Fran Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Hi. My secondary computer had been left on and idle for a number of days. There was a session of VIZ 2005 open with a scene open. That was the only program running, except that NAV 2003 checked the system once a day (Auto-protect was off). I tried to wake up the computer but it wouldn't. The monitor could not be turned off either. I unplugged the monitor power cord and plugged it back in, and the green light came on but there was no display. When I reset my computer, it did a disk check and rebooted. Windows XP could not start. It turns out that BOTH of my 120 GB Seagate harddrives are corrupted beyond repair. I was able to hook up the data drive to another computer and retrieve the data, but the drive is otherwise unuseable. Windows refuses to install on either drive. They can't be formatted either. Has anyone ever had this happen? Here are my specs: Asus PC-DL motherboard 2- 2.8 Ghz xeons 533 FSB 4- 512 MB PC 2700 DDr Asus video card with nVidia drivers 2- 120 GB dead Seagate harddrives NAV 2003 virus protection Hardware firewall System drive not shared Tripp Lite UPS The system is 2 months old. What could kill both harddrives? They were plugged into the same Primary IDE on the MB. When I went into CMOS, at first the status of Primary Master and Slave was [None], but it let me autodetect them. How could the drive status be changed like that? A surge of some kind? Could this be a motherboard issue or just cabling? This computer was mainly being used as a Backburner server for Max 6 and I would run Rhino or VIZ 2005 on it if my main computer was doing something else. Fortunately nothing was lost. I got Seagate drives this time because everyone was bashing Western Digital (which I'd always used before). Somehow I don't think it's Seagate's fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Fran, that sounds like a virus to me. That's about the only thing besides a massive power surge that could corrupt two drives at the same time. If you backed up the data I would run it through an anti virus program. I know you were running some virus program on that machine, which one was it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dp Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 yep sounds like a virus to me had a similar situation 4-5 years ago and ended with a fried box where the case was the only item saved nasty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 5, 2004 Author Share Posted October 5, 2004 Hi, Norton Antivirus 2003 with daily live updates and scans. What kind of virus would it be? Boot sector? Could the Tripp Lite UPS have malfunctioned and caused a surge? We haven't had any servere weather in the past couple of weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Although I too find it a litttle strange that you lose two HDs in the same machine at the same time, I'm not so sure that it's a virus. Doesnt hurt to scane the data with NEW definitions. Without the newest definitions, you might as well not bother. Anyway, I would more likely blame the HDs. I myself had two die last week in seperate rendering nodes. Granted mine were a bit older (30s from 1999), I still have almost no trust at all in the quality or security of hard disks. I have lost count of my failed drives over the last few years, but its over 10. In my experience HD failure is the most common problem on PCs. It amazes me that most people put so much trust in a single magnetic disk. HDs are cheap now and I dont only mean the price. I hope you had a plan of action ready for situations like this Fran. If you didnt, now is the time to come up with one. Personally, my render nodes are identical. I use Ghost with an image mounted on my server. The server is a 4 drive RAID 5 system with one redundant drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 5, 2004 Author Share Posted October 5, 2004 Well, I had a 6GB harddrive that used to be good. I cleaned it off and tried to install XP on it. At first everything was okay until it got to copying files. Then it gave "failure to copy file" errors. So I switched out cd drives and tried again. This time it said something about a bad image file and that perhaps the install cd was bad. So I tried another install cd (I have 3 xp licenses). This time setup told me the harddrive was corrupt and could not be repaired. What is going on here? Do I need to flash the BIOS (shudder) or change out the motherboard (shudder again, only more)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliot Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Fran I had a similar experience last month. That is what has triggered me to do a new computer. In my case I lost over 1,900 E Mails with all the attached drawings from the different architects with whom I work. In addition to the SSCI drives I have an internal backup drive..... I lost everything in the three drives. Then I have an external drive that I connect every once in a while to do redundant backups..... I didn't think too much about a virus and I connected the external drive (4th drive) to get the information.... The external drive went out too.....!!!! I tried and tried but I couldn't recover the *.dbx files, they where all gone.... I called Microsoft, they charged their 250.00 and told me there is nothin they could do. They also told me this is something they have been seeing lately, but do not have an anwser. This incident caused me too loose a large contract. The experience made me extremely scared. I have reformated all my drives and built a new machine. Discreet as well as Tyan advise me not to use SP2 due to incompatibilities. I can't afford this from happening again. This weekend I loaded SP2 on the new machine. I feel the new machines is operating more stable and more secure. Hope you find a solution. How is the new baby doing...? Is he keeping you up all night....? Wait till he starts using the computer....!!!! Good Luck Elliot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jucaro Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Fran, Have you tried doing a low-level checkup and format of the drives? Depending on the model, you can download the program from Seagate's website. Not to badmouth Seagate, but majority of dead hardisks I've had are all from seagate. hehe..its because majority of my drives are from seagate. Funny though that I still have all my Maxtor drives. Also, depending on how many disk extensive operations that you use (NAV being 1) it greatly reduces your HD's MTBF (meantime before failure) Here, I do my full virus scans 2x a month and defragmentation 1x a month Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 i lost 3 drives in one computer over about a 5 day spanse last year. more than likely it is not related to your problem. the cause of my problem.... the magnet in my supposedly shielded pc speakers that were sitting to close to my case. (slap hand to forehead now) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
graphix Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Fran, An important question is where the drives set up in a RAID configuration? If the drives where setup in RAID stripe array for performance that would make an odd powersurge or a "computer brain fart" enough to corrupt the entire array. This would also explain the reason you can not reload windows. 99.9% of the time in order to install windows on a RAID setup you have to specify a driver during the windows setup. on the OFF chance that a virus did get to the drives a low level format should take care of the problem, if you don't know how to do that then just take the drives to a local computer shop and they can do it for you. graphix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Not to badmouth Seagate, but majority of dead hardisks I've had are all from seagate...Funny though that I still have all my Maxtor drives. Same here. Fran, As you know there are many things that can cause these problems and its often not the most obvious thing (like those magnets!) that is the real culprit. Having said that, I would first suspect the motherboard because BOTH drives died at the same time. A virus could be it, but don't most damage-causing ones target the boot sector? One drive doesn't use it. But drives are cheap, your time monkeying with them may exceed the cost of replacements. Of course there's the time to re-install everything! Yikes, a mess no matter what you do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hockley91 Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Holy Moley! Let this be a reminder to all of us eh? It can strike at any time. Fran, I had a similar problem a few weeks ago. I left the computer on all night and then I came to work the next morning and my monitor would not turn on when I moved the mouse, although the computer was on. After I reset, a few of my directories were missing. Very strange. I had no viruses on my machine. Seems strange (as everyone else has said) that both drives burned out. My thought is that it isn't a virus (you said you have virus protection). I think there was a sudden power surge or overheating that caused the problem. Depending on the manufacturers warranty, hopefully you can get some replacements. Of course, that takes forever and won't provide any immediate solutions. I wouldn't trust the drives at all at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 5, 2004 Author Share Posted October 5, 2004 Fran, An important question is where the drives set up in a RAID configuration? graphix No Raid. The Asus guy suggested that I do a memory check and to try a surface scan and low-level format on those drives. He also emailed me a list of other things to check. No time to do it today though. As I said, this was an auxiliary computer and all the data was backed up in several other places. I'm just wondering why the system is eating my harddrives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vizwhiz Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 hi There Fran i hope you get Thru This and Things work out for the better (wishful Thinking but trying to be somewhat optomistically) someone once said (not me) "There are 10 kinds of People, Those who have had harddrive failure and Those who WILL have harddrive failure." (binary That is) backup backup backup. i should have Taken This advice because i had a scsi drive crack 2 years ago i know what you are going Thru Randy a Fan of Fran ---- "Life is like a Computer. To get Things up and running Take a Boot and give It a hard drive to your Floppy." I said That Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwhite Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Sorry to hear about the hard drive issue, however there are probably hundreds of CG users now working on getting a back up system in place. Under the same "weird possibilities" catagory as the speaker magnets, we had a mother board fry after we plugged an APC back-up power supply into a power strip with surge protection. It does not seem possible that the surge protection could have caused the APC UPS to surge/oscillate, but it did not like that power strip and after about 10 rapid cycles the mother board was fried. Since then we have never plugged an APC into a power strip since and have not had any issues. We have had power strips almost catch fire though - got lucky on that one! Hmmm... what is that weird smell. Wow the power strip is turning black and melting! Make sure your smoke detector is working. Best of luck, Mike White Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Yea, I offer my condolences as well. I have been operating my business this whole year without a backup system. I have never had anything bad happen before so I never saw the importance. BTW I have had a Western Digital for the past 2 years and it has been awesome - works fast & silent. But now that I am ordering my new system, I also ordered a 250gb drive that will be my backup using Norton Ghost. I can't be as lucky forever, so I have to be prepared. The new Fox special "When Hard Drives GO BAD"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 The new Fox special "When Hard Drives GO BAD"... And they always do. Fran, you said you put the drives into another box to retrieve some data? I'm not clear if you were trying to work with them connected to the original motherboard. Have you tried putting the boot drive into another machine in place of its boot drive and seeing if that machine will boot from it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poco Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 I had the same problem about a year ago (2 dead HD's). I did most whats been suggested in this thread but to no avail. After searching for ages I found the solution (for me), it was the (cheap) powersupply that killed the HD's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted October 5, 2004 Administrators Share Posted October 5, 2004 Not sure if this could be the same problem, but I had one of my drives go bad a while back. Somehow the MFT was corrupted and I could not see any of the files on the drive. The drive simply refused to be seen by the OS. I took it to m brother-in-law who ran a MFT repair utility on a Linux box and everything worked fine again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 6, 2004 Author Share Posted October 6, 2004 It appears to have been a bad memory stick. I removed them from banks 2 & 4 and xp is installing now with no problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 It appears to have been a bad memory stick. I removed them from banks 2 & 4 and xp is installing now with no problem. Woah how weird. I've heard the PC-DL is picky about what memory you put in. Of course, I read that AFTER I had ordered my board & memory, so we'll see how it works out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltaire_ira Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Fran, Based on what i'm reading in this thread, I too had the same problem. I lost all my data when I left my system idle overnight.next morning, Windows won't load. I was disconnected from the net, that would rule out virus attack.I use 2 80 gig Seagate SATAs in raid 0 configuration. What made it worse, I replaced the hdds with new ones and still it happened. Finally, after so much thought, I had my system set to hibernate and windows would shut down the hdd after a designated time.waking -up the system is the problem, it will not wake up.when you reboot, windows will not load. I asked the shop, PC-DLs aand SATA's are usually servers and basically servers are not designed to hibernate or be in stand-by. common sense maybe...but i think it was the problem. now, I dont let windows go on stand-by mode or hibernate, even shut down the hdds. I no longer experience data corruption anymore. I've read also somewhere in the PCDL manual that SATA's don't support S1 or S3 standby modes. Maybe that was the cause of your HDD crashing, IDE or SATA's. I still have my 160 gig (2 80 SATAs in raid 0) but i use it as data storage. I'm now on a dual boot system.I have windows installed on a much stronger and tougher 40gig 5400rpm seagate IDE running windows xp sp1 and another hdd windows on a 80 gig seagate IDE running windows xp sp2. My system is much more stable now compared to having windows on SATA's would be susceptible to crashing. good thing about a dual boot system is when one of the o.s. would crash, i could still retrieve my files by booting on the other. here's my system ASUS PC-DL deluxe Bios revision 1005 40 gig Seagate IDE 5400rpm w/ windows xp sp1 80 gig seagate IDE 7200 rpm w/ windows xp sp2 160 gig (2x 80 SATA's) raid 0 2x 512 twinmos ddr ram 128mb nvidia 5600 fx btw, everything is running smoothly in windows sp2, though i have observed a slight slow down in my renderings. but, i think its a good trade-off.I no longer encounter problems..as of now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltaire_ira Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 btw, I have a UPS.so that would rule out power serges since its still fully functional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 6, 2004 Author Share Posted October 6, 2004 Woah how weird. I've heard the PC-DL is picky about what memory you put in. Of course, I read that AFTER I had ordered my board & memory, so we'll see how it works out. Yes, I need to call Corsair with the lot number of the sticks I removed and see if there is a caution from them about it. The Asus guy recommended I do that. On another note, I have had VIZ 2005 give me an out of memory error on occasion when all it was doing was sitting idle. I wonder if it leaks. John, as far as sleep mode goes - is that a function of XP or CMOS? I'm not using a RAID configuration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hockley91 Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hmmmm RAM memory is a pain also, because you never think that could be the problem. We had bought a 512 memory stick once and everything worked fine for a few months. Then strange things started happening. Programs wouldn't run and sometimes the computer would hang in windows for no apparent reason. We all thought it was the hard drive or that windows was corrupt. We reformatted and then tried to install windows, to no avail, it wouldn't finish the installation. After days and days of frustration, I finally took out the memory sticks and put in a new one. Everything worked great after that! No problems! Even to this day that same computer works just fine. We returned the defective memory to Altex here in San Antonio and they gave us a replacement part. It's amazing all the different systems that can fail. I guess if the manufacturers made parts that didn't fail, then they'd be out of business huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now