Harddrives die

[philo]

It's nuts...
I built a machine for a friend of mine ...maybe 3 years ago...
It now has a total of 5 drives...some internal, some external...
and they seem they keep dying within 2 - 9 months.
All have been replaced under warranty
and none of the replacements have had any problems...some are over 2 year
old now.
I've used maxtor, western digital and seagate the latest has been a month
old seagate baracuda which is now the 5th drive that's gone.
as a precaution i even replaced the PS on the machine...but one has dies
since then.This seems to defy the odds!

BTW: each problem was a verifiable warranty problem...
but it's beyond anything i've ever experienced

 

[Al Smith]

It's nuts...

I built a machine for a friend of mine ...maybe 3 years ago...
It now has a total of 5 drives...some internal, some external...
and they seem they keep dying within 2 - 9 months.
All have been replaced under warranty
and none of the replacements have had any problems...some are over 2 year
old now.
I've used maxtor, western digital and seagate the latest has been a month
old seagate baracuda which is now the 5th drive that's gone.
as a precaution i even replaced the PS on the machine...but one has dies
since then.This seems to defy the odds!

BTW: each problem was a verifiable warranty problem...
but it's beyond anything i've ever experienced

Just sounds like bad luck to me. You keep buying defective drives.
That the replacements work shows that there is nothing wrong with
your computer.

 

[johns]

I'm seeing a bit of the same. Lost 7 drives in one lab
.... all within a few days of each other. Then lost 2
SATA drives ( Maxtor ), both only a few weeks old.
I'm pretty sure, somebody in China has dropped
quality control in the dirt. I'm seeing kind of the same
thing with mobos. I've been through a bunch of RMAs
this year .. new boards right out of the box failing.
Even worse with new power supplies. I won't buy
another power supply from Mwave.com. They come
in DOA, or they immediately blow the mobo. Them
furriners don't work by the same standards we do.
They throw stuff together, and if it works, fine. If not,
screw you! I won't touch a VIA chipset again. And
I'm sure not going to buy another ASUS mobo. I just
toss them now .. warranty or not. I simply can't afford
the loss of productivity they represent. Maxtor is also
on a very short leash with me. If you buy a 1 year
warranty drive from them, I promise you it will fail
about 2 days after the warranty runs out. Profits from
outsourcing is going to cost these clowns their reputations.

johns

 

[Will Dormann]

It's nuts...
I built a machine for a friend of mine ...maybe 3 years ago...
It now has a total of 5 drives...some internal, some external...
and they seem they keep dying within 2 - 9 months.

What temp are they running at? under 45C would be best.

 

[philo]

Just sounds like bad luck to me. You keep buying defective drives.
That the replacements work shows that there is nothing wrong with
your computer.

Yes, I guess I was just venting a bit. The machine is used by a
professional photographer who now has over 1Tb of HD's .
He now knows what the word "backup" means !

 

[philo]

What temp are they running at? under 45C would be best.

Truth is i did not take a reading, they are all warm to the touch...
but not hot

 

[philo]

I'm seeing a bit of the same. Lost 7 drives in one lab
... all within a few days of each other. Then lost 2
SATA drives ( Maxtor ), both only a few weeks old.
I'm pretty sure, somebody in China has dropped
quality control in the dirt. I'm seeing kind of the same
thing with mobos. I've been through a bunch of RMAs
this year .. new boards right out of the box failing.
Even worse with new power supplies. I won't buy
another power supply from Mwave.com. They come
in DOA, or they immediately blow the mobo. Them
furriners don't work by the same standards we do.
They throw stuff together, and if it works, fine. If not,
screw you! I won't touch a VIA chipset again. And
I'm sure not going to buy another ASUS mobo. I just
toss them now .. warranty or not. I simply can't afford
the loss of productivity they represent. Maxtor is also
on a very short leash with me. If you buy a 1 year
warranty drive from them, I promise you it will fail
about 2 days after the warranty runs out. Profits from
outsourcing is going to cost these clowns their reputations.

Well I sure have done a lot of drive warranty over the past year or two.
Gone are the days when you could install a harddrive and not even have to
worry about it for 5 years!

As far as motherboards...although I have not had any major problems with
ASUS, I see nothing particularly special about them to justify all the
raves I hear about.
My main machine uses an ASUS with on-board video which is just as bad as
any other cheapie mobo. OTOH: a few years back I built a machine with a
very low priced ECS board and it's never had any problems.

 

[Grendel]

It's nuts...
I built a machine for a friend of mine ...maybe 3 years ago...
It now has a total of 5 drives...some internal, some external...
and they seem they keep dying within 2 - 9 months.
All have been replaced under warranty
and none of the replacements have had any problems...some are over 2 year
old now.
I've used maxtor, western digital and seagate the latest has been a month
old seagate baracuda which is now the 5th drive that's gone.
as a precaution i even replaced the PS on the machine...but one has dies
since then.This seems to defy the odds!

BTW: each problem was a verifiable warranty problem...
but it's beyond anything i've ever experienced

Did you know that XP Pro has built in raid array support. You can get a
tweak quite easily, so no need for any more hardware (e.g. raid controller)
and you have a ready made backup, just in case!

 

[sbb78247]

Did you know that XP Pro has built in raid array support. You can
get a tweak quite easily, so no need for any more hardware (e.g. raid
controller) and you have a ready made backup, just in case!

There was a write up on THG about this as a software raid solution in XP and
IF I recall correctly 2000. While it did offer the raid function, it is not
bootable.

 

[Bob Davis]

It's nuts...
I built a machine for a friend of mine ...maybe 3 years ago...
It now has a total of 5 drives...some internal, some external...
and they seem they keep dying within 2 - 9 months.
All have been replaced under warranty
and none of the replacements have had any problems...some are over 2 year
old now.
I've used maxtor, western digital and seagate the latest has been a month
old seagate baracuda which is now the 5th drive that's gone.
as a precaution i even replaced the PS on the machine...but one has dies
since then.This seems to defy the odds!

BTW: each problem was a verifiable warranty problem...
but it's beyond anything i've ever experienced

My belief is that keeping drives as cool as possible is paramount. In my
present case, an Antec (Chieftec) with two 80mm fans in rear and one
directly in front of the drive bay keeps the drives luke-warm to the touch.
My PATA is now 38°C in a 26° room, and the SATA's (Raptor 36gb) usually run
even cooler. (Can't check them since they're in a RAID array.)

Try adding more air circulation on the drives themselves and I'll bet your
failure rate takes a plunge.