iamenrique

Hello, I've got a few questions about the usability of my hard drive in my home built PC.

I started having problems with my PC freezing a few days ago. It started to freeze EVERY TIME I used it, eventually. I did a windows system restore, which did not help the problem. I noticed that the amount of normal Program failures also dramatically increased the past month or so.(Looking at the Reliability Monitor for Vista.)

Soon after, the computer began having problems starting up- taking extremely long time and telling me eventually that Windows encountered a problem and closed to prevent damage. I did a startup repair from the windows Vista boot disk- CHKDSK repaired stuff but it didn't solve the problems. After I still got messages saying

"Disk boot failure. Insert System Disc and Press Enter.

I used the Vista Boot Disc to format the Hard Drive and reinstall my OS- and I still get system crash's and the Disk boot failure message.

The disc boot failure message also appears when I unplug my hard drive from the system- so I'm assuming that the cause is some sort of problem with my HD, with the HD possible clunking out.

So I was wondering if that sounds right to you guys- and also should I just scrap this HD and get a new one(or two?) Thanks.

Doby

The hdd "clunking out" sure is a possibility, go to the hdd manufactures website and download their utilities to check the drive.

With there utilities you can make a bootable floppy or cd so there is no need for a operating system to run the utilities

iamenrique

Western Digital Diagnostics indicated o problems with the drive( both smart test and comprehensive tests were successful).

Maybe the power supply is provided a faulty connection to the hdd, causing it to drop out sometimes?

Doby

I doubt its the hdd, the next thing is to remove the floppy and optical drives one at a time to see if that makes the error go away.

You could also try another data cable to the hdd, its a longshot but worth the effort