adriantr

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I've heard alot recently about friends hard drives "burning out". Is this an actual term for the hard drive failing in a particular way? or is it just a phrase that people are using to describe their hard drive failing?
 
Noobs all of you!!! 8)

A hard drive's motor can burn out but it doesn’t have a lot to do with age anymore. Manufacturing quality, day it was made, and random events will determine when a hard drive fails.

The motor can fail, the heads can fail, the disk can fail, the electronics can fail. But the burnout is the motor burning out (not from ambient heat sources such as inside the case (not usually!)
 

sailer

Splendid
Noobs all of you!!! 8)

Oh come on! Some people here have been around computers for decades. I've heard of problems with Maxtors, and occasionally with Raptors due to their high speeds, but motor burnout? Never heard that used before. Probably just a new local idiom to describe an old problem.
 

sailer

Splendid
Well I didnt mean it as an insult ;)

But no I have heard that phrase for ever, especialy when it was more common when hdds were in the 5400 rpm realm 10 years ago.

Ok, I'll accept that about the "noob all of you". The phrase you use might still be a local thing and not everyone has heard this description. I have heard of bearing failure, for instance, which causes the motor to freeze and might be the same thing (don't know for sure). Its still a very rare thing these days.

The most common problem for hard drives in my area has been power surges, often related to lightening strikes. Under normal circumstances, most hard drives are like the Ever Ready Bunny, they just keep going and going and going.
 

Doughbuy

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They might be referring to using a HDD for a prolonged time at a high temperature probably due to insufficent cooling. HDD's (as I know of, I could be wrong) don't have as fine temperature controls as other computer electronics, so they won't slow down or stop even if they are overheating (which is a problem for all components). So if a HDD dies that way... could it be burn-out? shrug

I did have a 200 gig Maxtor that died on me 2 or so years ago. I never figured out why, everytime I booted up, it was unrecognized. so I RMA'ed it, got a new 250 gig hdd, and I've been happy since... motor burnout? PCB board on fire? Regular burn-out? HDD's work in mysterious ways...
 

kamel5547

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I guess....

Easy way to get data off a HDD that doesnt spin.... freeze it for 12 hours. (if your lucky its not a peice that has physicaly broke.

I have great luck after only 4 hours or so :) I think this has only failed once for me.
 

maury73

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Motor burnouts are much more frequent than you might think!
When the heads crash on the disc surface at least 40% of the times it's due to a motor failure. Remember that the heads fly on the surface by aerodynamic forces.
 
Oh dont start wusy! Your all talking about facts that can easily be looked up with google in 10 seconds. This does not make you smarter then anyone else. And I am far from the morons that get their A+ right out of highschool and work for Best Buy thinking they know everything until someone asks where are the 3pin fan adapters, or do you have any type I network cards.

You cant judge someones knowledge on one answer. If I wanted to I could have easily googled the HOW of a HDD and posted 10 pages of technical jargon just as easily as I could have spellchecked this post.
 

Pain

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I've heard alot recently about friends hard drives "burning out". Is this an actual term for the hard drive failing in a particular way? or is it just a phrase that people are using to describe their hard drive failing?

It's just a phrase. If a disk stops working, it does me little good to try to decipher why it failed. All i care about is that it no workie, and I replace it. Crash, died, flamed, burned, burned out, crapped out, belly up, petered out, dirt nap. It all means I can't read my data.
 

blunc

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Hmmm, it started to look like you were throwing some jargon around there. I think until you perform a post mortem on a nonfunctional drive, it's a bit unrealistic to run about shouting "DRIVE BURNOUT...DRIVE BURNOUT!!!!".

Maybe the drive is just waiting for an "Attaboy, you're doing a fine job." for it to just start up again. ;-)
 

Pain

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Boo! If you know why It failed, you can try data recovery on it, like freezing it.

Yeah, whatever. :roll: I don't need to know why it failed and I can still try my bag of tricks to retreive the data.

The phrase to detail why it failed mean nothing to me. If you want to McGiver it to get the data, you go right ahead.

Hmmm, it started to look like you were throwing some jargon around there. I think until you perform a post mortem on a nonfunctional drive, it's a bit unrealistic to run about shouting "DRIVE BURNOUT...DRIVE BURNOUT!!!!".

Golf clap
 
Boo! If you know why It failed, you can try data recovery on it, like freezing it.

Yeah, whatever. :roll:

The phrase to detail why it failed mean nothing to me. If you want to McGiver it to get the data, you go right ahead.



Oh my bad. I was assuming data on a hard drive for most people is important and they want it back. And when it takes 10 seconds more to throw it in the freezer rather then the trash, I guess its just lazyness on your end. But your not in the computer field, so your data is your loss.
 

Pain

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Did I say the data wasn't important? No, I don't think I did. And, exactly how do you know exactly what field I am in?

Stop getting your knickers in a twist. I'm glad you know how to retrieve data. You aren't the only one with those mad computer skills you know.
 

Pain

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You'll notice that my first reply was not in response to you, but to the orignal poster.

I'm glad you are capable of retrieving peoples data. I'm sure they are very appreciative and compensate you accordingly.