Fran

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.

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- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.

Maxer

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?

3dp

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

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can i have everything louder than everything else please

Fran

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.

__________________
- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.

Frosty

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.

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Steve Shaw, M.Arch
www.crucialperception.com

Fran

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)?

__________________
- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.

Elliot

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

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Elliot

jucaro

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

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MD8 Design Solutions
X3MFX Interactive Design Agency
DE MAX Design PTE LTD

crazy homeless guy

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)

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travis schmiesing

graphix

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