New 160GB Western Digital SATA problem

[slimbo737]

I am very green when it comes to PC assembly...this is my first build for a personal computer. When I first had everything assembled, it was working okay. The BIOS saw the drive and everything. Then, I went to load Windows XP Pro. During the formatting process my hard drive never left 0% done and began clicking. After this, I tried rebooting to start the process over again and now the drive is unseen. I don't have any other SATA drives laying around to be sure that my drive is the problem.
Can anyone give me some advice or suggestions on what to do?
Thanks.

slimbo

 

[pscowboy]

You need another hd.

One tip, that a lot of noobies do wrong - don't overtighten ANYTHING! Just snug things up.

Just to make sure your hd is toast, can you borrow a friends' hd temporarily? Hook it up loose, outside the box on a piece of paper, in place of yours. Restart and immediately go into the BIOS - do not let it boot up. If it is recognized, yours is done. Shut down and give your friend back his drive.

 

[slimbo737]

Thanks, I suppose I should clarify how I am new to it...I used to work on PCs a lot (as a job), but by now they would be very outdated. Some used HDs as small as 2GB and even had ISA slots for some cards. So, I guess I'm pretty confident that the physical assembly is correct. However things like PCI express and SATA are new to me.

I guess my issue now that you say that it's probably dead is what could have happened to it? I would hate to stick another drive in there and have the same thing happen. Also, someone suggested to me power supply issues.

slimbo

 

[pscowboy]

Tell us all the stuff you put in the box - including the ps.

 

[PCcashCow]

You need another hd.

One tip, that a lot of noobies do wrong - don't over tighten ANYTHING! Just snug things up.

Just to make sure your hd is toast, can you borrow a friends' hd temporarily? Hook it up loose, outside the box on a piece of paper, in place of yours. Restart and immediately go into the BIOS - do not let it boot up. If it is recognized, yours is done. Shut down and give your friend back his drive.

If you want to be sure your hard drive is now a rare earth refrigerator magnate, run some tools from the manufacturer like Seatools from seagate or maxtools. Fdisk would break any partition that the install process started to initialized and then you can then run a chkdsk from Ultimate boot CD.. Also see if you can see the drive via the bios, as you did not specify at which step the drive is unseen, verify cabling and so forth.

When a drive make a noise worse then a SCSI Ultra 2 spin up, usually it's a bad sign. Lucky, Sata drives are cheap ($ to GB) now. Good Luck.

 

[slimbo737]

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5
Video Card - XFX 7600GT
CPU - AMD Athalon 64 X2 3800+
Memory - 1GB Patroit PC6400 DDR2
The power supply came with the case (which I have since been told is not a good move). It is a 500W unit and the case is by Apevia.

slimbo

 

[PCcashCow]

Not usually a good idea because if it does go while under warranty, you need to send the entire case back. Plus the parts and material lack in most standards, but your not running anything that would merritt needing anything better at the moment. So once you verified all your drive, bios, cabling, and partition (if one exists) configs, your probably looking at getting a new drive.

 

[slimbo737]

Sorry, it is unseen during POST and once I enter the BIOS.

Where do I get these tools, the manufacturers website?

slimbo

 

[misry]

WD's is Data Lifeguard. D/L the proper file to make a bootable disk but I wouldn't hold my breath if the BIOS doesn't see it.