The Curse Strikes

[xane]

They warned me but I didn't listen, and now the curse has struck ...

I got an IBM/Hitachi 180GXP 80Gb drive back in October last year, last night, for no reason at all, in the middle of a game, it blows up.

Resetting the PC and it makes a horrible scrunching noise, the sound of a disk head making deep grooves in the platters no doubt.

So, there you go. I now get to see if eBuyer will hold up their returns and give me another click-o-death drive for my sins.

 

[Shovel]

Oh dear

I was doing some hard drive hunting the other day actually, you can pick up an 80GB Western Digital Caviar Special Edition for ~£50 on Komplett these days. The 120GB (and maybe the 160) models are all sub £100 pounds now too. It's incredible how quickly the prices are pushed down.

 

[TdC]

wow! how's the sound? if it maxtor coffee grinder or more like WD's click'n'pause?

 

[Tom]

One of the prices (no pun intended) of cost-cutting, is reliability. I've been quite lucky and never had a HD failure ever. I've only ever used Seagate or IBM drives (apart from some piffling little Maxtor/WD drives back when I had my 486sx 25)

 

[MrBlack]

My broken IBMs tended to make a sort of Click-fwivvvvvvvvv noise (with the fwivv rapidly leaping to 3Hz over Super-sonic frequencies that make dogs jump.

Can;'t find it now, but there's a page somewhere on IBM's site with cute little mp3s of sounds made by HDs dying in different and amusing ways.

 

[wyrd_fish]

i've never had a HDD failure, but i'm sure i'm long overdue

 

[xane]

Can;'t find it now, but there's a page somewhere on IBM's site with cute little mp3s of sounds made by HDs dying in different and amusing ways.

Got it, it's all Hitachi now.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/know...4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument

Mine doesn't sound exactly like any of them, so I've done a little MP3 here (144KB) for you all

 

[Tom]

You should have a 12 month warranty, so I don't see a problem getting a replacement.

 

[xane]

You should have a 12 month warranty, so I don't see a problem getting a replacement.

I just checked the Hitachi support site and even though the drive is OEM it shows as being under warranty until June 2004, however I suspect eBuyer will simply send it off or ask me to do it rather than replace it directly (or refund me).

 

[Tom]

I doubt you'd get a refund, a replacement would be the best bet.

 

[RandomBastard]

I've had a dead maxtor that sounds like its playing the spoons on the desk. I think someone should record all the dieing/dead hd sounds and make tune

 

[xane]

The good news - I'm getting a replacement.
The not so good news - Its a Western Digital Caviar.

However, considering the IBM died, I've gone off them a bit. Anyone know what WD are like ?

 

[wyrd_fish]

from what i've heard WDs are quite good

although, i'm not sure where i picked that up...

 

[MrBlack]

WDs aren't bad. As far as I can work out, there's only 2 manufacturers left. If you go into a "Bob's High Street Computers" and buy the equivalent of a Tesco blue stripe no frills hard disk, you'll get a seagate or a WD, like as not.

Quantum and Maxtor are all under one roof with, perhaps, WD.
Hitachi, IBM and seagate do the rest, I think.

It's quite hard to find a _bad_ hard disk brand. It's like buying a TFT. even the best makes will have dead pixels. A drive will die or it won't.

Storage Review's comparison charts are starting to look pretty boring

 

[Sharma]

wow! how's the sound? if it maxtor coffee grinder or more like WD's click'n'pause?

Oi, Maxtor havent given me any trouble at all.

However I do remember my other computer before my current one, think it was a power surge or something but the hard disk in the computer decided it would blow up and a bunch of other componenets went with it, thankfully my Maxtor drive was untouched, woo.

 

[nath]

I've got a WD Caviar, and it's never given me any hassles (touch wood). Also, when I was looking in to buying hard drives (before I got this one) I'm sure I remember reading in lots of places that the WD Caviar is the dogs danglies.

 

[Escape]

There used to be an excellent site called 'storagereviews.com', which had good reviews for WD Caviers. I've owned one myself and had no problems with it.