Hello everyone,I've been experiencing some HD trouble lately.As you can see in my sig, I'm currently on a 320 GB hard drive. I used to have a 500 GB hard drive solely dedicated to FSX and addons, but here's what mystifies me.One morning, I turn on the computer only to find that it won't POST, and upon inspection, the 500 GB hard drive had failed, and somehow, in turn, the 320 GB drive was wiped out as well. I have gone through THREE hard drives like this, and for no apparent reason, they kept failing, and I had to exchange them for new ones. Only the 320 GB hard drive survives today.Is it the motherboard or the HD that is the culprit? HD's shouldn't fail on a monthly basis...what's going on?

Power supply or motherboard would be the likely culprits.

Power supply or motherboard would be the likely culprits.

Agree. But to brick three different hard drives without bothering any other components makes me think less a PS problem and more that it's a bad HDD controller on the mobo (or possibly the overclock is causing the controller to become unstable). Does that motherboard have a secondary drive controller you can swap to? Have you tried dropping to stock speeds after a failure to see if you can format the drive?I'd also run MemCheck86 for a few hours and make sure you don't have some intermittent RAM problems.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

If retrieving data is an issue, one of the best devices any computer owner that isn't afraid to perform surgery on their rig is an SATA/IDE to USB adapter. I have saved countless drives filled with info by mounting them as usb devices and running diagnostics on them or just for the purpose of grabbing data. As an IT Mgr., my first impression would be that the motherboard and/or controller are at fault. Try re-loading the chipset drivers for the board. If that fails try booting the drives on a different board. If they were not configured as ACHI they probably will boot. If they were AHCI, be careful as the chipset software might clobber the drive. That's why you grab data from drive first then experiment!Good Luck!

... the 500 GB hard drive had failed, ...the 320 GB drive was wiped out...

What do you mean by "failed" and "wiped out"?Are you saying the data was lost or the drive was rendered inoperable (will not mount, cannot re-format)?Cheers,- jahman.

What do you mean by "failed" and "wiped out"?Are you saying the data was lost or the drive was rendered inoperable (will not mount, cannot re-format)?Cheers,- jahman.

The 500 GB drive was rendered inoperable, in turn causing all the data in the 320 GB drive to be lost.I'll try reloading the chipset drivers and see if there is a secondary drive controller to use. I hope this never happens again.The problem is that if the motherboard is at fault, I'll probably try to replace it. If I replace the motherboard, I'll have to replace the CPU and other various components as well to keep up with the current technology, which would cost a lot of $$$ :( Thanks for the suggestions.