Keep having to replace Harddrive

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traceout

traceout

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May 3, 2012
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I've had my rig for about a year now and about 2 months ago my hard drive went bad, so I replaced it. Then in a month that one had to replaced as well. I thought maybe I had bad luck and replaced it and now the one I currently have has gone bad. Is there something that could be making my Hard drives go bad?!?

Intel® Core™ i5-2500 Processor (4x 3.30GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 - 2GB - Single Card
epower 700W
8 GB DDR3-1333 Memory Module - Corsair XMS3 Dominator
Gigabyte GA-H67MA


Thanks from <---------------------------THis GUy

 
Solution
CaedenV
a few thoughts:
1) as mentioned by serra, heat can kill a drive prematurely... but it would have to be really hot, as in 70+c, which is normally not an issue for most traditional desktop cases. A 'normal' operating temperature should be somewhere in the 35-55c range.

2) Power supplies can kill HDDs fairly easily. I am not familiar with epower, but looking a little online it does not look like it is what I would consider a 'name brand' reliable power supply. But again, I could be wrong. See if your motherboard has a utility that can monitor the powersupply voltages and see if they are remaining true at both idle, and at load. Cheap power supplies can over volt at idle, and then undervolt when under a load, and either of these...
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CaedenV

CaedenV

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Jun 14, 2011
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a few thoughts:
1) as mentioned by serra, heat can kill a drive prematurely... but it would have to be really hot, as in 70+c, which is normally not an issue for most traditional desktop cases. A 'normal' operating temperature should be somewhere in the 35-55c range.

2) Power supplies can kill HDDs fairly easily. I am not familiar with epower, but looking a little online it does not look like it is what I would consider a 'name brand' reliable power supply. But again, I could be wrong. See if your motherboard has a utility that can monitor the powersupply voltages and see if they are remaining true at both idle, and at load. Cheap power supplies can over volt at idle, and then undervolt when under a load, and either of these problems can damage parts (not just the HDD).

3) It could very well be dumb luck. Most HDDs die within the first 2-4 months if they are bad, but if a drive last past the 4 month mark you can generally rest easy until the drive is 3-5 years old if under regular use. Perhaps you had a fluke drive failure after a year, and these replacements are simply bad drives (many companies will send less than optimal parts to customers when fulfilling an RMA, and once you RMA it can sometimes take 2-3 tries before you get something good).

So check your airflow, temps, and voltages, and then get back to us.

what brand drives are these?
 
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Solution
dalauder

dalauder

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^+1 CaedenV pretty much covered everything I was thinking.

@CaedenV, you misunderstood me in that thread that ended up about poor, education, & credit. I was saying that acting like improving your life is easy was incorrect (posted by another user). It takes lots of time, hard work, , sometimes moving, and sometimes luck.
 
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4745454b

4745454b

Titan
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My uncle works for THE Post Office, the one in DC. He told me a story very similar to this. (Not him, a co worker) He told the coworker to check the voltages. The 5V rail was at 7.something. Replaced the PSU and everything was fine. I'd start with the PSU. Get a good one.
 
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tigerwild

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Your pics show that your power supply is BAD, and probably killing more than just your hard drives.

You are loooking for voltage fluctuations of more than 10%. This means your 5 volt will never get outside the range of 4.6-5.4 volts, and your 12 volt will stay within 10.9-13.7 volts. Your 12 volt rail reports as just 2.8 volts!!!!

If your motherboard/power supply combination are undervoltaged regularly it will cause premature failure of parts. Other sources of the undervoltage issue can be: if you aren't using higher end components with large capacitors for 'hold up' times in the power supply or a good Uninteruptible Power Supply (UPS) you can experience these part killing 'brownouts' if you are getting brownouts from your electrical company.

High end motherboards are coming a long way toward cleaning up the power of shoddy power supplies, but they can only do so much. Replace your power supply before you loose everything.
 
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RetiredChief

RetiredChief

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Feb 22, 2007
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epower PSU are best used as a door stop, not in a computer.
Look at getting a higher quality PSU, even if it is NOT the cause.

tigerwild - His snap shot does NOT = Bad PSU, it means he has a software program that is incorrectly displaying his voltages. He could not turn the computer on with voltages as shown. Also the specs for + 5V is 4.75V -> 5.25V and for +12 V it is 11.4V to 12.6 V

Did not see the ver of HWMonitor, the newest one is 1.19 (may or may not help), but need to find a program that displays the voltages correctly. Most MBs have a utility that will show the voltages, also other 3rd party monitoring programs.

Once you find a program that is showing the voltages correctly, ie NOT out in LEFT field. then look at both Idle voltages (in spec) and the look at the voltages when running prime95. Prime95 will load the +12 V rail and Check the CPU and Memory. Can also run furmark (in a window) to load the +12V rail.

Added: I've noticed several models of HDDs that have VERY bad reviews, One had a 40+ dissatisfation % - OUCH.
For example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136767&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo
 
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CaedenV

CaedenV

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Oh no problem, the rant was nothing personal against you. I just know some people (related to me, as well as a lot of my old high school friends) that say the same thing you did at the beginning of the post and it really sets me off. I could see by the context of the rest of your post that it was not exactly what you meant, but so many people just get to that first part of 'life is not fair so I am going to pout in a corner' instead of just living the life that they want. As with all things on forums, it was mostly to blow off steam on something that has provided me with a fair share of person angst.
Maybe it is wrong of me to think that 'If I can do it then surely anyone could do it', but I know that there are plenty of people much smarter than me, and with much better life circumstances who just fall apart when faced with real life. There are also a lot of people much dumber than me, and with harder life situations who are doing better than me; So I have taken a stance of if someone is whining then give them a kick in the pants. I may offend them, but Ive gotten to the point where I don't really care about offending people, and I figure that giving them a good chiding could only help.

Anywho, I suppose that this has absolutely nothing to do with the OP in this thread :)
 
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CaedenV

CaedenV

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+1

Those voltages are bogus on the screen shot and entirely not helpful, but replace the power supply with something reliable anyways even if it is not the power supply at fault (really, it is only ~$50-70, and most quality power supplies will last for several builds, which is more than reasonable for a bit of piece of mind). I had one power supply that tested well on voltage, but would kill things due to spikes and drops when there were major power demand changes (found out by borrowing my dad's o-scope and playing around for a bit), so even if your steady voltage is fine, avoid cheap power supplies like the plague. that single bad power supply burned through 3-4 motherboards and several other parts, and I had no idea that the PS was the issue. But we all learn somehow :)

ya, even Seagate (my personal favorite brand) is very much hit and miss. Pick any brand and there is at least one lemon drive in their lineup. Some skus are rock solid with very small failure rates, while others are 50% failures, or even more. Check your specific drive model online for reviews and see if yours is a lemon, or generally one that is reliable, and never buy a HDD that does not have 100+ reviews on it already.
 
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ram1009

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I heard that both Seagate & WD were re-branfing some Samsung HDDs to keep up with demand as a resuld of the floods in Tailand. Looks like it will be a while before they regain their credibility.
 
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ram1009

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I've been using WD for close to 20 years and recently had my first data loss so I can't complain. Fortunately, I bought a couple of 1TB Caviars just before the floods because I wanted to set up a RAID but was unable to in XP. So, I have a couple of new HDDs taking up space for a future build. Sorry for all the spelling errors.
 
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RetiredChief

RetiredChief

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LOL - You're talking the the "king" of spelling errors.
HDDs are starting gome down, at least when on sale.
WD - I limit to the Blacks, I do not buy the Blue, or green models. Currently I still have a WD black sata III in use that I bought when they first came out. I Know SATA III is just a marketing tool for HDDs.
Seagate, if memory serves my right are discontinuing their "green models" as they stated just not worth it to buy - lower performance and very little operating cost savings.

I'm also OK for the near term on HDDs. Have a couple in enclosures that I could use in a pinch, Plus a number of 2 1/2 in drives.

I'm Thinking of getting the seagate hybred 2 1/2 inch drive (750 Gig w/8 gig internal SSD) for one of my older laptops to replace an older SSD.
 
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dalauder

dalauder

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The Spinpoint F3 1TB is definitely my favorite hard drive. I've bought 7 and kept 4 for myself. One does seem to be dying now in a RAID array I've got. So I need to backup, tear that array apart, and start from scratch--just need a free weekend (it's RAID 5). Still, I'm very happy with the price/performance.

Some of the newer HDDs do seem to be beating these in speed now, but not by much.
I don't believe in buying mechanical HDDs for laptops. Laptops move, HDDs are not made to move. So I like to stick to SSDs for laptops unless I already have an HDD sitting around. Besides, 120GB SSDs are only like $90 lately.
 
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CaedenV

CaedenV

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Agreed, F3 is a great drive, along with the larger F4 drives. Before the floods hit I was about to jump on a set of F4 drives for a RAID 4/5 array, but wanted to wait a week just in case anything went on sale or rebate.... I was terribly wrong lol So instead I upgraded my tower, which was pretty damn awesome (and cheaper than 4 F4 drives at $280 each, which is what they jumped up to lol).

Not everything that Sammy makes is gold, but they have some great drives :)
I also love Seagate as they are dirt cheap, but seem to last forever (at least for me anyways, I have a 4-5 year old 1TB seagate in my system now), but they are not the best performers on the market, just good cheap storage.
 
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