Hard Drive is trying to commit suicide

[George Pertoli]

I have windows xp installed on a older dell p3 450, with 768 of ram.
In this machine the primary hd is a western digital (old 5400) and the
secondary is a maxtor 7200 30gig. Now every so often both drives
revert to PIO mode and I have to restore an older image (with drive
image 2002) to get back to ultra dma mode. I'm assuming (from what
I've read) that crc errors are causing the drive mode to switch.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Now from time to time the primary
(wd 5400) will wind as if I asked it to unrar a 10gig file, and will
not stop until I move the mouse. I'm concerned that this older hd
will eventually give out due to this weirdness. I have turned off
system restore and all screen savers and power saving options to see
if this would help. I thought it did, until today, when it just
happened without these items running.

What could be causing the drive to wind?

What could be causing the errors that change the drive transfer modes?

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

TIA
George

 

[Steve Nielsen]

The drive is old and failing. Back up your data.

Steve

 

[George Pertoli]

No it's not Steve, it's been doing this for about a year now. By all
odds it should be dead if it's been failing for that long.

 

[Ron Martell]

I have windows xp installed on a older dell p3 450, with 768 of ram.
In this machine the primary hd is a western digital (old 5400) and the
secondary is a maxtor 7200 30gig. Now every so often both drives
revert to PIO mode and I have to restore an older image (with drive
image 2002) to get back to ultra dma mode. I'm assuming (from what
I've read) that crc errors are causing the drive mode to switch.

This is almost certainly a BIOS and/or drive hardware issue. Mode is
set long before anything is actually read from the hard drive.

Do you have your BIOS set to "auto detect" for the hard drives?

Can you change it to user specified parameters with LBA mode
specified?

Go to www.maxtor.com and download their diagnostic test and run it to
check out the older drive.

One further point. Sometimes two hard drives of different vintages
can have problems when connected as master and slave on the same IDE
channel. This is relatively rare and it is more likely to occur when
the drives are also from different manufacturers.

However it may be worth trying to reconfigure your drives so that the
old drive is the master drive on the primary IDE channel and the newer
drive is the master drive on the secondary IDE channel. CDROM drives
etc will probably have to be rejumpered to "slave" setting in order to
accomplish this.

Also note that when a hard drive and a CDROM/DVD/CDRW are connected as
master and slave on the same IDE channel the hard drive jumper setting
is for "stand alone master drive" and not "master drive with slave
present". The "master drive with slave present" setting is only used
when the slave drive is also a hard drive.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[George Pertoli]

This is almost certainly a BIOS and/or drive hardware issue. Mode is
set long before anything is actually read from the hard drive.

Hi Ron,

Is the BIOS causing the transfer mode switch only? Is the drive
continuously winding (running) a totally different issue?

Do you have your BIOS set to "auto detect" for the hard drives?
Yes.


Can you change it to user specified parameters with LBA mode
specified?

Yes. I can manually enable LBA mode. What should I set them too?

Go to www.maxtor.com and download their diagnostic test and run it to
check out the older drive.

Run the maxtor diagnostic on the Western Digital drive ? Will do.

One further point. Sometimes two hard drives of different vintages
can have problems when connected as master and slave on the same IDE
channel. This is relatively rare and it is more likely to occur when
the drives are also from different manufacturers.

However it may be worth trying to reconfigure your drives so that the
old drive is the master drive on the primary IDE channel and the newer
drive is the master drive on the secondary IDE channel. CDROM drives
etc will probably have to be rejumpered to "slave" setting in order to
accomplish this.

Cabling this might be very difficult in the case. There isn't a whole
lot of room. My cdrw and dvd are on an older 40 pin. I haven't got
two 80's to work with.....until this weekend at least.

Also note that when a hard drive and a CDROM/DVD/CDRW are connected as
master and slave on the same IDE channel the hard drive jumper setting
is for "stand alone master drive" and not "master drive with slave
present". The "master drive with slave present" setting is only used
when the slave drive is also a hard drive.

I didn't know that. Thanks a million for the response.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Hi Ron,

Is the BIOS causing the transfer mode switch only? Is the drive
continuously winding (running) a totally different issue?



Yes. I can manually enable LBA mode. What should I set them too?

Just a couple of comments: While the BIOS may be what is unsetting DMA
operation for the drives, it sounds to me more like some other source of
errors is causing an error burst. In that case the standard XP drivers
revert to PIO and stick. But you do not need to restore an image - go
to Device manager and highlight the top level controller under IDE
ATA/ATAPI, above the Primary one, and Action - Uninstall. Close and
reboot, and PnP will start things over.

I think Ron's comment about separating the drives on different
controllers is the way to go

You should have BIOS settings (whether auto or manual) using LBA for XP
- provided you have that, the CHS values are not used

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Not necessarily, I've seen old drives behave that way for longer than a
year and then finally give up the ghost. Either way, I'd back up data,
and test the drive throughly.

Steve

 

[George Pertoli]

**** You Ricky. My virus scanner caught your little kiddy script.

 

[George Pertoli]

Not necessarily, I've seen old drives behave that way for longer than a
year and then finally give up the ghost. Either way, I'd back up data,
and test the drive throughly.

Steve

Steve,

I did that a year ago. Backup....Test....backup test...

I just did the backup and test thing b4 coming here to post this
question. I did not come here empty handed so to speak. This drive
goes through data transfer hell. If it was failing last year...It
would have never survived 3 more months lol.

George

 

[George Pertoli]

Just a couple of comments: While the BIOS may be what is unsetting DMA
operation for the drives, it sounds to me more like some other source of
errors is causing an error burst. In that case the standard XP drivers
revert to PIO and stick. But you do not need to restore an image - go
to Device manager and highlight the top level controller under IDE
ATA/ATAPI, above the Primary one, and Action - Uninstall. Close and
reboot, and PnP will start things over.

I think Ron's comment about separating the drives on different
controllers is the way to go

I think that the indexing feature is causing the drive to constantly
run. I caught it with the task manager up, doing it's do. I wonder
if the indexing is causing the errors?

George

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Well, by golly, I'm stumped. I think Ron and Alex may be onto something
though.

Steve

 

[Alex Nichol]

I think that the indexing feature is causing the drive to constantly
run. I caught it with the task manager up, doing it's do. I wonder
if the indexing is causing the errors?

It is certainly well worth disabling. It is only really of use in true
Office environments that need to access a large number of documents on
the basis of text contained. It will be giving the drives more to do -
but that ought not to be generating errors if the hardware is working
correctly