HDD Not Responding

[kbronski]

I read through this thread already, but I'm curious if there's something else afoot here.

See, I am running two drives in my laptop; a 250GB SSD for my primary system/software drive, and my laptop's original 5400RPM 750GB HDD is mounted in the optical bay. The HDD has been having issues lately where it'll hang (stop responding). This happened when I'm editing videos, listening to music, or really doing anything in general. I'm not sure why it's doing this, either; I don't know if there's a power issue, where the mobo header that had previously gone to the ODD simply can't power the HDD (I know some ODDs run on ~5v where hdds tend to run on ~12v). I don't know the exact specs for that on mine. Laptop is what you see for system specs in signature. I wonder if maybe the HDD is just old and needs to be replaced outright. Maybe I could throw a 500GB one in there from work and run that for a few days to see if there are any hangups with it.

Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? Witty comments?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hiyya K mate I am sure the power connectors for ODD's and HDD's should carry both voltages see here - scroll down to the pic of the pins arrangement (and see pic) All about the various PC power supply cables and connectors
What I would like you to do is read and run my ditty
Using HW Info
PART A:
You can test the volts on the PSU with HW Info HWiNFO, HWiNFO32/64 - Download < download theright bit version and close the right hand window select Sensors and scrolldown to the power section where you will see what the volts are doing see mypic. Now the section you want will be labelled - fpr example Asus boardsusually have "Nuvoton" and Gigabyte boards "ITE" in anycase the section you want will have Vbatt or VBAT in it (dead give away)
The original right hand window shows the machine running and is handy for thatbut for looking at the components in some detail close it and use the main lefthand side panel
FOR OTHER COMPONENTS
PART B:
Open each small square with + in it on the section the components are in andthen click on the individual component/s (it will highlight in blue) - in theright hand side will appear all sorts of details including brands speeds andother essential info that particular device. See pic for example.
Use PART A: my pic shos the section of the Asus brand boards other can be different like Gigabyte is usually ITE anyway the Vbatt is the give a way

If this comes up ok you might be as well to check the cables mate with a digital multimeter to make sure the 12v is coming through - they are real cheap to buy and worth it for picking electrical problems.

The it might be onto HDD testing

 

[essenbe]

Hello, kbronski. Have you been using it for a while? If you have and have had no problems until recently, I would suspect the hard drive. You could look at the SMART statistics with Crystal Disk info CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World or the best would be to run Seatools for DOS http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/313457-seatools-dos-windows-how-use.html#Part3. Run the short and the long test.

 

[kbronski]

Hey guys,

First of all, sorry for the misleading H/W info; it's a laptop, not a desktop. Secondly, I've been using it for over 4 years now. It's gone through a motherboard replacement, two fan replacements, and as of late hasn't been able to detect batteries. None of this bothered me until my drive started to go.

essenbe, thanks for your recommendation; I'm also thinking it's the drive, since it's old and has seen numerous installs, unspoken terabytes of data, and a lot of travel. I'll throw a different drive in today to test it out for a while and see if that makes much of a difference. I'll return with an update when I find out more.

 

[essenbe]

Great. Please let us know the results.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

kbronski see my pics one is my five year old Toshiba battery at full chargeand one is fully discharged (because I stupidly knocked out the power lead) but if the machine is on power and fully charged - if you scroll to thebottom of that HW readout I asked for and your readouts for the battery are anything like the discharged one in the pic then it is also adding toyour woes because the cells will not be giving you the power you need for muchat all - if you use it in that condition on battery

'Having said that essenbe is probably right about the drive.

PS Sorry about the pic quality - having p[problems here myself

 

[kbronski]

kbronski see my pics one is my five year old Toshiba battery at full chargeand one is fully discharged (because I stupidly knocked out the power lead) but if the machine is on power and fully charged - if you scroll to thebottom of that HW readout I asked for and your readouts for the battery are anything like the discharged one in the pic then it is also adding toyour woes because the cells will not be giving you the power you need for muchat all - if you use it in that condition on battery

'Having said that essenbe is probably right about the drive.

PS Sorry about the pic quality - having p[problems here myself

I appreciate the battery post, but my computer is beyond that; it won't even detect a battery (any battery) anymore; it is, for all purposes, permanently tethered to an AC adapter. I suppose that's what I get for going all "Eh, this'll work" on it so many times.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm time for an update mate sounds like the power charging circuit has eaten the biscuit a long time ago.