Sskafar

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Feb 26, 2003
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I have been having a problem with one of my hard drives. I am running a Raid O on a Rocket Raid controller since I have built my system two years ago. They are two IBM 45 GIG ATA100 drives. I have had no problems at all until now. Every so often the drive will start running and making a repeating chirping sound that goes in three counts with a click. Seems like the drive is trying to set itself or soemthing. When this happens my entire system locks and I cannot do anything until this stops, sometime it last a minute, sometimes five. At first I thought it was Diskeeper running in the backround But I unistalled it and it still happens periotically. Otherwise the system boots and runs fine. I ordered a 60gig MAxtor drive to start backing up all my data in case of failure.

What do you guys think?
 

rmar

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Feb 13, 2003
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Around the fall of 2000 I read a lot of good reviews of the IBM Deskstar drives. I bought one 75GXP - 45 gig (DTLA – 7045) installed it and became a big fan because of their speed. I also picked up 2 other Dell computers and they had the same drives and was very happy with the performance. So I started populating all the rest of my computers with more Deskstars (which totaled 2 computers – one with two 75GXP 45 gig (DTLA – 7045) and one with a 60GXP - 60 gig (IC35L060AVER07) with them until the fall of 2001. I was a sucker!

Right after I picked up my last drive – the 60 gig, my Deskstar (aka - Deathstar) trouble started. All but one drive has had the same problem that you described. I am so ticked because I thought the 60GXP would be a improvement, but to no avail it did the same thing a couple of weeks ago. I know that these drives run very hot, so my guess is that the heat is killing them.

You can try to fixed the problem by running the IBM (now Hitachi - IBM unloaded their crappy HardDrive operations to them) Drive Fitness Test (DFT). You can download it at www.hgst.com. What you describe are bad sectors and the DFT will write to the drives bios to skip those sectors. Keep in mind , the DFT may make you wipe the drive clean in order to fix it. In some cases, the sectors are so bad that the DFT is not able to fix it and then you may have to RMA the drive if it’s still under warranty. I ‘ve already RMA’ed 3 drives and will be sending this recent one to them because the DFT could not fix this one.

Good Luck and I hope you won’t loose any Data.
 

Sskafar

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Thanks for the informatative reply! I have beeen going nuts wondering what the hell is triggering it to start running like that. I am going to check out that utility that you mentioned. I did notice that alot of times when I was running diskeeper it would stop and make me run chkdsk in order to continue. I guess this was do to the bad sectors as you mentioned. Once I get my Data backed up I am going to look into some new drives. What Brand drives did you end up switching too?

Thanks again

Scott
 

rmar

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Feb 13, 2003
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The one Dell that had a warranty replacement, Dell replaced it with a Western Digital Caviar. I am not sure what the exact Model is because I don’t have the computer anymore, my friend has it now. He's been constantly running it and has been working for a 1 ½ years with out any problems. When I had it, I noticed that the drive wasn’t as fast as the Deathstar. But I’ve heard that these drives are reliable.
FYI – One intriguing development at Western Digital is that if you are willing to go with a Serial ATA controller– Western Digital is coming out with a 10,000 RPM Serial ATA Drive – 1.2 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), 5.2 milliseconds (ms) average seek time and a five-year warranty. Not sure the real reliability and what the price would be – but very intriguing.

On my other computers, the RMA replacement drives I received, I unloaded except for one (they sent me a 180GXP – this drive is physically different from the other GXP’s and the service guy at Hitachi told me that they are modeled off their SCSI drives and are tougher – So I figure why not and give it a try because I like their speed). I ended up replacing the other drives with a couple of Maxtor Drives- because I’ve had good luck with them.


The first Maxtor drive I bought is a DiamondMax Plus D740X (6L040J2). I found it to be kind of noisy - It makes a unbalanced vibration sound. But it has been working for a year now with out any trouble. The second Maxtor Drive I bought is the DiamondMax Plus 9 (6Y080P0). It has been running constantly for 4 months now. This drive runs quiet because of the fluid damper and has an 8 mb cache buffer. I do a lot of Database work and in my view both the drives are not as fast as the Deathstars. But, I really like the DiamondMax Plus 9 – it’s quiet and is close to the speed as the Deathstars.

I hope this info will help – Good luck.
 

rmar

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Feb 13, 2003
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I had forgotten to mention one more thing. The Maxtor warranties just recently change the length for only 1 year. But, you can still find retail boxes out there still offering it at 3 years. When you decide which brand to get and you decide on Maxtor, them fast, because I don’t know how long the supplies of the 3 year warranty boxes will last.

As far as the Warranties on the Western Digitals – I am unclear of how long they are.


Good Luck again!