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Ignacio Soler GarciaFlag for Spain

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Succesive HD fails

Hello, I have an ASUS A7N8X-E for less than 6 months and in this time 3 different SATA HD have died.

Two HD was Maxtor 160GB SATA and the other was a Seagate 160GB SATA. I think that maybe is breaking the HD because this rate seems to high. Another extrange thing is that the 3 drives died on the same way doing extrange sounds, not the tipical sound of the headers, clak tuit, clak tuit. Instead they do a noise like wriiiit, wriiiit, wriiit. After a few noises you restart the system and the HD is never detected again.

Any hint on what can be happen, maybe the MB is wrong and can break teh HD's? Maybe the power supply? I donno how to face this.

Thanks in advance.
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Watzman

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kcarrim

I was thinking the same. First try another good quality power supply.
I must say that "wriiiit, wriiiit, wriiit" (how does one say that, BTW :) ) also sounds like a powersupply that is not giving the continuous power it should give (i.e. 215V (low but not horrible) 247V (Too high, bad news)). Though that can come from the wallplug as well. Do you have powerfluctuations in the area where you live?

Have you checked any of the drives on another system? Maybe it is the MainBoard. I've had some sort of alike issue with a PC over here as well.
what SATA controller do you have?
My suspicions are one or both of two things that can easily cause hard drive failures:

a) As mentioned above, power.   Your power supply may need to be replaced.   It's possible that it is a bit on the weak side, which could cause issues with the drives.   (But, this would also likely cause issues with the whole PC, not just the drives).

b) The other suspicion I have is case temperature.   I don't know your whole configuration, but it's very likely you may not have enough ambient tempoerature cooling.  That is, you need to add at least one extra fan to pull more air through the case.   This is a good and INEXPENSIVE solution that's a good idea anyway.    Hard drives vary quite a bit in temp, and some drives tend to run much hotter than others.      

 
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The Asus motherboard has a Promise raid controller integrated into it. I don't know now what's the model. Tomorrow I will post it.

Thanks to everybody. I will up 75 points!

SoMoS
I have it, is a Silicon Image Sil 3112A, not a Promise, sorry.
By the way, the computer is completely stable and the case has three fans, two on the case and one in fron of the HD.

This is getting me mad ... :(
I have had a similar problem with a SATA drive dieing but it was the SATA controller that did it.  Basically the controller driver form the manufacturer was bad and so what happend was the controller had bad timing when shutting the disk down, anyways i had to get the driver for the controller from the website and not the motherboard vendor, but since you do not have the same controller this may not be your problem.  ( i know it may seem strange that the drive was ruined by the controller but basically the drive failed the disk tests after enough of these faulty shutdowns, and I did see this on more than one controller of this type that had the same inital driver installed, since installing the newest driver i have had no problems)
I've had similar issues with SATA drivers and conflicts with the motherboard. I'd like to believe it's a hardware issue and it sounds like it could be a bad power supply simply not providing stable power to the drive but you should make sure you have the latest motherboard bios and drivers for the controller card as well as the drive itself.
You could also have failing NVRAM onboard of your MOBO. That would not really explain the sounds the HDD is making after time. But if such a thing is true, then you would be able to find this out when changing the drive to another PC.
When a HD fails is dead for ever. I have to take it back to the shop and they test them before sending it as a RMA. Also, as an explanation of the sound is not like the motor stopping and starting, is more like a weeeeet, weeeeet, weeeeet. I never heard this sounds before.

Also, I've read something about the fluid bearing being wroken easily and making the HD wrong. All three HD had a fluid bearing system, someone knows somethign about this matter?
I think, i don't really know but i think, that it was just bad luck. Anyway, I've changed the HD at the shop and selled the new ones at ebay.

It's time to come back to old good IDE.