OT hard drive

Hope someone can advise...

I'm about to sell my old PC to a friend but while I was firing it up to remove all my documents etc the hard drive made a sound like it does when you boot up and the drive initiates. It did this several times and the computer crashed.

I've experienced this before once or twice when I used to use the PC. Anybody know what's causing it?

Reply to
fishman
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Sounds like a dying drive, but could be dieing cables or even IDE channels on the motherboard (have a look for swelling or burst Capacitors somewhere near the IDE sockets).

Reply to
NeedforSwede2

Arse about the cables, i just threw a box of IDE cables out :S

Reply to
fishman

In 13 years of IT I have never seen an IDE cable fail. I've seen ones that didn't work out of the box and ones that were rooted while being taken out, but I've never seen one fail. I'd guess your drive is dying.

Fraser

Reply to
Fraser Johnston

Depends how badly routed/folded/wrapped they are. Had 3 under 10 years old, all fail within the last month because of the way they were folded. The insulation had cracked and they were effectively shorting and making all sorts of strange noises at the drive end, or lockups at the PC. Changed the cable and all good again.

Reply to
NeedforSwede2

The drive has left to pursue a new career as a paperweight.

Reply to
Bob Sherunckle

The hard drive is worn out.

This happens. Depends on the year it was made, but fairly recent drives (five years or so) tend to work but heat up and make "angel" noises and lock up.

You can still read files off them but the machine will crash after a bit.

Ten, fifteen, years old, the drive would get a bad piece of a platter and shrink in size a bit, then windows would keep testing the edge of the bad bit like a kid with a tooth cavity and make it worse and worse so that the files kept vanishing and being corrupted.

Sounds more like the recent type of failure mode. If you dislike the friend, cool it down and it'll work for long enough. If you like them, explain the situation and see about a replacement drive of some sort - they're not hugely expensive but second hand kit is almost worthless so there's no slack for buying new, etc.

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