Raptor issue - Is this heat related or not?

[zerazax]

Okay so it was another sweltering day in Los Angeles and this issue popped up again after it was gone for a while so maybe someone can confirm this is a heat-related issue as I suspect it is:

I'm running Vista x64 on my WD Raptor X and I have it in a P182SE. While the P182SE is a great computer for a silent temperature, its not the greatest for cooling. Because I don't have AC where I live right now, room temepratures can reach up to 80 degrees F or more on hot days, so the ambient is bad.

Basically what happens generally is that i may be using the computer or away from it, but usually you hear a click first before you realize that windows basically locks up and stops functioning. Then suddenly the computer will restart but when you go through the BIOS POST screen, it will fail to detect the Raptor's SATA connection. You then need to shut down the computer and/or sometimes go back into BIOS to put the Raptor to be the first HDD booted up. I found out this wasn't any other hard drive because my Seagate storage drive would always show up just fine...

Is this a heat-related issue in all likelihood? I did notice that this problem seemed to occur more when it was on a hot day or when my fans were too low and the inside got hot (that damn 8800Ultra isn't helping either). Or could there be another culprit?

I should really consider moving everything into a Stacker..

[icecpu]

use software to read the HD temp, like everest

my Raptor X is about 36C when it's a hot summer day in California, I don't think it's the heat issue anyway

Raptor are well known for failure, I had RMA 2 Raptors in the past 2 years.

[tiro_uspsss]

Raptor are well known for failure, I had RMA 2 Raptors in the past 2 years.

:bs:
:down:

[Serra]

It may or may not be. I would think it unlikely unless your hard drive is truly unusually hot though, if heat were really the issue you'd probably see noticeable data corruption. If it were an issue with heat on the platters you'd just have a head crash and would have lost it, if it's an issue with heat on the electronics I'd expect you to see streaming data corruption to the drive before it failed, which after happening a few times you'd likely end up seeing somewhere.

Your issues could still be related to heat, though perhaps elsewhere. Check on all your temps and get back to us. It's also possible you just have some corruption in Windows itself - have you been able to repeat this issue on other installations of Windows or other operating systems?




Raptor are well known for failure, I had RMA 2 Raptors in the past 2 years.

:down:

[One_Hertz]

your heads are unstable... or there is a problem in the SA... or the there is a problem in the pre-amp. In either case if you hear it clicking sometimes it is not heat related - your drive is dieing. Get all data off it asap...

[Serra]

your heads are unstable... or there is a problem in the SA... or the there is a problem in the pre-amp. In either case if you hear it clicking sometimes it is not heat related - your drive is dieing. Get all data off it asap...

I used to think this as well, but I've had non-HDD related issues which left my drive clicking after a crash before (the hard drive in question was stressed and scanned a large number of times to ensure it was not the source). It's probably the more likely scenario, but there are apparently some corruption issues that can have the same result. Just FYI.

[One_Hertz]

I used to think this as well, but I've had non-HDD related issues which left my drive clicking after a crash before (the hard drive in question was stressed and scanned a large number of times to ensure it was not the source). It's probably the more likely scenario, but there are apparently some corruption issues that can have the same result. Just FYI.

non-HDD related issues? That's impossible by definition. When it clicks that means it can not find its firmware for whatever reason (usually heads failing). No possible corruption within the user data can cause clicking. It's like saying nuking China will evaporate us here in Canada. You can not even touch the firmware by using standard ata commands so I fail to see how non-HDD related issues can cause a drive to click. I've seen drives click when the power given to them had major issues, thats about all I can think of, but then again that would be an HDD related issue. You may have seen temporary HDD issues, but the possibility of that is extremely low so I do not mention it.

Can you exaplain what you thought was your non-HDD related issue?

[Serra]

non-HDD related issues? That's impossible by definition. When it clicks that means it can not find its firmware for whatever reason (usually heads failing). No possible corruption within the user data can cause clicking. It's like saying nuking China will evaporate us here in Canada. You can not even touch the firmware by using standard ata commands so I fail to see how non-HDD related issues can cause a drive to click. I've seen drives click when the power given to them had major issues, thats about all I can think of, but then again that would be an HDD related issue. You may have seen temporary HDD issues, but the possibility of that is extremely low so I do not mention it.

Can you exaplain what you thought was your non-HDD related issue?

It seemed to be some form of corruption-related issue. The basic symptoms that were present included Windows simply freezing at some point of action (I believe it was while playing a specific game actually), and would simply begin clicking for a minute then stop.

Obviously my first thought was that I had some kind of hard drive issue. So I downloaded HD Tune and took a look at SMART info, then did a full disc scan. Once that didn't turn up anything, I did it again. Then I tried downloading some other tools to see if maybe HD Tune (my go-to for stuff like this) wasn't as reliable as I thought, but I wasn't able to find any issues. And yes, I tried it with a loaded system and an unloaded system. So then I decided I had to do more testing and started pulling data off the drive to a backup, but found some corrupted files that refused to move. Still, to me that could have meant a bad sector so I formatted the drive and took an MD5 hash of a large file, and used a script to constantly write that file to the drive then read it and compare hashes... came back clean after two goes.

So could it have been transiently hard-drive related? I guess there's a chance, but I'm not convinced. Heat generation from the rest of the computer really shouldn't be an issue as at the time I was using water cooling on both CPU and GPU, with an aftermarket NB cooler as well, and the constant copy and reading should have had the hard drive as warm as it was going to get.

I won't tell people not to back up their data when they hear clicking, but I'm just saying I'd give it a thorough check before just tossing it too.

[One_Hertz]

It seemed to be some form of corruption-related issue. The basic symptoms that were present included Windows simply freezing at some point of action (I believe it was while playing a specific game actually), and would simply begin clicking for a minute then stop.

Obviously my first thought was that I had some kind of hard drive issue. So I downloaded HD Tune and took a look at SMART info, then did a full disc scan. Once that didn't turn up anything, I did it again. Then I tried downloading some other tools to see if maybe HD Tune (my go-to for stuff like this) wasn't as reliable as I thought, but I wasn't able to find any issues. And yes, I tried it with a loaded system and an unloaded system. So then I decided I had to do more testing and started pulling data off the drive to a backup, but found some corrupted files that refused to move. Still, to me that could have meant a bad sector so I formatted the drive and took an MD5 hash of a large file, and used a script to constantly write that file to the drive then read it and compare hashes... came back clean after two goes.

So could it have been transiently hard-drive related? I guess there's a chance, but I'm not convinced. Heat generation from the rest of the computer really shouldn't be an issue as at the time I was using water cooling on both CPU and GPU, with an aftermarket NB cooler as well, and the constant copy and reading should have had the hard drive as warm as it was going to get.

I won't tell people not to back up their data when they hear clicking, but I'm just saying I'd give it a thorough check before just tossing it too.

Well problems could theoretically come and go... It just sounds to me like you had a relatively unstable drive. The bad sectors got there somehow in the first place, which usually indicates that the drive is getting degraded and is not reading back the same data it put on the sectors. It doesn't make much sense for the heat to cause it. Yeah, I say you just had a slightly unstable drive.

[Frisch]

Try this :
Go to Start
Click Run
Type chkdsk /f
A dos prompt will appear, asking if you want to run it on next boot...press Y
Restart