Hard disk click (restart?) once within 10min playing, works fine after reboot...

[Megoosa]

My Xbox with 1.4 board and Cerbios which was repaired some months ago has played many hours of games without any problems. Until the last 3 days. Every day when I play a game (NFS: Underground 2) the hard disk will click once (and sounding like it restarts) within the first 10 minutes of gaming. The game then hangs after a few seconds when it wants to load new data. I can power off and on the Xbox using the power button and then play the same game for an hour or longer without any problems. And the problem repeat itself the next day.

The most logical seems to be a faulty hard disk (it's a old 160GB P-ATA drive from Western Digital). But because it only happens once a day (when the unit is cold?), is there another possible cause like a power supply problem or even a worn power connector to the drive? I don't want to throw away a P-ATA hard drive too quickly.

[tiertop]

Yeah, clicking is often a sign of some kind of failure.  You could try deleting the game and FTPing it over again and see if that fixes the problem. It might just be a weak sector on the disk and rewriting it might fix that or cause the drive to remap it with a spare.

With a change in temp possibly fixing it, I think of perhaps a failing solder connection somewhere.  Heating a broken solder joint can make the the connection good again and when cold it becomes intermittent.

Edited April 12, 2023 by tiertop

[Megoosa]

Maybe the molex connector to the hard drive was a bit worn, because this Xbox was dissembled a lot by the previous owner and the connector can be pulled out with very little force. I tried the easiest fix first by bending the pins in the connector a bit tighter and the problem seem to be gone now. It's used for a couple of days already, the same game.

If the problem comes back I'll try to re-transfer the game using FTP.

[nikeymikey]

This sounds very much like a failing drive. If I were you I would get any important info ie saved games, EEPROM backups etc transferred to a PC from the drive asap. YOu can do this via FTP or by connecting your drive directly to your PC (if you still have IDE connectors in your PC) 

Then you can either set up a new SATA drive or carry on as you are until the drive dies. Either way you will have backups of your important data so you can get going again.  The EEPROM is a vital part in getting any new drive up and running.  

[Megoosa]

The drive is still working fine. I backed up the save games only. The EEPROM is already somewhere on the PC because I dumped it using a Raspberry Pi, I bought this Xbox with a broken hard drive back then. And I flashed Cerbios to the TSOP, so it should accept any unlocked HDD.