Help with possible HDD issue

[eso]

Hi helpful trainzerers.
I was running a session this evening and went to place some stock on the route when my PC sort of locked for 15-20 seconds and started making a 'clicking' type sound. the freeze kept on happening and it took about 1-2 minutes to eventually quit out. I've installed HDsenitinal which is showing my install drive as 100% healthy so i'm guessing not bad sectors of a dying HDD.
Can still access the drive and see everything installed ok, managed to back up some CDP's to another drive fine but the 'clicking' was happening while they copied across.

Not sure what else the problem might be?

Don't think the problem is with my solid state system drive as can do everything else with no noise, just seems to be when the Games install drive is being accessed. I'm assuming that if it was PSU/GFX/RAM etc. the problem would happen all the time.

Any suggestions?

 

[mcguirel]

Default your bios when you have hardware related issues. Always the first step in my line of defense. Not saying will solve it, but eliminates CMOS/IRQ issues.

 

[pcas1986]

I gather you have both an SSD and regular hard disk drive?

In the old days a clicking from the hard disk was interpreted as the heads bouncing against the "rest" or "parked" position. I don't know if that still applies to current generation drives. But I suggest is not a good sign and I would be looking for a replacement asap.

SSDs have no moving parts to my knowledge and so would not make a noise. Recently I upgraded my PC and kept my existing 120GB SSD boot drive. But I think I may have zapped it during the upgrade as the bios would not recognise it most of the time when starting. This caused absolute havoc so I replaced it.

Fans can make odd noises. If it is just a case fan - i.e. not a power supply, processor or video processor fan, then try disconnecting it from the motherboard for a while and see if the clicking disappears. A temporary disconnection should be ok.

 

[clam1952]

Still applies to any mechanical hard drive, clicking is a sign of impending failure, as it's usually a mechanical issue, heads are unable to read the data off the platters, be it due to a damaged platter or head and the controller keeps trying to get a read, fails and continually hits the end stop until it does. Software such as Smart or HD Sentinel will not be able to detect an intermittent mechanical fault such as a motor failing or damaged head until it's too late!

There are no mechanical parts to an SSD so it's incapable of clicking.

 

[JCitron]

Eso,

Backup all your data from that drive! It's dying and will do so unexpectedly even if SMART says it's fine. You may be seeing a failing hard drive here as the heads are unable to read the data and retry their operation. This can also be caused by a faulty power supply, or sometimes as I've found a loose power connector. So, check the connectors, which is easy, and if that isn't it replace the drive.

John

 

[eso]

Nice, thanks team. Will order a replacement asap!
Managed to back up most of the important stuff last night, good thing I have multiple drives in my machine (SSD, 1x 1TB, 1x 2TB & 1TB external). It's just a shame the HDD has my Steam install which includes TRS12

Does anyone know what steam files I need to back up? I'm pretty sure my TRS folder is pretty huge by now.

 

[captainkman]

To back up Trainz, the main folder you need to save is the UserData one. I'm not sure where it is on a Steam install though, but it's in there somewhere. It's part of wherever the Trainz install is located.

Kieran.

 

[clam1952]

What I find usually works on replacing a non system drive if you have other drives with enough space, is create a folder on one of the other drives copy the disk contents to it, replace the drive ensuring it has the same drive letter as the removed one and simply copy the contents of the folder back, no need to reinstall anything as the registry entries, paths and shortcuts will be pointing at the same drive letter so as far as the OS and programs are concerned, nothing has changed.

 

[eso]

Cheers again everyone, shiny new Hybrid HDD ordered this morning. Found a spare 90 gig on my other drive so trying to back up my steam file at the moment but it's taking forever!

On the plus side, my missus is well pleased

 

[JCitron]

Cheers again everyone, shiny new Hybrid HDD ordered this morning. Found a spare 90 gig on my other drive so trying to back up my steam file at the moment but it's taking forever!

On the plus side, my missus is well pleased

That's good news.

Good luck with the hardware replacement.

John

 

[eso]

I've been tempted to try out a new hybrid hdd for a while now anyway so that's a bit if a silver lining. It'll be interesting to see if there's any performance boost in TRS.

By some miracle the 90gb managed to copy over last night without incident which was a big relief. Shame about my other 500gig of steam installs :/

 

[JCitron]

I've been tempted to try out a new hybrid hdd for a while now anyway so that's a bit if a silver lining. It'll be interesting to see if there's any performance boost in TRS.

By some miracle the 90gb managed to copy over last night without incident which was a big relief. Shame about my other 500gig of steam installs :/

Please let us know of any excellent performance increase you see. I've been curious myself. The good news with Steam stuff is it can easily be reinstalled via their Steam front end. I recently did that with Arma3 which is the only game I play through Steam. That install was close to 2.5GB and then there were patches on top of that. The install didn't take too long though which I was quite surprised considering all the content.

John

 

[eso]

So far I can see a pretty decent increase in performance, especially around load times for long draw distances (3500m+). There's also a lot less stuttering in general and I can comfortably run Direct X at high res on routes that I had to dial down previously.
for my 106gb back-up it took about 40 minutes to copy onto the new drive, TRS installed and updated in less than an hour, data copy and extended database repair in about another 2 hours (remember over 100gb to check). I'm still fixing one or two errors that I'm putting down to problems with the previous drive (a few broken/faulty assets that worked before and my .CDP back-ups all ended up being corrupted).

This is what I ended up getting and totally happy so far.

 

[JCitron]

So far I can see a pretty decent increase in performance, especially around load times for long draw distances (3500m+). There's also a lot less stuttering in general and I can comfortably run Direct X at high res on routes that I had to dial down previously.
for my 106gb back-up it took about 40 minutes to copy onto the new drive, TRS installed and updated in less than an hour, data copy and extended database repair in about another 2 hours (remember over 100gb to check). I'm still fixing one or two errors that I'm putting down to problems with the previous drive (a few broken/faulty assets that worked before and my .CDP back-ups all ended up being corrupted).

This is what I ended up getting and totally happy so far.

Nice! I'll check out the drive and performance stats on it. I may upgrade my own drives eventually. I'm currently running 3 older Seagate 2TB drives that run well, but don't have the performance you are probably seeing.

John

 

[narrowgauge]

Eso

What is the name of your new hybrid, I tried a Seagate one but I didn't see any marked benefits. Perhaps the solid state section of the drive was too small.

Peter