Did my hard drive just fail?
 

Well I was just browsing on some TFP when I heard sounds coming from my computer (yes my brand new fucking computer). Sounded like a chain saw blade, maybe even a chainsaw blade going through a piece of lumber.

A little icon popped up on my desktop that said "unknown hardware failure" and my computer froze. I reset it manually and it wont boot up, in the normal boot up window it says holds up on my detecting IDE Channel 0 Master and slave... it says that I have none. Are these where my operating system is installed? If so that would be my one hard drive with all my stuff installed on it.

Now I have another drive in this computer, but it is simply for storage. Is there any way to see if this drive still works?

If you are wondering how I am on a computer, I just jumped onto my work laptop to do some googling here.

Usually the boot device is Ch0-Master (for most prebuilt computers). So yes, if it is failing to detect them, that's likely the issue. Also, the sound makes me think head crash, which is when the read/write head of the hard drive "crashes" into the platters that contain data and grind away the magnetic surface of the plates. This is a fairly common cause of hard drive failure (common as far as causes go... HDD failure isn't TOO common overall).

Warranty call!?

I actually built the comp myself Xeph. And its a good thing I got an Instant Product Replacement on all my parts. I have never had to use one before but I figured I should get one just in case... So I am going to pull out the HD and bring it in for a straight swap tomorrow. More of a pain in the ass cause it was the drive I installed everything onto.

Huh, interesting. I've been wondering about my HD myself (also a brand new comp, though I ordered it from Dell and have a warranty)--it hasn't been making any chainsaw noises, but it has been crashing and doing this Blue Screen thing damn near every time I use it (and also when it comes out of hibernation). Driving me up the wall.

Ktspktsp says mine is likely a software problem, but I have no idea. Maybe it's @#$% Vista conflicting with something else?

You could go to the BIOS and try & manually detect the hard drive although from what you say I'd say its wasted. A hard drive should never sound like a chainsaw blade going through a piece of lumber.

I have 2 hard drives, soon to be 3, with redundant backups & rescue discs for each. If one fails I always have the other. Just for future reference, I know that helps little now.

that's your problem right there... :P

Yea it was my hard drive. It was not constantly making the chainsaw noise, it happed for about 5 seconds then BAM, broken.

I just went and got a new HD for it. Sucks though cause I have so much stuff to install, bah! what a waste of time.

Now what I am thinking of doing is buying a third HD and making that one a complete copy of my primary drive. Is there any good software to ghost the drive or anything? I want to have a complete, exact copy of it at all times so that if this happens again it will be like nothing happened, I can just fire up my 3rd HD and its all good. Is this possible?

My other HD is a storage drive, and it is all backed up on externals all the time so I am not worried about it.

I used Norton Ghost for a direct backup (worked perfectly, but took FOREVER, i.e 24 hours or so), through the USB port on my laptop. I used the software provided by Iomega for simultaneous backup, as it allowed me to choose exactly what was backed up.

So that Iomega will make a complete copy than I can run off of if my other drive dies?

Acronis works well, will save an exact copy of your HD, free trial version.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...FRZjnAodNloSfg