Hard drives dying: Six signs a drive is about to fail

[Gizmo]

From the Front Page:
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/903/2/

[booman]

I'm using an old hard-drive on my second computer and every time I boot the BIOS will not recognize the drive. So then I have to go to the BIOS and exit without saving. Then there it is... starts up just fine, and runs just fine. I'm thinking the hard-drive may be on its last legs or the BIOS needs to be updated.

[Gizmo]

In your case, it may be a combination of the fact that it is an old drive and you need to update you BIOS. Some BIOSes have a delay setting that basically causes the BIOS to wait for some period of time before initializing the drives to give the drive a chance to finish its internal POST. If the BIOS doesn't wait long enough, it can cause this same problem.

[booman]

ooo, I may do that. It never did that when I first built the computer, and then when I kept adding things like a new video card and new games, then it started to happen.
I'm planning on replacing the drive this weekend and moving the old one to another computer.

[SteveI]

Most modern bios have a setting called "IDE delay" and can usually be set to 0, 15sec, 30 sec, 1M.

It has solved more than one set of problems for me over the years.