Hard Drive or not?

[swatme]

I have just "repaired" a PC which would not boot up. Knowing a little of the history of the PC I assumed that the Hard Drive was full, so i got C: and deleted the tempfiles and other usless files, and the PC booted no problem. However, I when defragmenting the HD I discovered that the HD would stop and then restart. On one boot I got a "HD failure" message before booting and another time it just whizzed, clicked, whizzed, clicked ad infinitum! Now the thing won't boot at all and I discovered that there is only 3.5Gb used on the 9Gb HD.

I recommended to my friend that he buys a new HD, but that is the 3rd HD it has had in a matter of weeks! So it must be caused by something else, any ideas?? It is an older PC with a number of upgrades, but after the original HD became corrupted the replacements have exhibited this behaviour. The PC is running an AMD K6-2 at 350Mhz and 64Mb Ram, I'm sorry but i don't have any mother board and HD specs to hand - any ideas??

Thanks for your help

------------------
Hey Howdy Hey!

[sleddog]

Go to the harddrive manufacturer's website, support section, and download there harddrive utility. This will perform a comprehensive testing of the drive. You may also perform a zero-byte fill with the utility that might help. Note any/all error messages and email the manufacturer's tech support. If it's under warranty it can be replaced.

------------------
sleddog
[sleddog.f2s.com] (http://www.sleddog.f2s.com)

[Paleo Pete]

Virus? I think before you let this person put another floppy in the machine, make sure the new drive is set up and installed using all clean floppies, and check every disk he has with a good virus scanner or two. Or 3.

Hard drives can go flaky that fast on occasion, but usually only one out of 1000 or so, not 3 in a row.

Could also be something on the motherboard, bad controller maybe, or even the power going to it.




------------------
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[swatme]

Thanks 4 the tips, problem is, i don't think i said it clearly enough, it won't even get past the BIOS setup, won't even display Graphics card details, or go to BIOS, it just Click...whirrr...click whirrr, etc i hv feeling it motherboard or BIOS problem, any more pointers, to avoid buying new mother board? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/mad.gif

------------------
Hey Howdy Hey!

[Randy_tx]

Swatme........Sorry it took so long to get back to you.....This is a bit of a long shot, but given that 3 hard drives have failed on this system lately.....you might want put a different Power Supply on that system. A defective power supply is the only thing that could "spike" a hard drive the way you describe this ....that might be what is happening.... I guess it could result from a bad motherboard as well, but I've never had that happen to me before.

------------------
"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT