like this, or is this perhaps the work of a virus? Like I said I had a similar hard drive problem a few months ago, but managed to fix it. I am running two Seagate 250GB SATA hard drives, drive C with windows XP and programs installed on it (thats the drive with the loose cable that failed), drive D with just my personal files and everything backed up on it, and drive E which is a Western Digital 120GB IDE hard drive with windows XP installed on it, which is the one I booted up off to fix the C drive. If anyone knows anything that could be of help, I would be very grateful for your assistance. Thanks, Ant

Clicking drive, errors found/fixed via chkdisk... I'd dump/replace the drive... And also ensure I do have reliable backups (CD/DVD) of data drive too (just in case that one decides to go pear-shaped anon...); and verify those off system backup are OK/fully accessible/readable... If drive is under warranty... request a replacement...?

Well the thing is, i've had the bootup issue once before with a different hard drive, but that was when I had blown my old motherboard too, this is with all new hardware i've had for 6 months now. I had the bootup problem with the new hard drives too, but that was because I left in some old RAM with the new RAM i put in. I'm just wondering if a dislodged data cable would cause a hard drive to lock up in the way that I described.

Guees it might.. as a dislodged cable might well be intermittently connecting...? Not an experience I have thus far (taps wood/head for safety...) - with any drive EIDE or SATA (not played with SATA yet...). Overall I'm inclined to feel that many current drives (especially the larger capacity) are less reliable than as those of earlier vintage... Certainly there are enough posts on forums/fora various that tend to suggest this...; drives failing well within the expected life-time (often still under warranty)?

Yes a dislodged data cable will cause problems. To do a thorough test of the drive integrity download a diagnostic program from the harddrive maker. That will tell you with a fair degree of certainty if the drive has suffered any permanent damage. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

I ran the online SeaTools disk checker, and according to that my hard drive has a S.M.A.R.T error, and has a bad sector or something. Would the dislodged cable have caused this? It says the drive should be considered likely to fail at any time, and should be returned under the warranty. =/

Run: 06/06/2006 22:48:56 NVIDIA nForce3 250 Serial ATA Controller (v2.6) : ST3250823AS Model: ST3250823AS Serial Number: 3ND1TPKE 3ND1TPKE Capacity: 250.06 GB Test result: Self-test routine completed with a S.M.A.R.T. alert error! The Drive Self-Test has determined that the drive may have one or more failing sectors. Please run SeaTools Desktop for additional information about this problem. Any drive reporting a S.M.A.R.T. error should be considered likely to fail at any time. You should back up your data from any such drive as soon as possible. Contact your computer or hard drive vendor to obtain return information.