4th Disk FAIL

[rawsteel]

Hi all.

I am having real troubles with HDDs and I am desperate now. I used to have 2 Maxtor hdds in RAID 0, but later split them as I got constant problems of loosing the raid and had to remake it many times.

1 of these hdds died in short period (like 1 month)
then I ordered another one which also died
the 3rd one worked few years (so total 4 Maxtors 250GB disks , 2 died)

Then I upgraded my pc and Motherboard/CPU and bought new 1TB Samsung F1 drive. However I had started having problems with both my Maxtors AND my new Samsung drive (ocasionally lost clusters, bad sectors etc)

Then I both 2nd 1TB Samsung drive which worked for about 1 month and started blue screening me with error that points to faulty hdd. And now that new 1TB SAMSUNG drive died also

I just cant believe I can get so many bad hdds just by luck. I am trying to figure out what may cause that. Can something else be the cause of my problems. Bad cables/Bad motherboard/Bad PSU/ Bad anything......

I am desperate and dont know what to do. Icant even extract the data from my failed drive.

I upgraded my psu to a good one recently (OCZ Z series 650W) and the previous one was Chieftec 350W

my motherboard is MSI k9a2 cf

I have 4GB ram and I ran Memtest 86+ for 8 hours without problems

Can anyone help? Some ideas what can be the problem. I cant continue buy hard drives each month or 2

 

[gtvr]

How is your local power? Are you on a good surge protector?

Power dips can affect things, I have my good PC on a small battery backup - they make ones that look like large power strips, and will give you 5-10 minutes of runtime - great for preventing flickers/dips etc that can mess with mechanical devices like HDs.

Power supply of course could affect things - any problems since the new one?

 

[nforce4max]

The quality of Maxtor drives have declined since the lates 90s and haven't improved much. So Personally I suggest that you move to better brand which means WD but you need to keep them cool either than that you can use the other drives as bulk storage. Once I start getting issues with drives I dongrade their use to less important roles such as bulk or back up. I still keep vintage conner drives on hand. Do you maintain your drives physically such as cleaning dust of the body of the drive and monitoring temps? How many hours do you have logged use on them?

 

[rawsteel]

I am using the Samsungs lately and the NEW one failed. Btw I kept my case open in the last few months as I got symptoms and also I have a fan (side one ) that blows directly on the drive bay. My case is decent.

I am going to rma the failed drive but that's not my issue. My issue is - how will I ensure that the new one will last?

I was thinking of RAID1 but I dont want to spend MORE money now on that as I intend to upgrade to SSD when the new 25nm come. Hopefully by christmas.

The thing is I am not very sure SSDs are more reliable , I hear hight percentage of failures there also . Kinda running out of options.

 

[foscooter]

I know it happens, but I've never had a drive fail, in 13 years. Of course, I don't have a 13 year old drive now (it was a 2.5GB drive in 1997). I do have a couple of WD120GB, bought in 2008, manufactured in ???, and they are okay.

But I know drive failures happen. Especially in RAID. We are all suppose to get RAID Enabled (WD RE) drives, but who does that? Even I have 4 drives in 2 RAID 0 arrays. So I'll find out if RAID is a drive killer.

And yeah, you can hold out 'til XMas for a Intel G3 SSD. I love my iX25-V now, and can't wait to see the new ones!

 

[nforce4max]

Personally I don't bother with Samsung drives and don't got a Toshiba drive either got Quantum though (lol) but any way get the free version of HD tune and look under the health tab. Spin retry is a bad sign of spindle motor issue and relocated sector count is a very bad sign of bad media. If the numbers are all over the place between start up and run then ditch the drive. As for cooling is concerned I go to great lengths. As for WD RE drives they are fairly decent and the one I got performs fairly well even though I only got one copy.

One of my more interesting mods. My top drives are vintage IDE with on that gots 10k hours logged and no issues at all.
May do raid thanks to bulging pagefile use these days.