Replacing five WD2000JB drives

[A. J. Moss]

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four weeks ago.
One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000, due to a large chunk
of bad sectors; another one has begun sticking - at random intervals it
makes a clunking noise, and no further disk access is possible without
cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?
Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA, or one 7200.8 300Gb
PATA. (Which is better?)

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted in
NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

 

[Rod Speed]

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four
weeks ago. One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000,
due to a large chunk of bad sectors; another one has begun
sticking - at random intervals it makes a clunking noise, and no
further disk access is possible without cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?

I'd use Samsungs myself.

Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA,
or one 7200.8 300Gb PATA. (Which is better?)

The 7200.8 300Gb PATA is a more recent design.

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted
in NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

I would with such an atrocious result. You sure your power supply is
adequate and that you arent seeing some of the drives getting stinking
hot because they are all mounted adjacent in the drive bay stack ?

Use Everest to check what temperature the drives are running
at and see what the SMART stats on those drives say.
http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

 

[Matt Silberstein]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 18:43:28 +0100, in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage , A. J. Moss
<[email protected]> in

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four weeks ago.
One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000, due to a large chunk
of bad sectors; another one has begun sticking - at random intervals it
makes a clunking noise, and no further disk access is possible without
cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?
Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA, or one 7200.8 300Gb
PATA. (Which is better?)

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted in
NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

I would. How can you trust them? The cost of extra backups because of
uncertainty would be more than the drives.



--
Matt Silberstein

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http://www.savedarfur.org/

 

[CJT]

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four weeks ago.
One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000, due to a large chunk
of bad sectors; another one has begun sticking - at random intervals it
makes a clunking noise, and no further disk access is possible without
cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?
Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA, or one 7200.8 300Gb
PATA. (Which is better?)

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted in
NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

I can't help thinking you're doing something wrong. As another poster
suggested, check cooling and power in particular. SMART is your friend.
If you have environmental problems, the Seagates will die, too.

While one can argue about the relative merits of WD drives compared with
some others, they're not _that_ unreliable. (In fact, I think they're
on a par with the others +/-.) The only caveat is that if during
shipment they were subjected to major stress, one could see high
mortalities -- but again, that's true of any drive.

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Bitstring <[email protected]>, from the
wonderful person Matt Silberstein

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 18:43:28 +0100, in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage , A. J. Moss
<[email protected]> in


I would. How can you trust them? The cost of extra backups because of
uncertainty would be more than the drives.

I'd second that. As to whether 2*160 or 1*300, I guess it depends what
you plan to do with them. Basically 2 drives means you are twice as
likely to have (one) of them fail .. if you are striping them that means
you're twice as likely to lose the lot. If you are able to mirror them,
then your reliability improves over 1 drive. If you are using them as
'plain old drives' then I'd probably go with two (if there is space in
the PC) - uses more electricity (marginally) but gives you a fallback -
you could run with just one, iffin you had to.

Seagate are currently the (7200 rpm) drive of choice it seems. Where did
you get these WD drives from - sounds like they fell (heavily) off the
back of a truck at some point! 'Fails to format' is something that
shouldn't have left the factory..

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I can't help thinking you're doing something wrong. As another poster
suggested, check cooling and power in particular. SMART is your friend.
If you have environmental problems, the Seagates will die, too.

While one can argue about the relative merits of WD drives compared with
some others, they're not _that_ unreliable. (In fact, I think they're
on a par with the others +/-.) The only caveat is that if during
shipment they were subjected to major stress, one could see high
mortalities --

but again, that's true of any drive.

But may differ in how resilient to bad handling they are.

 

[A. J. Moss]

I can't help thinking you're doing something wrong. As another poster
suggested, check cooling and power in particular. SMART is your friend.
If you have environmental problems, the Seagates will die, too.

400W Tsunami PSU. Any good?

Hard disk connected in the air path of the two 80mm input fans.

 

[CJT]

400W Tsunami PSU. Any good?

Hard disk connected in the air path of the two 80mm input fans.

The devil is always in the details. What does SMART say about the drive
temps? There's no way to know without testing whether a particular
power supply is up to spec.

 

[Biffa Bacon]

The devil is always in the details. What does SMART say about the drive
temps? There's no way to know without testing whether a particular
power supply is up to spec.

Sounds like a dropped box to me.... ?
Thats the only time I've seen a large qty of drives all fail at the same
time (20).

 

[CJT]

But may differ in how resilient to bad handling they are.

Fair enough, but I haven't heard anybody make any claims in that regard
specifically.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four weeks ago.
One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000, due to a large chunk
of bad sectors; another one has begun sticking - at random intervals it
makes a clunking noise, and no further disk access is possible without
cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?
Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA, or one 7200.8 300Gb
PATA. (Which is better?)

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted in
NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

Out of a single box of 10 250GB Seagate drives, 8 failed.

After problems with another batch and another drive from yet another
batch, I decided against using the 250GB Seagates.

That said, I still have about 5 or 6 in my systems that have caused no
problems, but I will be replacing them with the 300GB drives in due
course.


Odie

 

[Michael Cecil]

Out of a single box of 10 250GB Seagate drives, 8 failed.

Could be that single box was the one that got dropped a bit hard, too.

 

[willbill]

I bought five Western Digital WD2000JB PATA hard disks four weeks ago.

imo, the WD jb's are good hard drives. i'll grant that you had the
slightly bigger 200's (i had 3 of the 160's) and thought well
of the 160 (2 platter) jb's that i had (whereas i think your
200's are 3 platter, but i doubt that makes any serious difference)

One of them fails to format fully in Windows 2000, due to a large chunk
of bad sectors; another one has begun sticking - at random intervals it
makes a clunking noise, and no further disk access is possible without
cycling the computer power.

Obviously both these drives are going back, to be exchanged for what?
Either two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160Gb PATA, or one 7200.8 300Gb
PATA. (Which is better?)

Should I insist that the other three disk drives, which are formatted in
NTFS but as yet completely untested, go back as well?

a recent review at anandtech made me think the
newer 7200.8 is a better choice (vs. the 7200.7
(depending on price))

afaik, the 7200.7 and 7200.8 have 5 year warranty

i have no experience with PATA 7200.7 nor 7200.8

anyhow, i set up a new machine for a family member
and offered them either the jb 160's i had (at a
serious discount) or newer drives (at newegg prices)

when they chose my PATA jb 160s, i went with a PATA
Hitachi 250 GB Deskstar T7K250 (2 platter) and
two of the older 7K250 (lower density, 3 platter).
(it was a timing thing; i 1st got 2 from newegg,
and on the 2nd buy i noticed the newer T7K250)

the T7K250 is now my primary drive, and i use the older
250's for backup (i open the computer case (i have an
18" 3 connector round connector with only the boot drive
on it, boot into DOS98SE, and use DOS Ghost 2003 for
the backup (i prop the drive (slightly slanted) on the
bottom edge of the case; when the b/u goes beyond 20 min.
i'll blow a small external fan on it to keep it cool)

there's no question that the both Hitachi drives
(T7K250 and 7K250) have better performance than
the WD jb drives do

i have no reason to think that there is any difference
in longevity (WD jb vs. the above Hitachi) given decent
fan air movement over the hard drives)

bill

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Could be that single box was the one that got dropped a bit hard, too.

That is a distinct possibility.

However, I did have other drives from different batches / boxes (albeit
from the same distributor) that failed.


Odie

 

[Michael Cecil]

That is a distinct possibility.

However, I did have other drives from different batches / boxes (albeit
from the same distributor) that failed.


Odie

That reminds me of the one time I almost bought a drive at Fry's. It was
on my way so I was browsing and noticed they had some really good deal on
drives (I think it might have been 40GB Deathstars actually but this was
before they all started going bad and StorageReview was still singing
their praise). Anyhow, I tried to get one back in the aisle and was told
that I'd have to ask for one at the register. So I went up to the
registers and asked for one. The clerk goes off to some metal cage area
and starts to come back with a bare OEM drive still in the antistatic
wrap, only she trips a little and drops the drive. She recovers, walks
over to the drive and picks it up, then proceeds to bring it to the
register as if there was nothing wrong. I walked out at that point and
made a mental note to never buy anything fragile from Fry's.

 

[J. Clarke]

That reminds me of the one time I almost bought a drive at Fry's. It was
on my way so I was browsing and noticed they had some really good deal on
drives (I think it might have been 40GB Deathstars actually but this was
before they all started going bad and StorageReview was still singing
their praise). Anyhow, I tried to get one back in the aisle and was told
that I'd have to ask for one at the register. So I went up to the
registers and asked for one. The clerk goes off to some metal cage area
and starts to come back with a bare OEM drive still in the antistatic
wrap, only she trips a little and drops the drive. She recovers, walks
over to the drive and picks it up, then proceeds to bring it to the
register as if there was nothing wrong. I walked out at that point and
made a mental note to never buy anything fragile from Fry's.

Reminds me of the time that I bought a couple of 8" diskettes at the
university bookstore. The checkout clerk folded them in half.

One thing that bugged me about drives for a long time was that the etailers
stopped shipping them in the manufacturer-approved shipping boxes and just
put a couple of wraps of bubble-pack around them (not nearly the specified
three inches). That was in the 75GXP era and I still wonder how many of
those drives died of inadequate packing.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

That is a distinct possibility.

In which case it would be clearly noticeable from the packaging.
Unless the drives were repackaged, which borders on the criminal.
If not, then the mfgr packaging is clearly inadequate for the
handling that the drives normally receive during transit.

 

[A. J. Moss]

I can't help thinking you're doing something wrong. As another poster
suggested, check cooling and power in particular. SMART is your friend.
If you have environmental problems, the Seagates will die, too.

Is it possible that a defective UDMA cable could cause the drive to
clunk and stick? I had the cable for several years, swapping drives
on a fairly frequent basis, and the middle connector wore out. It
wasn't properly clipped at the back, and it just came apart when I
pulled out the last hard disk.

It was showing symptoms beforehand - either the disk connected to it
would work, or it would fail to detect the drive's name string and size
properly. If it managed that bit OK, it didn't seem to give any problems
subsequently, and if it didn't, it was unusable and had to be pulled out
and put back in again.

I've changed the cable, and the drive that was sticking now *seems* to
be working (although the only testing I've done is to copy the data off
it onto a more reliable disk). I haven't yet tested the one that didn't
format fully.

 

[Biffa Bacon \(mobile\)]

The devil is always in the details. What does SMART say about the drive
temps? There's no way to know without testing whether a particular
power supply is up to spec.

ps - very handy free smart tool here.
http://www.sysinfolab.com/download.htm

 

[CJT]

Is it possible that a defective UDMA cable could cause the drive to
clunk and stick? I had the cable for several years, swapping drives
on a fairly frequent basis, and the middle connector wore out. It
wasn't properly clipped at the back, and it just came apart when I
pulled out the last hard disk.

It's certainly possible.