Partition table vanished

pyfips

New Member
Hello,
my (desktop) computer is doing strange things and I am wondering what might be the cause. Maybe someone can give me a tip how to find out what is going on and which part I should replace. If this is not the right place to ask this kind of question I'd be happy if you can tell me an alternative :)

I start from the beginning, although I don't know whether the phenomenons are linked to each other.
A view weeks ago, the computer started over night - sort of at least: The "idle" LED was blinking, but the cooling fans where not spinning. There was also no display output when I turned on the monitor. This happened multiple times.

A few days later the computer didn't boot anymore. I started a live Linux that revealed that the partition table of the disk containing the operating system was vanished (At least it could not read from the partition table anymore). I also could not write a new partition table or do anything else with that disk. GParted even could not analyze the disk and skipped it with an error message ("could not read /dev/sdb"). I had this problem with another disk of the same type two years ago, so I thought it was just the bad quality of that SSD.
I have replaced it with an old SSD which also lost its data one year ago but apart from that it was still working.
Last week, the computer booted again over night - this time the "idle" LED was fully shining, but the fans where not spinning. However, I could hear my second disk (HDD) clicking once a second or so. When I tipped the "power" button, the computer booted normally.
Since then I turned of the power supply when I was not using the computer.
Just now the computer wasn't booting anymore: The partition table of my SSD was gone (I did expect this already since this has happened earlier with that SSD, but I did not expect it that early).

Apart from the mentioned problems the system was running very stable, I never had issues with it suddenly switching of or making "strange" things.

Now I am a bit confused which part could be the culprit - and how I could find this out.
The motherboard has been replaced one year ago by an ASRock B450m. The power supply is from Xilence.

Thank you!
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If hard drive is clicking then its bad. If you haven't changed out that psu, now would be the time. Never even heard of that brand. Where are you from? What are the full specs of your machine?
 

pyfips

New Member
Hello John and thanks for your reply!

I think the clicking occured because the hard drive did not get enough power to do "whatever" from the power supply - the fans of the power supply where not running so I guess it was still in "standby" mode. But thank you for the hint, I'll replace it with the other thing(s).
Here is my system config:

Mainboard: ASRock B450M Pro4 AMD B450 So.AM4 Dual Channel DDR4 mATX Retail
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660
RAM: 16GB (2x 8192MB) G.Skill Aegis DDR4-3200 DIMM
Power supply: Xilence XP530R8 - 530W
Hard disk (SSD / the forgetful one): Transcend TS256GSSD340
Hard disk (HDD / the clicky one): Seagate ST3500413AS

I am from Germany.
 
Last edited:

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
According to the psu itself it has good ratings.

psu.jpg

If both hard drives are having issues I would put the blame on the psu not outputting correct power to them. You could possibly get the psu checked. That motherboard has dual M.2 slots so you can use NVME SSD on the top one only, the bottom one only supports sata M.2.

Or its just a possibility that you are buying crap hard drives to begin with. 16mb cache hard drives are so old at this point. Even 64mb cache drives are old.
 

pyfips

New Member
The HDD is indeed very old (could be 10 years or so). However, it never made any trouble. It also sounds normal during use. It was only in this strange half-powered-state where it made these sounds.
The SSD is newer. By the way the SSD that could not even overwrite the partition table after the crash was a Crucial MX500 1TB CT1000MX500SSD1. (I had two, both died. One in the end of 2019 after 1 year and 11 months, the other one 2020 after 9 months).

So to summarize I surely have to buy a new hard disk. But is there any possibility that the mainboard or the psu damages hard disks in that way, so that it would make sence to replace one of these too? I definitely can switch the psu cable connected to the hard disk.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
At this point, you most likely need to someone to diagnose what is going on since its not really clear cut. My guess is either bad drives all together or just a bad power supply. Not much more I can tell you.
 

pyfips

New Member
Okay I'll probably start with a new hard drive. If some strange nightly LED party happens again then I'll replace the PSU.
I'll give feedback if I get have any new findings about this (and remember this thread when that happens)
Thank you for your advice John!
 
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