The life of a hard drive?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

"news-text.dsl.pipex.com" <Reply to Group> wrote in message
news:4087fd56$0$26195$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
> "Ablang" <HilaryDuff133@ablang-duff.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns94CABAF0655004132004@195.131.52.135...
> > How long are hard drives supposed to last anyway (in your
> > experience)? I know some probably have an MTBF of about 30 years, but I
> > had a WD 6.x GB HD that just became as good as dead a few weeks ago (too
> > many bad sectors; scandisk ran forever).
> >
> > So tell me about the bad ones in your life?
> >
> > --
> > "All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner."
> > -- Red Skelton
>
> My Fujitsu MPG3409AH E died on Sunday. "Primary Master Drive Fails" after
a
> pleasant BSOD in XP - haven't had one of them since Win 95.


I once had a hardrive which failed on a Wednesday.


>
> Fortunately, was recoverable and managed to retrieve my files today after
a
> *lot* of effort searching for software to help.
> http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
> Did the job with a boot disk scan finding no errors - even though XP still
> ran ChkDsk and tidied it up.
>
> Still going to return the thing though. Don't trust it not to fail again.
>
> Nick
> Hoping the disk doesn't die again before I can get that 8 Gig of Buffy on
to
> the new, bigger, better Barracuda 160gig.
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

On 22 Apr 2004 16:15:21 -0700, beerstud948@yahoo.com (Dalboz) wrote:

| On the subject, what would the symptoms of a hard drive failure be?
| Would the system randomly rebooting itself be an indication?
|
| I ask this because I was having a problem with my old computer
| rebooting itself randomly, even during Windows booting. It wasn't a
| virus because I run Liveupdate on Norton Antivirus everyday and do a
| full system scan once a week. I built a new computer but kept the old
| hard drives, and it wouldn't boot into Windows properly. It would
| reboot itself. I tried to repair Windows and it would get to the same
| place every time and then reboot. So I formatted the partition and
| reinstalled Windows and it worked fine. For a while (it's been less
| than a week since I finally got it up and running again). Last night,
| while playing "The Longest Journey," it rebooted. Now I have
| encountered some errors in running this game, but this concerned me.
| The drive has seemed to be running slowly and I have abused it over
| the last less-than-two years. It's a 120 GB Western Digital Caviar IDE
| drive (5200 RPM, I believe). My computer rarely ever goes off, and I
| run Folding@Home in the background constantly (distributed computing
| program, so it does access the drive). Could this drive be going bad,
| and would randomly rebooting be a symptom?

Could be, but maybe not. If you're running WinXP, go to Control Panel
> System > Advanced tab. Under Startup and Recovery, click on the
Settings button. Under System failure, uncheck "Automatically
restart." OK and get out. You'll have to reboot.

The true problem is often masked when the system is set to restart
automatically when something happens. There are several things that
can cause this type of problem. One is a failing PSU. Another is
overheating. Yet another is RAM. Or it could be something as simple
as a corrupted driver.

As for your WD hard drive, go to

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#windlg

and download DLG Diagnostics to run from DOS or Win DLG to run from
Windows.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 02:55:27 GMT: written by Larc
<larc-news@jupiterlink.net>:

~snip~

>The true problem is often masked when the system is set to restart
>automatically when something happens. There are several things that
>can cause this type of problem. One is a failing PSU. Another is
>overheating.

I've encountered both of these.

I would have the random reboots while playing Quake and it was a Power
Supply problem. I upgraded to a 300W Enermax and have had nary a
problem.

As for overheating, that would cause my system to have a hardware
failure and now that I have the sides of the case off, I haven't had a
problem. I'm just waiting for the new case to arrive.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

Larc <larc-news@jupiterlink.net> wrote in message news:<e30h80lfge5n48ht5bpv5992r6frskorgt@4ax.com>...
> On 22 Apr 2004 16:15:21 -0700, beerstud948@yahoo.com (Dalboz) wrote:
>
> | On the subject, what would the symptoms of a hard drive failure be?
> | Would the system randomly rebooting itself be an indication?
> |
> | I ask this because I was having a problem with my old computer
> | rebooting itself randomly, even during Windows booting. It wasn't a
> | virus because I run Liveupdate on Norton Antivirus everyday and do a
> | full system scan once a week. I built a new computer but kept the old
> | hard drives, and it wouldn't boot into Windows properly. It would
> | reboot itself. I tried to repair Windows and it would get to the same
> | place every time and then reboot. So I formatted the partition and
> | reinstalled Windows and it worked fine. For a while (it's been less
> | than a week since I finally got it up and running again). Last night,
> | while playing "The Longest Journey," it rebooted. Now I have
> | encountered some errors in running this game, but this concerned me.
> | The drive has seemed to be running slowly and I have abused it over
> | the last less-than-two years. It's a 120 GB Western Digital Caviar IDE
> | drive (5200 RPM, I believe). My computer rarely ever goes off, and I
> | run Folding@Home in the background constantly (distributed computing
> | program, so it does access the drive). Could this drive be going bad,
> | and would randomly rebooting be a symptom?
>
> Could be, but maybe not. If you're running WinXP, go to Control Panel
> > System > Advanced tab. Under Startup and Recovery, click on the
> Settings button. Under System failure, uncheck "Automatically
> restart." OK and get out. You'll have to reboot.
>
> The true problem is often masked when the system is set to restart
> automatically when something happens. There are several things that
> can cause this type of problem. One is a failing PSU. Another is
> overheating. Yet another is RAM. Or it could be something as simple
> as a corrupted driver.
>
> As for your WD hard drive, go to
>
> http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#windlg
>
> and download DLG Diagnostics to run from DOS or Win DLG to run from
> Windows.

Well, I'll run the diagnostics when I get home from work. I think my
PSU may be slightly under powered, even though it is new and 400
Watts. I checked this site http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
and found that with my hardware, 400 Watts isn't quite enough if it
runs everything at once at full power. But I need to check the memory,
because I'm using 1 GB of new Kingston RAM. But an interesting thing
here: I checked the event viewer at the time that the reboot occurred
and it showed a restart from a bugcheck (I don't have the code at the
moment; it's on my home computer; and I'm not a programmer, so I don't
necessarily understand the codes), but using Google, it seem that it
may have something to do with antivirus software. Upon further
inspection, it seems that the most common things with most rebooting
problems was a combination of antivirus software and an nVidia
graphics card. Could Norton Antivirus (2003) possibly be grabbing the
Detonator drivers for some reason?

As for overheating, it's possible, but not likely. While my system is
running hot (CPU 50C, motherboard 36-40C; I'm currently trying to fix
this problem), the computer was running over the weekend without
rebooting and it was running way hotter (CPU 60C; motherboard 45C)than
that before I turned the chasis fan around (for some reason it was
blowing into the case) and replaced the CPU fan. I suppose the GeForce
FX 5950 could be raising the ambient temperature in the case, but
after the reboot I checked temp, and it was still cooler than it had
been over the weekend.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

On 23 Apr 2004 16:08:18 -0500, someone@somewhere.com (Dalboz) wrote:


>I've got a 400W PSU. It should probably be enough, but checking the
>power demand website revealed that it might not be. I'll probably try
>to replace it, although I don't think that's really the problem.

Forget about what that website claimed, I have several systems it claims
need over 500W, running from good name-brand 300-420W power supplies.

The key is not that your unit is labeled as 400W, but whether you can
trust the manufacturer's rating.

 

[Hunter]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

Ablang wrote
> How long are hard drives supposed to last anyway

while you didn't ask...
one strategy I've employed is to always have critical data on an
external usb drive in addition to burning a CD once a month for items
I absolutely cannot live without if I had to install a new HD and
reinstall the OS

now having said that, I also use tools like Diskkeeper 8 and Spinrite
in fact, there is a new Spinrite 6 just about to be released from
grc.com that will work with NTFS and just about anything else.

...because a HD may be bad immediately and what you perceive as a new
drive may in fact have 1 or 2 years of life already on the components,
it may look new to you but it may have included previously used parts