Multiple Hardrive failure over the course of a year

Etetherin said:

I ). I dont think heat damage is likely but you never know.

Again, I suggest you try a utility such as Hard Disk Sentinel; it keeps track of all your hard drive temperatures, including min and max over lifetime, etc. With that many failures I would definitely want to check the max temps to rule that out. It also lets you know if there are bad spots or SMART errors. You can usually find it offered as a freebie, or you can try the trial software. Thanks for clarifying your system configuration. So it is a desktop and it does sound like everything is powered by the same power supply. And if I understand correctly you actually had 5 hard drive failures within a year; that certainly seems extreme to me. I am curious - you say you had one drive fail and you repaired it and then it failed again. What type of failure was it that you were able to repair (or do you mean you replaced it)?

spacecon said:

Again, I suggest you try a utility such as Hard Disk Sentinel; it keeps track of all your hard drive temperatures, including min and max over lifetime, etc. With that many failures I would definitely want to check the max temps to rule that out. It also lets you know if there are bad spots or SMART errors. You can usually find it offered as a freebie, or you can try the trial software. Thanks for clarifying your system configuration. So it is a desktop and it does sound like everything is powered by the same power supply. And if I understand correctly you actually had 5 hard drive failures within a year; that certainly seems extreme to me. I am curious - you say you had one drive fail and you repaired it and then it failed again. What type of failure was it that you were able to repair (or do you mean you replaced it)?

So I should go ahead and risk installing and setting up the new ssd?

When I said I repaired it. I ran a repair utilitity on it that "said" it repaired its sectors. Reinstalled windows on it and like a said not long after it had mechanical failure. Or at least I figured it was a mechanical failure because it started bsoding again. And then I tried to run more tests on it again and it would start red baring across the screen (indicating errors). And then the computer restart. (incomplete test) and that was in a bootable utility not run inside windows. So I just assumed it was mechanical.

Etetherin said:

So I should go ahead and risk installing and setting up the new ssd?

That is not a decision I am willing to make. That is something you have to decide based on what your other options may be (as far as perhaps trying a different power supply and weighing the cost of that vs possibly burning out a drive, etc., or verifying that the drives really are bad.) I am just saying that when you do get up and running, you should install the utility so that you can check on all the disk temps and status so you can see if something unexpected is going wrong. That is easy to do and can eliminate some variables. BTW, do you still have the damaged disks, and is there any way you can take your "damaged" disks and try them on a different computer and run tests on them to make sure they really are bad? You can get drive docking stations pretty cheap these days. There is some chance that there is something else going on in the system, perhaps intermittently, and the data is not being transferred properly making it look like the drives are bad. It is just hard to believe so drives would die on their own. There must be some connection between the failures of all of them.

joedaman633 said:

Possible explanations regarding original post:
1. PSU is causing damage to the HDDs
2. Mis-use
3. Hard Drives aren't actually dead
4. Heat damage

Option 1 seems the most likely
Option 2 is possible, but SSDs are especially hard to abuse so I doubt this
Option 3 is plausible, what symptoms did the drives give?
Option 4 is more plausible with the HDDs than the SSD I think, whats your PC setup like? Do the hard drives sit where fresh (cold) air comes in, or is there no fan? Or are they near the exhaust?

I think joedaman stated the possible explanations pretty well. I agree that 2 (mis-use) is unlikely, especially considering how many and how fast they are dropping, and assuming you aren't recklessly banging them around. From your setup description, 4 (heat) is also unlikely, although once up and running I would definitely monitor the temps to be sure. That is not something that will instantly kill them, but it can shorten their life. So that leaves you with first trying to verify 3 (whether the drives are actually dead) before tackling 1 (psu causing damage). If you can verify 3 that will tell you whether to go ahead and restart as-is or to first buy a new supply. If you don't have the option to verify 3, then you have to decide if you want to replace the supply (assuming it is considerably cheaper than drives, I think I would do that).

Unfortunately I dont have the drives anymore, I scrapped them. But when I get the chance I will peak inside and take pictures of the labels on my psu and post them here.
I will say that alot of super users go to micro center and are very happy with that place. They have great reviews as well. So I dont think they would sell me some piece of crap. But you never know.
I am not the best at this stuff but I do know a whole bunch and have been self teaching for 6 years now.
I dont think I got a crappy psu, but you never can be to sure.

Just throwing this out there, is there anything setup wise (software) that could cause this?
To be more clear, I have always used Intel's rst to build and control the raids. But when I go to my mfg website of my motherboard they are telling me to use marvel.
I know I asked earlier but I didn't understand the difference.

I will go ahead and restart my PC, and get it all set up.
And just to rule it out. This is what I should be doing.
Installing windows
Updating windows.
Install necessary drivers from.mother board mfg website
Installing video card drivers from mfg website
Installing all peripherals drivers from mfg websites (Lan card, wifi card)
And then lastly reinstalling all apps that I had previously?

If I missed anything or its not in the correct order please do tell. Like I said I am and have always been self taught from reading and just figuring things out on my own. So my information may be incorrect.

And lastly thank you all so very much for trying to help. This is the very reason the internet was created!

For those asking about my PC specs in tapa talk. I dont know what that is. But as soon as I get my PC that this thread is about I will update my PC specs in my profile on this website.

How do I make it show up on there.
I mean for when I get it running again? The specs for my laptop are posted here and they aren't showing on tapatalk? The laptop isn't the problem right now but just as a reference of how to get them up on tapatalk I could use them to learn.

Hi there

I'm really surprised how often I read on these Forums about HDD failure -- I've got quite a few HDD's all subject to varying degrees of abuse and over the years I don't think I've ever had more than TWO fail and even then I had enough warning to backup the data prior to complete failure.

HDD's can run quite hot (not the best idea!!) without failure. I've had different makes etc so I can't say if one manufacturer is worse than another.

SSD's are particularly robust as there's no moving parts either --although I don't recommend dropping them on to granite floors etc.

If you have a few HDD's why not set up Soft RAID using Storage spaces on W10 which should protect you against data failure --you CAN add HDD's dynamically and they can be of different sizes. Then if one goes --no prob just replace it dynamically into the storage pool and sling the old defective one.

1 of 3: An introduction to Microsoft Storage Spaces | Hardware Revolution

Cheers
jimbo