hard drive noise

[Roscoe Pendoscoe]

A new Maxtor 160GB 7200 (3 weeks old) in a box I built about ayear ago
started making an alternating clicking noise, pretty loud, certainly
not disk activity yesterday.

Can't see it anywhere, DOS prompt included. Explorer, Powerdesk, or
Win disk management neither.

Didn't act strange leading up to the event.

DEAD?

Anyone had this type of failure, with the clicking first.

Win XP Pro sp/1
2.53 P4
1 x 40gb Maxtor
2 x 120gb Maxtors on raid ide

I think it's gone south, anybody have any hope for recovery?

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

A new Maxtor 160GB 7200 (3 weeks old) in a box I built about ayear ago
started making an alternating clicking noise, pretty loud, certainly
not disk activity yesterday.

Can't see it anywhere, DOS prompt included. Explorer, Powerdesk, or
Win disk management neither.

Didn't act strange leading up to the event.

DEAD?

Anyone had this type of failure, with the clicking first.

Win XP Pro sp/1
2.53 P4
1 x 40gb Maxtor
2 x 120gb Maxtors on raid ide

I think it's gone south, anybody have any hope for recovery?

Never ever buy a Maxtor drive, they have the life expectancy of a mayfly.
If you bought a retail drive then you will find a CDROM in the box that
has disk diagnostics on it, boot from the CDROM and run their tests. It
sounds like the drive is dead but Maxtor is going to want the results of
their diagnostic before they will RMA the drive.

 

[Roscoe Pendoscoe]

Never ever buy a Maxtor drive, they have the life expectancy of a mayfly.
If you bought a retail drive then you will find a CDROM in the box that
has disk diagnostics on it, boot from the CDROM and run their tests. It
sounds like the drive is dead but Maxtor is going to want the results of
their diagnostic before they will RMA the drive.

Their Maxblast lll/Powermax 4.09 newest DOES NOT even detect it. Sees
my other hard drives and channels. Gives me 004 code (not detected)

Changed the cable
deleted and re-installed the IDE channel it's on and nothing.

I have never had any Maxtor die on me so suddenly. I've had real good
luck with them actually. I have 3 computers I built in my office that
run 24-7 with2 20 GB 3 40GB's and 4 120GB's ranging from 3 years to 1
year and no problems whatsoever.

I admit I did not like it when they backed off from 3 to 1 year on the
warranty.

Which product have you had the best luck with? Some tell me same thing
about WD. (never buy Western Digital) you know.

I'll find out about RMA and post results so customer support can be
assessed. There is something to be said for good returns even though
it doesn't ease the loss of data. Luckily, I had JUST STARTED
transfering some unimportant data there that I can recover from
elsewhere.

Roscoe

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

My personal experience with Maxtor is a 50% failure right out of the box
or within a few days. Admittedly that wasn't a huge sample, it was 3
drives out of 6. However a couple of years ago I developed a video server
system and for that project we did extensive testing, running a
significant number of drives for a month doing continuous transfers 24/7.
The IBMs and Maxtors both had very high failure rates (the IBMs were the
notorious 75GXPs). The drives that came out best were Seagates which is
what we ended up shipping in the production systems. We didn't test
Western Digitals because there was some sort of incompatibility with our
drive carriers (we used T Win hot pluggable IDE chassis for that project).
My personal experience with Western Digital has been pretty good but not
perfect, I've had one WD drive fail on me.

 

[James Whitehead]

Every maxtor I have owned (3) have also died within 18 months. Seageate, WD,
IBM are still running after many years.

 

[~misfit~]

Every maxtor I have owned (3) have also died within 18 months.
Seageate, WD, IBM are still running after many years.

And I have Maxtors that have been running reliably for 5 years or more. I
have a 20GB ATA133 that I've had for a few years and it's never given me a
moment's trouble. I also have 2.4GB maxtor drives that I'm still using.
Experiences vary.

 

[Roscoe Pendoscoe]

And I have Maxtors that have been running reliably for 5 years or more. I
have a 20GB ATA133 that I've had for a few years and it's never given me a
moment's trouble. I also have 2.4GB maxtor drives that I'm still using.
Experiences vary.

Very true.

I have right now several Maxtors that run 24/7 and no problems. I did
have a 1.2GB Maxtor that started giving me some trouble, errors
constantly. You can imagine how long ago that was.

Put a few dozen in some computers I built for others and heard nothing
bad back.

Anyway, THIS ONE DID DIE, and I said I'd report back about exchange of
the drive. I have not received it yet but, the RMA process was the
LEAST PAINFUL I have EVER encountered. I called them Tuesday late in
the day and said I should have it within 4 biz days. I did not get
marched through a bunch of endless dialog and the tech support fellow
even greeted me by name as I have registered all my drives and the
minute I told him my phone number he KNEW who I was!

Also said Iwould get a new drive, not some recertified return of some
other failed drive. I requested that but was told they don't send
recertified drives in these type of circumstances. Another plus for
Maxtor in my experience.

We'll see how soon it arrives. I did an "advanced" RMA with a credit
card and have 30 days to get the bad one back to them.


Roscoe

 

[Roscoe Pendoscoe]

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 05:36:33 -0500, Roscoe Pendoscoe

Top posting just to get it over.

I got the NEW DRIVE( build date 12 days previous) the following
Tuesday, 6 biz days from the time I talked to tech.(from Malaysia)

Weird problem though that didn't affect the delivery time.

Maxtor siad in confirmation e-mail they sent VIA Airborne, I clicked
the link and it brought me to UPS tracking page. Airbonre said it was
not their number as did UPS.

FedEx Express delivered the thing!

Very confusing but I have it in and running fine.

I am considering buying 3 year warranty drives in the future.

Roscoe