Can a faulty motherboard cause the click of death?

[Ohzopants]

About a month ago my really old 6 gig HDD drive died after clicking for about 2 weeks before. I simply wrote it of to the age of the drive.

Yesterday however my main, newer, 40 gig HDD started the click of death also. My question is whether this is a strange coincidence or whether something in my system could be causing the drive deaths? I'm thinking motherboard or power supply... but I could be wrong.

Please help I'm on the verge of violently destroying my PC!!!

Specs:
MB: Asus A7V333
CPU: Athlon XP 1800+ (not, nor ever, OC'D)
RAM: 512 Mb PC2700
Vid card: ATI Radeon AIW 8500
HDD: Maxtor 40 gig 7200 RPM
PSU: Standard 350W

 

[Xie]

About a month ago my really old 6 gig HDD drive died after clicking for about 2 weeks before. I simply wrote it of to the age of the drive.

Yesterday however my main, newer, 40 gig HDD started the click of death also. My question is whether this is a strange coincidence or whether something in my system could be causing the drive deaths? I'm thinking motherboard or power supply... but I could be wrong.

Please help I'm on the verge of violently destroying my PC!!!

Specs:
MB: Asus A7V333
CPU: Athlon XP 1800+ (not, nor ever, OC'D)
RAM: 512 Mb PC2700
Vid card: ATI Radeon AIW 8500
HDD: Maxtor 40 gig 7200 RPM
PSU: Standard 350W

could be power or even heat perhaps. do you have any case fans blowing on your hd's?

 

[eddieb]

Try a new cable. I had the same thing happen and it turned out to be a faulty ribbon cable.

 

[Ohzopants]

Thank you so much eddie...

I tried a new ribbon cable and it seems to have fixed the problem. I guess I owe you one.