Possible HDD Failure after periodic beeps

[Ckorban]

My PC Specs:
PC Name (#1):
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Abit IP35 Pro Motherboard
4 gb (2x 1gb PNY, 2x 1gb Kingston)
Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS (g92) 512mb
Zerotherm Nirvana
Creative X-Fi Gamer Edition / Logitech z-5300
Seagate 320gb (OS), Seagate 500gb (Storage)
Antec Nine Hundred
Vista x64bit


Important
1) I have played around with uGuru, Abit's overclocking software for like 5 minutes, and only in those 5 minutes was anything overclocked (My cpu from 2.4ghz to 2.45ghz). Everything else is at stock
2) I have recently upgraded my CPU/Mobo/VGA, they are pretty much 1 month old.
3) The Seagate 500gb is about 6 months old.
4) Bios drivers are the ones from that came with the mobo on the CD, might or might not be 100% up to date.
5) I keep my computer on 24/7 whenever possible.
6) Was working fine before and after upgrade, just happened out of the blue.

Problem:
I woke up one morning and was screwing around in my room and heard very faint beeps periodically and investigated. It was my computer that was beeping once, faintly, every now and then. Being the first computer I used an aftermarket cooling solution, my zerotherm nirvana, and also first time using arctic silver 5, I decided to shut it off due to the beeping possibly caused due to rising temps. I had to leave to class so I couldnt investigate. The next day, I turned it on, and it wouldnt get past the initial motherboard boot screen. The motherboard has an LED display on it that shows troubleshooting codes, it was stuck specifically at 75, which I found out to be "Detecting IDE Devices".

Important to note:
1) I can't even press delete to get into BIOS at all, it just freezes right there at the first motherboard splash screen. I did manage to hit Tab, which shows me whats happening, not the splash screen and it gets stuck at the message "Detecting IDE Devices...".
2) Here, when left alone it would also start doing those beeps eventually.
3)I did some research and found on some forums and found 2 people who had similar problems, 1 turned out to be a bad harddrive, and the other bad HD cables.
4) I reset it oh so many times, and once and only once, it did get to windows, but when I came back it was "Shutting down...", but stuck there, had to cold power it off.

What I Did:
1) I have 2 Harddisks and 2 Optical Media drives, I swapped out the cables for all of them, nothing happened, no luck.
2) I removed both harddrives and was able to get into BIOS and past the splash screen, where it tells me it can't find an OS.
3) I checked the temps in BIOS just to be sure, they were very fine, in the mid 20s and low 30s.
4) I plugged everything back in to make sure correct seating, no luck.
5) I removed my storage hard drive, the 500gb one, not the one the OS is one, and voila, we have a perfect system.
6) Put the 500gb back in, and goes back to the problem. Took it back out and now running with only the 320gb, the one with the OS on it.

What I need help with:
Basically, I wanted to know why my computer was literally freezing at that point, instead of simply booting and not recognizing the harddisk. Also, could it be any jumper settings problem maybe? What I'm about to do is shove it in an external USB enclosure, I just need to find my power cable for it, so I can test the HD to see if its dead. Also, wanted to see if anyone has any ideas from data recovery, or if these beeps are useful to tell anything.

Thanks for reading guys,
Chris

 

[SNGX1275]

You can eliminate the jumper issue by just setting the OS to Master and the 500 to slave. I don't ever use CS just because you always can have that little bit of doubt if that is your problem, forcing master and slave eliminates that possibility.

It does sound to me like your drive is dead. I would disconnect your OS drive and set the 500 to master and try to boot up with a drive diagnostic utility disk in the drive. Hopefully you can get it to start up off the cd, then run the test to get an error code and RMA the drive.

You can put it in an external enclosure, but I don't know of any diagnostics that can be ran on it, although there may be some.

The only other possibility I can see is if you just don't have enough power to spin up both of your drives on startup, but that is pretty unlikely. HD failure sounds much more likely based on your post.

 

[Ckorban]

Thanks for answering SNGX, I've had multiple drives fail over the years but never did it hang the system like this, not even able to get to BIOS.. Any idea why it did that?

I'm burning SeaTools as I type and going to try it soon as I get home.

Thanks again.

 

[tipstir]

Take out the battery off the mobo (motherboard) and unplug the power cord for 30 mins. Then put back the battery on the mobo then plugin the power. You should now be able to get into the BIOS. But remember all over clocking and settings will go back to the factory default. Another way to do this is changing the CMOS jumper but each mobo is different so check your owners manual for the mobo for clearing the CMOS or just remove the battery.

Never Never leave turn on the system with CMOS jumper in the off position and never never turn on the system without the battery in placed on the mobo.