Is it normal for a 5 year old HD to fail???

[acoustic5679]

I built my system in 2001 and have had the same system drive all this time. In the last few months my HD has not been booting when I start the CPU. It will say "system boot disk error, please insert system disk" in DOS. I thought it was maybe my mobo, but when I go into my bios it does regonize my newer 320 gb hd that I keep all my media on. Bios does not regonize my older system drive. For the last few months it would work if I leave the whole computer off for a couple days and then turn it on, but its been 5 days now and the computer will not regonize the old HD or boot from it. I just bought a new 120gb drive from newegg to see if n fact it was the drive. I will get it this friday. Is this something that is usuall for an old HD??? It can't be my mobo if it regonizes my other HD right? I have tried exchanging ide cables and I get the same results....newer HD gets reconized, old one doesn't... Please help

 

[tgstyle]

Hard Drive = Mechanical moving parts = Inevitable failure... 5 years is a good run for a hard drive. It is most likely the drive

 

[piratepast40]

To answer the question in your subject line - well it isn't exactly "normal" but, for a drive to fail after 5 years of use is common. Sure sounds like it's on the way out. Since you've allready got at least one newer drive available, just remove the old drive and reload the OS on the new drive. Then put your backed up files on that drive.

Of course if you didn't backup your data when you first started having problems, then you get to slap your forehead, put on a dunce cap, and go sit in the corner for awhile .

 

[AdamBomb42]

The HDD had a long and good life. It's time to bury it and move on.

 

[SSS_DDK]

It depends on it's use..it's mechanical so the more it runs the sooner it'll fail.

 

[DavidB]

My oldest drive is 7 years old, I don't think it will make it another year. I've had 2 drives fail within 2 months and 1 fail after a year. All my drives run 24x7 except for the occasional reboot. So from what I've seen 5 years is a decent lifetime for a drive. You might want to download a utility like speedfan that will give you the SMART info from your drives. It is usefull in predicting failures.

 

[acoustic5679]

The old drive acts as my back up device. At least to a point. My pictures, videos, important media I back up on dvd once in a while to make sure, but the reason I bought that other drive was to store media on. I have no OS, programs, etc on that spare drive. Hopefully this new drive I get will work and all I will have to do is reinstall everything (pain in the ass!!) to the new drive. If all goes well and the new drive works, how do I get XP to regonize and utilize the drive I have all my storage on without formatting it and losing everything? I guess I forgot..its been a while.. I know you go to device manager and change something, but thats about it... Thanks for all your input guys!!!

 

[piratepast40]

You shoulnd't need to format to your current spare drive. Since you said your rig was 5 years old, I'm assuming you have IDE drives with PATA interface and not SATA.

If you plan on writing more to the spare drive than to your DVD/CD drive, then I believe it's best to make your new drive (which will become "C") the master on IDE channel 1 with the DVD/CD drive as the slave on that channel. Then make your spare the master on channel 2. To minimize confusion during the OS the install, you may want to just disconnect the ribbon cable for the spare at the motherboard while installing and then reconnect after you get that PITA completed.

 

[acoustic5679]

Thats how I had it set up before my main HD crapped out. What are the steps in XP to go though to get it to notice the drive? I remember I did something.... Thanks for the help..

 

[piratepast40]

Since the drive is allready formatted, it should be recognized when you connect it to the mobo. When you did the original install, you most likely needed to format and initialize the drive from the computer management section of admin tools. You shouldn't need to do that again. Windows should detect the new hardware and you're good to go from there.

There is a possible problem if your current spare is FAT32 and you format the new drive as NTFS. I'll defer that topic those with a better understanding of the issue.

 

[acoustic5679]

no they are both NTFS. Right on.. Thanks for all the help.. Now my only hope is that this new HD works and its not my MOBO. My Bios detects the other media drive I have and not the system HD the OS is on, so this rules out a problem with the mobo right?

 

[piratepast40]

My Bios detects the other media drive I have and not the system HD the OS is on, so this rules out a problem with the mobo right?

It sure sounds like a problem with the drive and not the mobo. If for some odd reason, the problem is the mobo (but it doesn't sound like it), You've still got good hard drives you could use in another system.

Just keep in mind that you're dealing with a 5 year old system. Capacitors age and other components degrade over time. You computer might last another 5 years and then again, something else may go out tomorrow. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!!!

 

[tgstyle]

If you had to do something special in XP to get it to recognize the drive it may be a Dynamic drive in which case you will just have to import the drive. You can do this under computer management -> disk management.

 

[sirrobin4ever]

Not a bad run for a hard drive.

Make sure that you don't have a Floppy disk / CD / Flash Drive connected to the computer. If you do, the computer may be trying to boot to that instead.

Best of Luck

 

[piratepast40]

Make sure that you don't have a Floppy disk / CD / Flash Drive connected to the computer. If you do, the computer may be trying to boot to that instead.

I had that problem but pretty sure it was because I allready had my old drive installed as the "C" drive. When I installed XP on the new drive, it assigned the next available drive letter (after the CD/DVD, removeable drives, card readers, etc.). When I did the install with the old drive removed, and everything else in place, it assigned the new drive as "C". Based on my experience, I don't think it's necessary to remove your non-HDD drives from the system as long as there isn't a drive installed with a recognized OS that is allready assigned as "C".

 

[TenGig]

Is it normal for a 5 year old HD to fail???

Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: Yes it's normal

 

[Flakes]

yep normal, im pretty sure my maxtor is failing but i dont have anything important on it, im just waiting to use it as an excuse to get a raid 0 with raptors.

i already have an image of my pc on a seperate external HDD, so i wont loose a thing if it fails within the next 2min, only thing ive installed since i created the backup is stalker.

 

[sirrobin4ever]

im pretty sure my maxtor is failing

Yep. Sounds pretty normal to me! :lol: (I HATE Maxtor! :twisted

 

[apache_lives]

gotta love raid arays

hope you backed up your data

yeah 5 years is a good run

what brand?

 

[acoustic5679]

I think it was an IBM... thats odd... It was rated pretty high when I bought it though Last night I was messing with the ide cables trying to get the mobo to see the "bad" drive. No luck. I accidentally set it to turbo under the performance option in my bios and my computer work at all. No video and a very loud beeping noise were coming from the mobo. I finally got the video to come back on(I don't know how) When I have overclocked my cpu before it never did that. I think if this HD works and fixes the problem I will just start looking for another system to build. Thanks for all the help!!!

 

[peejeev]

Lol that's more than normal. How did you keep it running for 5 Years. I get 2 years out of mine max usually before I need to replace them (maybe that's because I overuse them a little :lol: ).

 

[proof]

Yes, it is somewhat normal.

 

[acoustic5679]

I just installed the new drive and it works great. But I can't get XP to utilize my storage drive. It keeps asking me to format it. I partitioned it in NTFS and I got this to work last time I did a reinstall of XP. I have installed all the updates like SP2, etc... and I can't get it to regonize it. I went into disk managment under admin toolz and it says...

Disk one
one box thats blue says 128 gb healthy active
The other box thats black says 170 gb unallocated.

I don't understand can someone help me??? I know I can get it to regonize it as a normal formatted drive. I can't lose that data thats on there.. Please help..

 

[Eviltwin17]

eh, its possible

harddrives can die for any reasons from heat to kicking your computer out of frustration(did that once)

 

[acoustic5679]

There is nothing wrong with the HD. My bios doesn't even regonize the full size of the HD. it shows 129 not 320.