ok so for a long time about 5 months, ive been having issues with my hard drive randomly shutting down. i switched IDE cables and we made sure that the red stripe was on the outside, along with the hard drive jumpers being in the right position (Cd and DVDrw drives are set on secondary channels, both hard drives set on primary channel, all with right jumpers) it actually worked for a whole week without shutting down. THEN i starting getting the drive has a bad block error after the hdd kept shutting down, this is with the new drive) these things also happened to my old which is the system drive, and isn't shutting down for some reason. can the power source be failing? its an Okia psu, which from what ive read are pretty bad. also my old cd drive which is slave on secondary ide part for some reason locks up like the green light stays on and then my system SOMETIMES shuts down, only the hard drive, the fans stay on and everything. blah you guys dont even know how many pages of help ive tried getting. and this is my final resort, i know its not the hard drives because both, the new and old one had the same symptoms. ive already tried everything else, ram check, took everything out except for the essentials (hdd, mobo, fans, gpu) and it still happened, this was before we switched the ide cables with new ones and the jumpers.
Have you looked at your power supply? You might be using a faulty plug that doesn't make good contact.
no its making good contact, what i noticed is when i switch the molex power cables around inside, the problem stops. later on, like a few days it comes back.
Its an Okia power supply, i read around and i found it on a list of NON trustworthy PSU's. im hoping its just that because its really cheap to replace.
The only things that it could be are the power supply or motherboard. If you have an old power supply(at least 350 watts) lying around somewhere, you might want to try that.A generic power supply will cost about $20.00, a motherboard will be a bigger replacement, but in the long run it's cheaper than having to replace hard drives.
I've not heard of Okia, and if I haven't heard of a PSU manufacturer, they can't be that well known. I'd suggest, rather than digging out an old unit, to buy a proper Power Supply like an Enermax and see if that works. If your old units are underpowered as well, they could do some severe damage to your pc when they break.
hm, welll i do know that its a 420 watt supply, and one thing thats been bugging me for a while, CAN the Mobo make the Hdd's shut off randomly? that thing that i said about having to switch around molex connectors, thats what leads me to think that its just the PSU, when i went to go get my comp to be fixed for this issue, i didnt pay anything, the guy (my uncles friend) just told me what to do step by step, i changed the Jumpers on ALL the drives, and even put in new ide cables and made sure the red strip was facing out. and when i went i even switched in an old psu he had lyring around, i turned on fine. Also, about the CD (non dvd drive) when it locks up with the green light, and it doesnt respond to the eject button or anything, THEN someof these times is when it causes my OLD or NEW drive to shut down. and sometimes on bootup the cd drive wont get detected, and its just that drive, but with a reboot it starts working fine. im running and Abit KG7 btw, non raid. its an old mobo but ohwell. oh and formatting the drives wont work as i already tried that a while ago. so you are right, its either the Mobo or the PSu, which right now im 50/50 on both:/ good thing is the guy that built my comp says he has a Socket A mobo lying around if it is that. bad news is ill have to call up Ms since my copy of xp is OEM. Thanks guys for your help
Do they come back on again if you need them? Windows is often told to shut down the hard disks after periods of inactivity to save power. Check your Power management settings in the control panel.
no it cant be that since it did it a few times on bootup (bios screen) usually when one hdd shutsdown (oddly enough, they dont shutdown at the same time) it usually starts up again and does the same thing, starts up, shutsdown etc. so USUALLY switching the molex connectors around helps. and so far its alll good since the last time.
Yeah, that sounds like you have a dodgy set of molex connectors. I suggest replacing the power supply.
