RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

LiadansWhisper · **05-18-2015, 04:39 PM**

(05-18-2015, 01:45 PM)Gegenji Wrote: Basically, what steps can I take to keep my HD from running as it should, and what to avoid to keep from having to deal with this situation again.

How long had you had the HDD? Â They only usually last from 2-4 years. Â I had a hard drive that lasted for 5 years, then randomly went out (without warning). Â And when it died, it was so fucked that we couldn't pull anything off it the standard way, so now it's a paperweight. Â I could have sent it to a professional lab to have them make an attempt, but that usually costs about $1500-3000.

Some hard drives are just bad. Â Some of them get damaged over time (remember, it's spinning at a really high rate of speed for years at a time), or just wear out.

Coatleque · **05-18-2015, 04:54 PM**

(05-18-2015, 01:45 PM)Gegenji Wrote: So, I figured I'd put the question out: what causes a HD to go bad?

Incoming wall of text.

I can echo what's already been said here. The Hard Disk (unless you get a Solid State Device) is the only physically moving part in the computer. With any mechanical device, the longer it moves the greater the chance of failure.

If you've never seen the inside of a hard disk drive, here you go:
[Image: Seagate_ST33232A_hard_disk_inner_view.jpg]

[Image: Seagate_ST33232A_hard_disk_inner_view.jpg]

Those large metal disks are usually made of ceramic and covered in a magnetically sensitive film. The little armature over top of it is not actually resting on the disk, but hovers at a fraction of a millimeter above it. This particular drive has "three platters". There is an armature between each of the platters as well.

When a drive reads or writes data, that armature swipes in and out across the disk. That is the grinding sound you hear when loading software. The platters themselves are spinning at typically 7800 RPMs.

How do these things typically fail?
1.) Physical Shock (dropping, or vibration) - If enough shock is sustained, the armature may skip or touch the platter. At the speed it is moving, this will actually carve a groove in the disk which will destroy the head making it unreadable.

Another aspect is dust. Drives are typically sealed except for a small port which has a dust filter over it. If anything should get on the platter and collide with the head, again it will scratch the surface and destroy the film.

2.) Faulty Circuitry - On the bottom of each drive is the controller board which interfaces with your computer. Sometimes bad solder connections may cause chips to malfunction and render the drive useless.

3.) Bad Blocks - Sometimes the magnetic film simply fails on the platter. This causes the area to be unreadable and a CHKDSK will flag this as "Bad Blocks" or "Sectors". This is a good indication your drive may die at any moment.

4.) Motor Failure - I have rarely ever seen this become an issue, but the DC motor could fail if the bearings go bad or the coils burn out. Chances of this are extremely low for the life of the drive. If this was to happen it would be as the drives spins up or down since it draws much greater electrical current at that time. You can avoid it from even spinning down by going into your power management software and telling it to keep your drives on 100% of the time.

Kilid/Torhe · **05-18-2015, 05:01 PM**

(05-17-2015, 01:18 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I. Hate. AMD. GPUs.

No experience with anything that requires Catalyst Control Center has ever gone well for me. Whether it's because CCC thinks my nice 1080p monitor needs to be underscanned to make it look "correct" or when it decides it has compatibility issues with other software on my computer, I can expect the shitty software to crash at least 100 times a day, usually bringing the graphics driver with it.

In-game, I found that if you have a recent R9-series AMD card, you better turn on those LOD and LOD streaming settings or places like Coerthas and Mor Dhona will give crippling, unplayable lag because they make the GPU flip out.

...it doesn't help that a R9 290 consumes double the power and generates double the heat as an nvidia GTX 980. The lights in my apartment would flicker when I used AMD cards (that I've mostly pawned off by now).

I'll take that complaint, and raise you the problem with stock, reference 290X's.Â I've recently downvolted it to keep the temperature down, else that cruddy little single fan that AMD shipped with the first batch of cards whines up to such a point it's comparable to a washing machine, in regards to decibels.

Imagine sitting right next to a really loud, angry hair dryer every time your PC did something strenuous.Â A loud, angry hairdryer that had to limit what it could do because it was getting too hot.

A third-party fan arrived Friday, and heatsinks for the RAM arrive tomorrow, hoping to get to get a quiet, overclocked GPU again soon :3

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **05-18-2015, 05:15 PM**

(05-18-2015, 05:01 PM)Kilid Wrote:
(05-17-2015, 01:18 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I. Hate. AMD. GPUs.

No experience with anything that requires Catalyst Control Center has ever gone well for me. Whether it's because CCC thinks my nice 1080p monitor needs to be underscanned to make it look "correct" or when it decides it has compatibility issues with other software on my computer, I can expect the shitty software to crash at least 100 times a day, usually bringing the graphics driver with it.

In-game, I found that if you have a recent R9-series AMD card, you better turn on those LOD and LOD streaming settings or places like Coerthas and Mor Dhona will give crippling, unplayable lag because they make the GPU flip out.

...it doesn't help that a R9 290 consumes double the power and generates double the heat as an nvidia GTX 980. The lights in my apartment would flicker when I used AMD cards (that I've mostly pawned off by now).

I'll take that complaint, and raise you the problem with stock, reference 290X's.Â I've recently downvolted it to keep the temperature down, else that cruddy little single fan that AMD shipped with the first batch of cards whines up to such a point it's comparable to a washing machine, in regards to decibels.

Imagine sitting right next to a really loud, angry hair dryer every time your PC did something strenuous.Â A loud, angry hairdryer that had to limit what it could do because it was getting too hot.

A third-party fan arrived Friday, and heatsinks for the RAM arrive tomorrow, hoping to get to get a quiet, overclocked GPU again soon :3

I think I'd cry. Or my wallet would.

...with my CCC issues, I'm much happier living with nvidia again. (Even if I hate Geforce Experience, it at least can figure out my resolution without resorting to modded registry files)

FreelanceWizard · **05-27-2015, 11:01 PM**

It's a little bit of a thread necro, but the very recent 350.12 nVidia drivers largely fixed my crashing issues when tabbing out. So, if you're experiencing the same problem, 350.12 and 352.86 seem to fix it!

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