Never ending busy mode; what is going on?

**caravel** · 07-05-2009, 15:00

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left..

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

**frogbeastegg** · 07-05-2009, 15:06

Originally Posted by Caravel

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

Now that is a very good thought. I have a tsunami dream case which has vents at the front as well as at the back and some nice big fans and good heat dispersal overall. The weather here has been baking, the hottest it's been in several years. Yesterday I'd been using the PC for a few hours before it started playing up, and the first time I'd been writing for an entire afternoon.

I shall have a wander into the temp monitoring page in the machine's set up ...

**frogbeastegg** · 07-05-2009, 17:47

The temperature checks are reporting as follows:

Motherboard: 45 degrees C
GPU: 61
The raptor HD: 36
The caviar HD: 34

**caravel** · 07-05-2009, 18:51

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

The HDs seem ok as far as I can tell.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

**frogbeastegg** · 07-05-2009, 19:30

Originally Posted by Caravel

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

Had to check that with a different tool. It's fluctuating between 48 and 49 degrees C.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

It's under very mild load. I've been reinstalling my games, starting them up to sort out the settings, playing them for a few minutes to check they work correctly and then quitting to install another. Time is also spent on downloading and applying patches, so there's quite some gap between each game launch.

The card has its own headsinks and fans; they're big enough to make the card double size. It's a BFG version of the 8800 so they should be decent. The card's positioned right next to the rear case fan. The two hard drives sit next to the front fan.

I gave the machine a clean out when I swapped the raptor drive in.

I should add that it's so hot here that I'm sweatingly slightly just sitting here. Horrible. Britain is supposed to be cold; all this warmth and sun isn't natural.

**caravel** · 07-05-2009, 20:28

It's a strange one... definitely keep an eye on your temps from now on and run with the case side off until the weather breaks.

**Xiahou** · 07-07-2009, 03:38

A couple of things...

First, check Event Viewer- look in the System and Application logs for any events from around the same time as your lockups. Let us know if you see anything interesting. (If you don't know where to find Event Viewer, just do a "Start->Run Eventvwr.msc")

Second, you might want to try something like Speedfan to look at the SMART data for your second drive. It has an option for a "detailed" report that opens in a web page. SMART data is no guarantee, but the data it tracks can often predict hard drive failures and Speedfan also aggregates this data into drive performance and health percentages.