Is this HDD about to fail?

[1Avatar]

Heya -

I've recently (over the past week or so) heard rather loud clicking and almost the turning on/off power whine of a hard drive that I have for just random storage and small things that are non-critical. It has been acting up pretty bad in that when I'm transferring DV capture material from that drive to my RAID, or the otherway around, the drive "disappears" from windows and it says that the drive is no longer available or may have failed - it only reappears (at which point it comes back) after shutting down and powering up the machine again.

Am I looking at a failure that I shouldn't risk any data on the drive anymore or is there a way for me to diagnose things? it's an 80GB Maxtor ATA133 drive and O&O defrag software along with Norton Diskdoctor and other programs are registering that the drive is "healthy".

Help appreciated and thanks in advance.

[83racecrew]

IMO, yes you are looking at an iminent drive failure.....I can't say how iminent....I have had one make your described "noises" for a couple months b4 failure or a couple min. :(

[1Avatar]

Blah :( That's what I was afraid of - I had an old Seagate Barracuda that the head failed on - worst sound ever.

Any suggestions on a replacement P-ATA drive? I'm looking for room over speed because it's just a dump drive to throw whatever I'm downloading or whatever DV I'm bringing in or sending out to so it's not critical and never has much data on it for more than a day or two. I was thinking of picking up a Diamond Max Plus 9 120/200GB or a Baraccuda 120/200GB - opinions?

[Android Vageta]

Id go with the Diamond Max, good drives. Sucks to here about your failing drive.

[83racecrew]

I am not much of a Maxtor fan....I would go with the baraccuda.....2 guys with different opinions....your choice is really easy isn't it :lol: :lol:

Sorry I can't offer anything to back it up :(

[1Avatar]

haha it's funny - because I've had seagate and maxtor drives fail before and even now opinions are split.

I think I'll end up going for the Maxtor - my 250GB ones have held up to server duty so hopefully a smaller capacity one will do just as well - the price at a shop here in town is the same for drives at the same capacities, but the maxtor offers ATA133 which I might as well take advantage of with my Promise controller.

I really like my Barracuda master drive though - real quiet drive and pretty quick.

[83racecrew]

:thumb: on the 133...good point

[BB_One]

If you existing drive is SMART enable you can run an utiltiy that will diagnoze and possibly fix the problem on the drive...take a look here...

http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_hdd.html

http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_hdd2.html

I recently was eperiencing similar problem and ended up reformatting the drive and it seems ok , well for now.

As for new drive what the heck me 2 pennies worth, Seagate or Hitachi (formerly IBM drives - darn robust suckers)

[1Avatar]

If you existing drive is SMART enable you can run an utiltiy that will diagnoze and possibly fix the problem on the drive...take a look here...

http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_hdd.html

http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_hdd2.html

I recently was eperiencing similar problem and ended up reformatting the drive and it seems ok , well for now.

As for new drive what the heck me 2 pennies worth, Seagate or Hitachi (formerly IBM drives - darn robust suckers)

Hey - thanks for the suggestion on Active SMART - I have a copy of this and it was reporting fine - I reformatted the drive as well thinking it would solve the issue and even did a reformat on my system drive just to make sure it wasn't a virus or a glitch, but it's been persisting and becomign more frequent so that's the point at which I posted this thread - I think I "lost" the drive about a half dozen times today :( I'm just happy that I was able to get my stuff off it.

[liggyman]

did you check the power cable and IDE cable to the drive?

Maybe even try another set?

Could just be a connection cutting out somewhere.

[ASM1]

Hmm Seems to be about the time for Hard Drives to go byebye - I had exactly the same symptoms on my SATA Maxtor Diamondmax plus9 160GB :( I guess I shouldnt be surprised as this thing started acting up after my cheap cr@p psu died in october. I was getting the odd clunk, but then yesterday my PC just crashed and wouldnt let me back into XP. I have tried changing the SATA/Power cables round to no avail (The PSU is now an OCZ 470 which seems fine having been tested with a multimeter)

So I guess I am in the same boat as 1Avatar in asking what to replace it with..... Sorry for the thread hijack/butting in, but I didn't see the point in posting another "what harddrive?" thread when this one is equally relevant :thumb: . So far its between seagate and maxtor... must say I fancy a seagate, for a change... (I've had 3 maxtors, two are still going strong, one's a bit poorly lol)

Whats the consensus on the current WD drives ? I know the raptors are fast (was gonna get one to go with the Maxtor - have the maxtor as a data drive, with the OS on the Raptor will have to put that ambition on hold since my "big" drive is knackered) but havent heard much about their caviar range (last WD I had was a caviar 8.4GB 5400rpm in my old P2 :D)


any further thoughts, 1Avatar I feel your pain :cry: ... literally....

cheers

Andrew

[BB_One]

If in love with Seagate, sort of speak. You might want to futurproof yourself and zoomm in on their 7200.8 series not the 7200.7. 7200.8 offers NCQ support which even if your present mobo does not support, your next one will (might) ~ Seagate offers also the best warranty on the market these days 5 years. For the Maxtor series, look into the Max 10, if you fell like giving Maxtor another shot.

You might also investigate Hitachi T7K250 series, those are full SATA II compliant, and off course are backward compatible to Sata (I).