Hard drive failure

MKJ

Fledgling Freddie
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Jun 5, 2004
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1,196
2nd hard drive failure with Seagate? The first started to become quite hot and eventually packed in whilst the 2nd died a death though will load up windows now and then but then stops working altogether. Funny noise when I shake it too. Both Seagate Barracudas running at 7,200 rpm. Always thought very highly of these drives as they are virtually silent but not so sure about them now. Fair enough they have lasted a few years of heavy abuse so perhaps I should be more forgiving but having migrated so to speak from scsi drives to these ide drives I am not so understanding. Scsi drives were kind of bullet proof. I have a good mind to buy a small scsi drive 2nd hand and just run windows on it and keep my other ide drives as storage. Can anyone recommend a strong ide drive which might make me think again? Come to that have you a scsi hard drive and controller card for sale? Blimey just took a look on ebay - some amazing bargains to be had. Ok I am willing to part with £10 for a decent size scsi hard drive and - *thinks hard* - oh at least £5 for the card. Generous or what? Only kidding - maybe.
 

SheepCow

Bringer of Code
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Dec 22, 2003
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1,365
Someone has had a problem with every manufacturer. I've had these drives fail:

Maxtor
Western Digital
Seagate
IBM

Currently the only drive manufacturer I've got in use that hasn't died is an IBM Hitachi.
 

smurkin

Can't get enough of FH
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Dec 22, 2003
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I think seagates come with 5 year warranty these days. They are supposed to be pretty good. I believe seagate also own Maxtor. Maxtor went through a rough patch a year or two back with reliabiity...apparently they have turned all that around.

I currently have wd drives..a raptor for my os and a couple of 120 Gbs in RAID 0..3 years old...no grumbles.

I had loads of IBM deathstars (four in total...due to in warranty replacements)..they were awful...but the Hitachi drives have a good rep and they are quite fast too.
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
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Dec 20, 2003
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SheepCow said:
Currently the only drive manufacturer I've got in use that hasn't died is an IBM Hitachi.

I've got one of those and it seems Hitichi QA is working. I had one drive DOA and that was a Maxtor, one drive fail and that was an 8yo SCSI fron Seagate iirc.
 

SAS

Can't get enough of FH
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Dec 23, 2003
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I've got a Maxtor drive and had PC for nearly 5 years now. I've not experienced any problems yet. No clicking, faults e.t.c but is it wise to replace a HD every x years to avoid failures? Or if it's not broken, don't fix it and keep the HD until a fault develops?

I am assuming there's some warning before the HD dies? :}
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
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SAS said:
I am assuming there's some warning before the HD dies? :}


never assume anything :)

tbh, yeah, there may be some kind of a warning. My SCSI drive that died started to generate intermittant read errors. These are fairly obvious, and when you start to get a couple a day then it's time to get a new drive. With "new" things like S.M.A.R.T tech your disk should "tell" you that it's going to fail iirc.

On the other hand if you're a shade unlucky then your disk may just well click::die on you :/
 

Dr_Weasel

One of Freddy's beloved
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Dec 25, 2003
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I had 6 HDDs fail last year ranging in ages from 40 days to 4 years old. I think Ive pretty much had every manufacturer go too.

I wouldnt feel so bad about it if I didnt have most of my machines UPS'd and power surge protected.

*grumbles*
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
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30,801
but hdd's need powerspikes to function properly :)


seriously though, when the manufacturers started speccing drives for things like "8hrs use per day" and somesuch I nearly burst a gasket :/
 

Lazarus

Part of the furniture
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Dec 22, 2003
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TdC said:
never assume anything :)

tbh, yeah, there may be some kind of a warning. My SCSI drive that died started to generate intermittant read errors.

i hope it wasnt the one i got :(
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
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err no, that was a different one :) the one I was talking about was a 2" thick old seagate :)
 

Whipped

Part of the furniture
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Dec 22, 2003
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See my tale of woe post for my own Seagate fun. My new, replacement drive was shipped yesterday. Although it said the country of origin was China. Not sure if that means it'd shipping from there or from Coventries offices.
 

smurkin

Can't get enough of FH
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Dec 22, 2003
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eeeurghh...we had a drive fail at work yesterday...a 40 Gb SATA maxtor on a chromatography system...its just dead and thers no backup data...its only a month old but its not been switched off once...I'm guessing the controller has gone as theres no noise or lights :mad: so I'm pretty anti-maxtor at the moment :(
 

MKJ

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jun 5, 2004
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1,196
My new hard drive

Unbelievable this. I purchased a similar hard drive a few years ago - and even then it was 2nd hand - for around £160 I think it was. The drive I bought was a Seagate 18.2 gig 10,000 rpm 160 lvd drive. I just bought a:

IBM ULTRASTAR 18.2GB 10000RPM 64PIN ULTRA3 SCSI DRIVE

AND A

QUANTUM ATLAS 10K II 18.4GB U160 SCSI HARD DRIVE

For eh £10 each plus £5 postage off ebay.

I have bought loads of stuff off ebay and never been disappointed. I only buy off people with good reputations. The stuff normally arrives in just a few days and is exactly as was expected or better so I am hoping these drives will be ok too. I am still lacking a card or 2 but they are rediculously cheap as well.

I intend to run just windows on the scsi and keep my 80 gig ide for storage. Pretty good solution to my present predicament really. I am using a udma 4 7200 rpm 15 gig drive at the moment which is painfully slow yet was the bees knees when I bought it brand new some time ago. I have a removable hard drive caddy installed so will keep the slow hard drive for storing a backup image of windows etc.

Oh well just wait now for the delivery - oh and get my hands on some scsi cards :) .
 

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