"Gilbert" said:
I had a problem where my p2b bios would report a smart error for the ide
drive. I ran Western Digital's 'windlg' tool but it did not report any
problems (I ran the extended test).
I found the smart error by using Seagate's seatools (I have a Seagate scsi
drive). The error comes from the 'drive self test' (dst).
I am really tired of WD's HDs and especially tired of these things starting
to fail after 1.5 years or so. I bought spinrite and am running it now to
try and see what it can do.
I think any future drives will be a Seagate . . .
-g
The "best" drive is a constantly changing answer. At one time,
people would not have hesitated to recommend an IBM drive,
but the "Deathstar" GXP put an end to that. Now, IBM is out
of the drive business, instead doing the research, while
Hitachi takes care of manufacturing.
Drive build quality will vary by country of origin, by the
nature of the design, and by cost factors. (Having visited
a disk drive plant, I can tell you the inside of some plants
would not inspire your confidence.) Hard drives are a high
tech device, delivered at dirt cheap prices. That would
suggest that each generation of drive made, could be adversely
affected by whatever decisions were made about the materials
used in the drive. It means you cannot predict with any certainty,
whether a new drive model will suck or not.
Inside the drive, cleanliness is key. Some drives have suffered
due to the way the head retraction is done - any time metal
parts rub against one another, there is a potential for particulate
to be introduced into the HDA. And some drives have had stupid
designs, where exactly that was happening - metal on metal contact.
(My personal opinion is, the quieter the drive is when it shuts
down, the better the metal on metal contact situation must be.
Any "clicking" or "snapping" implies parts rubbing together.
The airflow inside the drive is shaped, to try to encourage
particulate to be collected in internal filters.
(sample old patent for filtering internal air)
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4594626.pdf
The HDA is open to the atmosphere - there is no vacuum inside
the disk drive. A fine filter is fitted to the "breather hole",
and that removes grossly large particles. But it does not stop
the movement of humidity into the HDA.
Disk drives have an allowed temperature/humidity curve. I've
downloaded a couple of OEM disk drive specs, and they give a
curve of the allowed environmental conditions. Here are some
example data points from the curve. These conditions change,
every time that the "flying height" and geometries of the
head assembly shrink.
Relative Allowed
Humidity Temp
<14% 55C (very dry winter conditions - good for drives)
60% 36C (carpeting starts to mildew - no AC in summer)
90% 31C (discomfort for humans, and for your drive)
If you work in an air conditioned environment, it is relatively
simple to control humidity to 40%. In my house, when the AC
failed and I didn't repair it for one month, I had a disk drive
failure. The humidity in the house was about 60% as measured
by my dehumidifier and it was summer.
You can see from those numbers, that if you are not in an
airconditioned environment, you should be using aggressive
cooling for the disk drives. In other words, when you design
your computer case, for cooling the components, the
emphasis should be on cooling the disk drives, over any
other component in the machine. Few people place fans in the
case, to blow air over their disk drives.
Vibration is another factor, but I don't have any articles that
address what average conditions a computer case applies. In
server environments, I've seen mention of the impact of the
vibration generated by large numbers of drives, all bolted to
the same assembly. For home use, what I would suggest, is
avoid the Lian Li lightweight aluminum computer case, in favor
of a steel "boat anchor" kind of case. That will dampen
vibration from case fans and the disk drives.
Also, when transporting your computing equipment, remember that
the drives have a shock spec. The package the disk drive ships
in, offers much better protection than the computer case. If
there is a chance the disk drives will receives bumps or shocks
in transit, it would be better to put the drive back in its
shipping container and then move it.
What you do to the drive, will have some bearing on its life.
If the plant that makes them doesn't have good build quality,
or the way it is designed leads to early failure, there is
little you can do about that.
Paul
