Alright folks I have had a host of problems over the past couple of days. Two days ago, my computer refused to boot. It would hand on the Windows starting screen after displaying the little graphical eye candy, and then it would just sit there. I am using Windows7. If I left it for 30 minutes or so it would finally reach the logon screen, but then it would hang again after putting the password. This could be prevented if I unplugged my second hard drives SATA cable. The drive with the OS would then boot fine, although things were still slower than they should (I suspected it was the virus on my PC that Symantec couldnt seem to get rid of, it would just constantly detect trojans in a .tmp file, each time quarantining a file and another .tmp with a new name would pop up instantly). Before this started happening one day the secondary drive just suddenly disappeared from Windows, and ever since I got the drive about three months ago it would take a little while for Windows Explorer to be able to display the contents on that drive. I got so sick of the whole thing that a wiped both of my drives clean and did a fresh install of Windows7 Pro. I have split across the two drives four partitions, one partition for windows, two for data, and one for backup. (This was all more of an experiment with partitioning and Windows Backup than a real attempt at creating a secure backup). Today, my backup drive which is on the second drive, lost its name "backup" and its file system changed from NTFS to raw. Also, everything on my PC taking much too long to load, once loaded is fine, but takes a good while to actually start the programs. I'm installing a program (Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate) to the data partition on my primary drive, but that has been stuck on one step for the past 2 HOURS. I am wondering if I am experiencing symptoms of imminent drive failure, but surely not on BOTH drives!? The first drive I have had since I built the PC in March, and this last drive I bought in September. They are both WD... Sorry for the wall of text, any help would be appreciated. I'm about ready to rip both drives out and apart, and start chucking their platters at people all over campus.
I'm becoming quite certain that perhaps both of the drives are dying. The hard drive activity LED is constantly on, and every three seconds (I counted) I hear a drive make a tick and the LED flashes off then back on. I guess I ought to RMA the most recently purchased one back to newegg, as for the other one I'm going to chuck its platters around if I can remove them.
i'm having the exact same issue as you mate, except i can sometimes solve it by swapping the sata ports about.... are you using win7 X64 by any chance?
Have you scanned looking for bad sectors? Download Argus monitor, it has loads of SMART info, might be able to tell you what, if anything has failed.
run seatools for dos on the drives if it passes your drives are fine if not time to get new ones and backup now
Well, went to go try the programs you guys suggested - and it never even got to the Windows splash screen. Totally failed to read the primary drive, it is dead. Going to put the second drive in a friends PC and run some tests on that to see if that too, is in its final stages. I thought I was safe with WD, but I guess it happens. To two WD drives each less than a year old and of different models though, is really kind of a let down.
