Bad drive, what shall I do with it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jon Davis
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J

Jon Davis

I have a bad hard drive. It's pretty new, about a year old, and the strange
thing is it mostly only seems to fail on my primary machine. On the other
hand, it is used pretty lightly on my other machine, so that might be the
only reason why it doesn't fail on the other machine.

It's a Western Digital WD Caviar WD1200 120GB drive, and it was supposed to
be really, really nice in its day w/ its 128MB cache. But the problem is my
computer keeps freezing up with the HD light solid. I reboot and sometimes
the BIOS POST check freezes on "Detecting IDE Drives".

Also, when I unplug the machine and take the drive out to examine it, even
after only about ten minutes or so of use, it is extremely hot to the touch,
much more so than any drives I've had in the past.

I don't know if it's a heat issue or if it's just a bad drive, but I don't
know what to do with it. I paid a good deal for this thing (I'm poor). I'm
now out of cash and I really want to get this computer upgraded to a larger
capacity and faster drive than the old 5200RPM drives I'm using on the same
machine (no problems with them).

Jon
 
Well crap. I took it out and the computer still froze while I was browsing
this NG! Now I get a BIOS error, "Secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor
cable installed"?? I've never seen this error before, despite using the old
drives for months. And I replaced the IDE cable with another, although both
are 40-pin cables.

Jon
 
Jon Davis said:
Well crap. I took it out and the computer still froze while I was browsing
this NG! Now I get a BIOS error, "Secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor
cable installed"?? I've never seen this error before, despite using the old
drives for months. And I replaced the IDE cable with another, although both
are 40-pin cables.

Jon
Click to expand...
Go to WDC website and check if its still under warranty. I'm thinking 2
years. Their software can check to see if its giving any S.MA.R.T. errors.
Last version I downloaded was 11.

Hope it doesn't come to this but when my last Maxtor drive went up in smoke
I tore it apart and retrieved 2 really powerful magnets out of it. Use them
to hang my florescent drop cord with.
Good Luck
 
40 pin yes, but 40 or 80 conductor??

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Tumppi
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Also, what is your case temp??

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Tumppi
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=================================================
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(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
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Matt said:
The OP's drive is 120 MEGABytes, not gigabytes.
Click to expand...

What, and tbe drive is ".. pretty new, about a year old"

Wonder where he bought a new 120NB drive a year ago...

Odie
 
Odie Ferrous said:
What, and tbe drive is ".. pretty new, about a year old"

Wonder where he bought a new 120NB drive a year ago...

Odie
Click to expand...
I was wondering about the 128mb cache. I have a 120GB drive I was thinking
was around a year old, turns out its just over 2. It has 2mb cache.
Makes me think of the Quantum drive I bought at a computer fair, a long time
ago. This "new" oem drive already had an O/S installed.
 
the drive should have a warranty of three years

if you are using a drive that is a year or newer you should only use
80 conductor cables. If not, your not getting your moneys worth. and
many will not be correctly recognized by the bios without it.
 
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