Hard Drive "Cable Creep"???

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Hi guys,

Yet another Hard Drive problem. Usually when I'm studying, I use the e-book (in this case Sybex) and I have a Word doc open so that I can make personal notes at the same time on what I'm studying, and print at a later date to review before I go and write the exam (I urge you all to do this when you study! )

Anyways that wasn't necessary, but here's the problem. A few minutes ago while I was studying like that, I copied a line from the ebook and pasted it in Word. When that happened, the screen, my mouse and everything freezed and the hdd light stayed on. A few seconds later, my system restarted and said Boot from CD/DVD........No Boot Device Present. Well I popped in my XP cd and it installed the necessary startup drivers and then I rebooted and the same message came up.

Well this is the third time this problem happened to me. The last time it happened when I was using Photoshop and when I unplugged the IDE cable and plugged it back in and rebooted, the system started up just like normal. So I decided to try it here again and it worked. So I'm guessing that this is the cable version of the infamous "Chip Creep".

My questions are:
1] Since this problem can be remedied by plugging in and out the cable, is this a SERIOUS problem to worry about? (I'm not really worried, but since this is the 3rd time it happened within 2 months, then I'm very concerned)

2] Since the HDD wasn't making any loud/clicking/scratching sounds, could this problem lead to disk failure later on? Is it a sign of disk failure?

Anyways, back to studying for now.

 

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I'd say there was a hardware error of *some* sort - but it may not be quite what you think.

Unless the cable is under tension I've not seen any 'creep' ever. Unlike the chip creep you mention which was caused by heat-cycling.

For example - if the controller has a 'lazy driver line' then unplugging the cable might reset it - this might mean a motherboard replacement.

Harry.

 

No cable tension so far. And its certainly not the motherboard, cuz its a new one. But do you mind explaining that "lazy driver line" that you mentioned?

 

Well the only way I unplug is when the system is powered off, cuz I mentioned rebooting after unplugging and plugging back in. If what you mean is if I power down the system and reboot (without any unplugging), then no that doesn't work either. The only way I get it to work is when I power off the system and unplug and re-plug and reboot.

 

I think what sparky ment is to replicate a cold boot, which is always a good idea, also I would throw in once unplugged a few presses of the power button to help drain the caps of charge which should help isolate whether its a hardware problem or not. New board or not you can still get duff ones. If you've got a faulty cap then it may well present itself to you as an odd power issue, normally in older boards the machines wont cold boot without a few attempts and you can see which caps have gone by the fact they are leeking (they are easy and cheap to replace too).

 

replace the cable and run the manufacturers diagnostic tool on the drive.

grim

 

I had a similar problem recently..

My problem turned out to be due to having the IDE ends in the wrong devices, including the motherboard end into a drive. I done this on purpose though, due to a massive gap between my HDD and DVD drive and the cable couldn't reach both. It had been working like this perfectly fine for months.

I had a look around online and found out it was a windows error and that Linux doesn't have this problem. Methods of fixing the problem were mainly changing IDE cables but for me it was just to move my HDD into a floppy drive bay closer to the DVD drive, which allowed me to use the IDE cable the way it was intended, master->HDD, Slave->DVD and System->Mobo.

 

Find out what kind of hard drive you have in your system (eg Maxtor, Segate, Western Digital ...) and go to the manufacturers website as you may be able to download a free diagnostic utility which will check out your drive at a low level and indicate if there any issues with it.

 

in addition to what the other guys have said i would boot to recovery console and do a chkdsk /r

all to often i come accross file table which are abit screwed because of unplanned unexpected reboots, usually ends up with "inacessible (sp) boot device".

 

New motherboards can be, or go, faulty as well!

What I was referring to there was a possibility that static, or some other fault, caused some part of the IDE driver electronics to not work quite correctly. When this happens unplugging cables sometimes helps the hardware get back to a good state. But because the fault hasn't been fixed it goes bad again after some time of use.

Harry.

 

Nah.....cable ends are connected to the right places. However, I was thinking bout changing the cable altogether. However, the problem hasn't happened again. Thank God!

 

This is a Maxtor. I'll check the site later. But I guess its probably the cable or the drive itself. I was supposed to try another drive instead, but since everything I need is on this current drive, I don't want to use another. However, everything's backed up!

 

That's a very scary thought there Harry . While what you're saying might be true, I sure hope it isn't in my case. I rather lose the hard drive than the motherboard. Drives are cheap and I have extra, but I went through enough hell already just to get the board I'm using now.

The only way I'll know if its the board for sure, is by using another drive. But I won't be able to do that for now since I'm doing alot of studying for Net+ and using this drive alot. Thanks alot guys for your help. If the problem happens again, I'll definitely use another drive and post updates here.

 

Just be sure to grab periodic images of your drive, or backups of your important data files.