Repeated hard drive failures

[kibe]

I've had the same problem with three hard drives now. When I turn on my computer, the hard drive doesn't turn on right away, and I end up with a boot error and have to reset once or twice before it turns on. Then after a few weeks I get a BIOS message telling me that a SMART failure is predicted. Then the HD goes a week or two later. The first hard drive, which was a Maxtor 45 gig lasted a year. The second and third ones, which are Maxtor replaced 60 gigs have each lasted about two months. Cooling is excellent, and I do have a fan on the HD just to be safe. I also had a technician friend of mine check my system out and he couldn't find any problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

My system:
ASUS A7V 133a
256 crucial 133 sdram
Duron 700
Radeon LE
Maxtor 60g plus
Antec 830b case w/300watt PS

 

[GAZZA]

Wow that is some serious bad luck your having with hard drives , I personally have 3 of mine all on active and passive cooling and very rarely if ever turn the pc off .

Turning your pc on and off constantly is basically where your most at risk with hard drives , the start up especially going from "0" to 5400/7200 rpm in a few seconds with almost non existant tolerance will gradually take it's toll.

I really can't think of anything that would cause 3 hd's to die on you unless they themselves were at fault , usually Maxtor drives are very reliable as quite a few here can attest to.

Cooling is always good but HD's aren't like CPU's where it is a neccessity to keep cool to disapate the amount of heat generated.

 

[dude]

There shouldn't be a problem with turning on and off a system (or drive) as most all recent hard drives "park" their heads so you won't have that type of problem.

Do you move your computer alot? Kick or smack it?

 

[kibe]

No it really doesn't get bumped. Besides my case is pretty solid.... Any other suggestions? A friend of mine thought it could possibly be the motherboard.

 

[bozo1]

Are you overclocking? If you go too far, that can cause the "Smart" alert to trigger.

 

[kibe]

No it's not overclocked, just unlocked and switched to the 133 bus, so it's running at 733mhz until I can get a good HSF....