I have couple of computers at my apartment and one of them is about four or five years old.
I bought it fresh new and from the beginning it had somekind of technical problem. First harddrive died after two months of buying the PC. The warranty changed a new one.. it lasted two weeks, they changed it again and said if it still fails they will give me a totally new computer. So I knew the harddisk would die.. oh yeah after two years it died and the warranty had gone off.
So I had to manage with that annoying PC.. all the harddisks were in SATA port, so I decided to do a test and take off an old IDE harddisk from another computer and plug it in. That never died and it's still running fine after few years.

All the HDDs which died made a sound like power went off, then after few seconds they started up again.
And once they did that power off/power on, they kept doing it like 1-50 times a hour. I could play games, use windows and other stuff if they were in power on state. But if that happened during the windows loading screen, the whole windows got messed up and had to reinstall/change HDD

Does anyone have any idea which part in the computer caused the SATA harddisks to fail?

What kind of drives are they? brand and model.... How were they bought. I've gone through tons of drives, so it's not uncommon for hardrives to go bad, they're constantly active almost all the time so they are going to get alot of were an tear. Especially with the fact they use moving parts (assuming you're not talking about ssd).

I'm a firm believer that WD's black and green caviars are some of the best disk based drives around. My current black caviar is the longest living drive I've had, think I've had it for close to 3-4 years. And I think it was an open box one from newegg... someone probably returned it after realizing it was sata not ide.

Nothing in your computer would cause problems with the drives other than, the psu not putting out enough juice, or your mobo's sata controller going bad, but that wouldn't harm your hardrives other than possibly corrupting data on the drive.

I'm not sure if I read your post correctly, but have you tried those bad drives in other computers?

What kind of drives are they? brand and model.... How were they bought. I've gone through tons of drives, so it's not uncommon for hardrives to go bad, they're constantly active almost all the time so they are going to get alot of were an tear. Especially with the fact they use moving parts (assuming you're not talking about ssd).

I'm a firm believer that WD's black and green caviars are some of the best disk based drives around. My current black caviar is the longest living drive I've had, think I've had it for close to 3-4 years. And I think it was an open box one from newegg... someone probably returned it after realizing it was sata not ide.

Nothing in your computer would cause problems with the drives other than, the psu not putting out enough juice, or your mobo's sata controller going bad, but that wouldn't harm your hardrives other than possibly corrupting data on the drive.

I'm not sure if I read your post correctly, but have you tried those bad drives in other computers?

How were they bought? I didn't buy any of them, Fujitsu Siemens changed the dead disks to new ones
I think they were all WD drives, I have only the last one here.. it's model WD4000KD..
And yes I've tried them on another computers, like I tried on this my current computer but the disks do the same thing as did on the old computer

Oh... well one of the reason gamers and enthusiast prefer to build they're own machines is cause they'll know what's actually in it. But those drives are blue caviars... slow but use alot less power. I'm surprised they're dieing so fast. But you never know with a prebuilt machine. They could be giving you refurbished parts they got cheap.

I would consider buying a new drive yourself If you're dead set on keeping that computer. you can get good 640g drive for around 60-70 on newegg.com, and swapping hardrives is nothing more than unscrewing them and replugging them in. Plus it'll give you a reason to clean the dust out of your case, which reminds me, mine is due for a cleaning.

Oh... well one of the reason gamers and enthusiast prefer to build they're own machines is cause they'll know what's actually in it. But those drives are blue caviars... slow but use alot less power. I'm surprised they're dieing so fast. But you never know with a prebuilt machine. They could be giving you refurbished parts they got cheap.

I would consider buying a new drive yourself If you're dead set on keeping that computer. you can get good 640g drive for around 60-70 on newegg.com, and swapping hardrives is nothing more than unscrewing them and replugging them in. Plus it'll give you a reason to clean the dust out of your case, which reminds me, mine is due for a cleaning.

Nah I don't really need the old computer, sometimes just use it for LAN gaming. But was just wondering why the drives died, I guess there was some problems with the PSU. For interest I might try buying new PSU, plug it in the old computer and see if the drives still die..
Yea I learnt not to buy a prebuilt PC and so I bought parts to my current PC last year. I built it up and it's running good

[quote name='freeworld' timestamp='1306032532' post='4814081']
Oh... well one of the reason gamers and enthusiast prefer to build they're own machines is cause they'll know what's actually in it. But those drives are blue caviars... slow but use alot less power. I'm surprised they're dieing so fast. But you never know with a prebuilt machine. They could be giving you refurbished parts they got cheap.

I would consider buying a new drive yourself If you're dead set on keeping that computer. you can get good 640g drive for around 60-70 on newegg.com, and swapping hardrives is nothing more than unscrewing them and replugging them in. Plus it'll give you a reason to clean the dust out of your case, which reminds me, mine is due for a cleaning.

Nah I don't really need the old computer, sometimes just use it for LAN gaming. But was just wondering why the drives died, I guess there was some problems with the PSU. For interest I might try buying new PSU, plug it in the old computer and see if the drives still die..
Yea I learnt not to buy a prebuilt PC and so I bought parts to my current PC last year. I built it up and it's running good
[/quote]

You would think they'd give a good enough psu, but maybe they gave you a pos instead. Like I said though, those blues, don't need that much power. Though it could be the cables going bad... you just never know sometimes.

What's the tool/device which they use... when I sent my computer with dead HDD to there they called me and said the harddisk was dead but they could retrieve files from it. Asked if I needed any.. anyone know how they got the data off the dead HDD?

What's the tool/device which they use... when I sent my computer with dead HDD to there they called me and said the harddisk was dead but they could retrieve files from it. Asked if I needed any.. anyone know how they got the data off the dead HDD?

from what i have read and know:
the professional places do:
they can take the disk from your HDD and put it in a new case and retrieve the data or examin the magnetic structure of the disk

but they can recover most of the data even if your house burns down.
now that is a good thing, unless you use SSD drives...
youll have a nice lump of platic

[quote name='NukeCorr' timestamp='1306253441' post='4815169']
What's the tool/device which they use... when I sent my computer with dead HDD to there they called me and said the harddisk was dead but they could retrieve files from it. Asked if I needed any.. anyone know how they got the data off the dead HDD?

from what i have read and know:
the professional places do:
they can take the disk from your HDD and put it in a new case and retrieve the data or examin the magnetic structure of the disk

but they can recover most of the data even if your house burns down.
now that is a good thing, unless you use SSD drives...
youll have a nice lump of platic
[/quote]

At the low low price of a house in NYC.

Sounds like either your PSU or your motherboard. Not really anything I would spend money trying to fix on an old pre-fab computer. Make sure you backup your data regularly. In this day and age there's no reason to not have a backup either online, or on a cheap external drive.

[quote name='ryan20fun' timestamp='1306254995' post='4815184']
[quote name='NukeCorr' timestamp='1306253441' post='4815169']
What's the tool/device which they use... when I sent my computer with dead HDD to there they called me and said the harddisk was dead but they could retrieve files from it. Asked if I needed any.. anyone know how they got the data off the dead HDD?

from what i have read and know:
the professional places do:
they can take the disk from your HDD and put it in a new case and retrieve the data or examin the magnetic structure of the disk

but they can recover most of the data even if your house burns down.
now that is a good thing, unless you use SSD drives...
youll have a nice lump of platic
[/quote]

At the low low price of a house in NYC.
[/quote]

its only one house