another dead HDD :(

[Sirber]

My WDC 200GB just died. Everything was fine until XP told me write errors. Now, no more drive. BIOS reconize it, XP detect new HW but freeze from time to time and never install it.

Thank god the drive had no data except datas from another disc, which I was backuping the datas from to format it later.

Man... this is so fragile :confused:

[SeeMoreDigital]

Jeez.... you're not having much luck are you!

How was the 200GB HDD connected... IDE, RAID, FireWire, USB2, SATA etc?

[Sirber]

IDE as master

Summer been quite hot, maybe it died from heating.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Indeed.... My 24/7 Media Server PC over-heated and crashed last Fri/Sat :scared:

[Sirber]

sorry to hear.

heat is evil, I ran my WS wit hthe case open with a fan blowing directly in it coz the machine was jaming to death.

[rkr1958]

Sirber, how many harddrives have you lost?

I'm currently running with four internal (120GB IDE WD, 250GB IDE WD, 160GB SATA Seagate & 160GB SATA WD) harddrive. Over the last three years I've lost three drives, 60GB Maxtor IDE (refrub from a defective return under warrenty), 45GB IBM IDE and a 160GB SATA Seagate. The only loss the surprised me was the Seagate, I thought they were more reliable.

Anyway, I didn't know if my drive losses were bad luck, high temperatures or typical given the number and density of intenal drives. I have an ANTEC quite case with 2 x 120mm case fans. CPU temperatures, even under load, rarely get above 115 degrees F. My harddrives will get warm to the touch, but never hot.

[Sirber]

I lost at home:

40GB Maxtor slim (within 3 months)
60GB WDC
80GB WDC (not dead, but dead noisy)
200GB WDC (this morning)

What's still holding:
80GB WDC (currently unplugged)
80GB Seagate (currently unplugged)
200GB Maxtor
300GB Seagate

I lost at work:
2x 40GB Maxtor slim within 3 months

[LAIN]

hehe, welcome in the club,

last year i lost 3 brand new maxtor 160 gb ata-133 in the same month, and the refurb work great thought. I've also lost one maxtor 60 gb one month after i've bought it.

Now i run my ws on a 120 gb maxtor ata, i have a nas in raid 5 4 x 250 gb WD ata, and the refurb 160 gb are currently laying down on my desk ... waiting that i'll finish to set up few computer to host them!!!

[UofC]

I lost at home:

40GB Maxtor slim (within 3 months)
60GB WDC
80GB WDC (not dead, but dead noisy)
200GB WDC (this morning)

What's still holding:
80GB WDC (currently unplugged)
80GB Seagate (currently unplugged)
200GB Maxtor
300GB Seagate

I lost at work:
2x 40GB Maxtor slim within 3 months

I suggest you stop touching computers. Some people just have the touch of death.

From time to time I do and during that time I stop touching any hardware.

In about 20 years, I can only recall 4 hard drives fail. Two of them I dropped on the floor.

[Sirber]

those death are over the years... except the 200GB which is still fresh :)

[CWR03]

I make sure to always have airflow across all HDD's, and haven't had a failure in quite some time. I did have a Maxtor tucked away in a bad spot with no flow, and at one point it got so hot it seized and quit responding. At times it was almost too hot to touch. I put a self-adhesive cooler on it and it stays only warm.

Vantec HDC-502A Hard Drive Cooler (http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3972938;jsessionid=5j5ndUhd0EILA47GbxyF0g**.node2?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG)

I don't know if this is the same as mine, which came with self-adhesive heat transfer tape.

[Sirber]

nice, my big mistake was I think during winter I used slow fan speed to reduce noise. I let it running that way until my PC crashed coz of the heat. Now I'm at full fan speed but maybe it was too late :(

[BillB]

Heat is the #1 killer of HD's as you well know. I have a Promise PCI Ide card with 4, 320 GB WD HD's and 1 250 GB as the normal slave, with a fast 80 GB WD as master. I went to Rad Shk and bought the biggest internal fans I could find, mounted them to the power supply and one was 120 volt which runs off of house current. The 120 volt fan gives much more CFM than the 12v ones. I also opened up lots of the vent holes on my case. Anything helps. Best is to set up an old system as a server, with nothing but fans and HD's, and jump that to the working system. The new 500 GB and 750 Gb HD's run hot, and requirer lots of air. My dream system would be a Xenon, 300, 8 GB Ram, 8 500 GB HD's and super cooling, with a easy opening case for cleaning. Dirt kills HD's!
Gee, all this to watch old movies and listen to old records!
BillB

[Pookie]

Those under-the-drive fans as CWR03 pointed to are amazing - cooled my main HD by 14 degrees C. Just be aware that the design can make it more difficult to physically re-install your drive.

You can get around the problem by using a 3.5 to 5.25 drive bracket - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817991002

and re-installing your drive in a 5.25 slot.

[BigDid]

What's still holding:
80GB WDC (currently unplugged)
80GB Seagate (currently unplugged)
200GB Maxtor
300GB Seagate

Living in a hot country, I have always had some fans to give air flow on the HDs. I still have old small drives working: 3Gb, 6.4Gb, 20Gb as spares or for files backups. Maybe they were more robust in the old days :)
Don't you "civilized" people have insurance for any situations :D
Thumbs up (or whatever appropriate expression in this situation).

Did

[boondocks]

Ever since the first 8088 w/10! whole Meg came out I've never had a drive fail. -knockonwood-
boondocks

[shunx]

I've had two disks fail so far this year. I also try to replace old drives after a few years.

[Sirber]

I'm building a NAS with 3x300GB in RAID5 software.
I hope I will have enough space (600GB) and security :)

[UofC]

Note that rebuilding a RAID5 software after a failure will take ages.

[Sirber]

Note that rebuilding a RAID5 software after a failure will take ages.I read a comparison and it's almost as fast as HW. also, the dual p3 450Mhz is dedicated to that.

[AVIL]

@sirber

You can try to recover the disk. I`ve used this software:

http://www.salvationdata.com/hsr3.0_detail.htm

It's free and there is a bootable cdrom version too in the same web.

You must install damaged drive as master in IDE 1 and operates with his own boot.

I've tried it with 2 HDD and I've recovered 1 (50% efective).

Good luck.

[UofC]

I read a comparison and it's almost as fast as HW. also, the dual p3 450Mhz is dedicated to that.

Wait a week and I can give you my real world results.

A 3x250GB RAID5 SW took over 7 hours to repaire a drive but the data still worked with one missing (2 out of 3).

The speed was 3% slower then HW RAID0 in transcoding.

[Sirber]

@AVIL

thanks but there's nothing to recover :)