Strange Problems with new WD3200AAJB Drive

[mcp6453]

I tried replacing the 160GB hard drive in my ReplayTV DVR with a brand
new WD3200AAJB drive. Unfortunately, the AA drives are not compatible
with the Replay 5000 series. (I have never had a problem replacing
ReplayTV drives. The newer drives are largely incompatible, so the
problems are now multiplying.)

One of my computers has a real WD3200JB (non-AA) drive that DOES work
with Replay, so I decided to reuse the AA drive by cloning the real
drive to the AA drive and then using the AA drive as the boot drive in
the Windows XP computer. When I installed the AA drive as the only drive
in the system, the computer booted normally and everything worked well.
Then I decided to run SpinRite on the new drive, just to be safe.

SpinRite will not run. Regardless of which medium I boot from (floppy or
CD), after I select the proper partition to scan, the program hangs at
"Selecting Drive For Use..." after which "Working..." constantly flashes
at the bottom of the screen. SpinRite works perfectly on this computer
with the real drive installed.

So it seems to me that maybe ReplayTV has written something to the drive
that SpinRite doesn't like. That seems bizarre since SpinRite's purpose
is to solve problems. Nevertheless, I decided to run FIXMBR from the
Windows Recovery Console. Running FIXMBR reports that "This computer
appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record." I let it
run, and it reported that "The new master boot record has been
successfully written."

Next I ran FIXBOOT. "FIXBOOT cannot find the system drive, or the drive
specified is not valid." (The BIOS still sees the drive.)

Then I ran chkdsk. "The volume appears to contain one or more
unrecoverable problems." (That's helpful.)

My next exercise was to try to run Western Digital's Datalifeguard
Tools, booting from the CD. Here's what happened:

Int 13 Level Communications:
Attempting Int 13 IO to drive 80 No Response

ATA Level Communications:
Attempting PM ATA Identify

Nothing happens after that. Remember that the drive works perfectly in
Windows. The drive is properly detected in the BIOS. Something really
strange is happening here, so if there is anything going on related to
ReplayTV, I hope someone can shed some light on the problem.

Is it possible that Replay can write things to the drive that cannot be
erased or reset, or am I just dealing with a defective drive? While the
drive is still in warranty, I don't want to return it if there is
something that I have done to it or if there is something that can be
corrected in the field.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I tried replacing the 160GB hard drive in my ReplayTV DVR with a brand
new WD3200AAJB drive. Unfortunately, the AA drives are not compatible
with the Replay 5000 series. (I have never had a problem replacing
ReplayTV drives. The newer drives are largely incompatible, so the
problems are now multiplying.)

It might be a WD problem. WD drives have very bad compatibility.

One of my computers has a real WD3200JB (non-AA) drive that DOES work
with Replay, so I decided to reuse the AA drive by cloning the real
drive to the AA drive and then using the AA drive as the boot drive in
the Windows XP computer. When I installed the AA drive as the only drive
in the system, the computer booted normally and everything worked well.
Then I decided to run SpinRite on the new drive, just to be safe.

SpinRite will not run. Regardless of which medium I boot from (floppy or
CD), after I select the proper partition to scan, the program hangs at
"Selecting Drive For Use..." after which "Working..." constantly flashes
at the bottom of the screen. SpinRite works perfectly on this computer
with the real drive installed.

SpinRite is essentially worthless today.

So it seems to me that maybe ReplayTV has written something to the drive
that SpinRite doesn't like. That seems bizarre since SpinRite's purpose
is to solve problems. Nevertheless, I decided to run FIXMBR from the
Windows Recovery Console. Running FIXMBR reports that "This computer
appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record." I let it
run, and it reported that "The new master boot record has been
successfully written."

Next I ran FIXBOOT. "FIXBOOT cannot find the system drive, or the drive
specified is not valid." (The BIOS still sees the drive.)

Then I ran chkdsk. "The volume appears to contain one or more
unrecoverable problems." (That's helpful.)

My next exercise was to try to run Western Digital's Datalifeguard
Tools, booting from the CD. Here's what happened:

Int 13 Level Communications:
Attempting Int 13 IO to drive 80 No Response

ATA Level Communications:
Attempting PM ATA Identify

Nothing happens after that. Remember that the drive works perfectly in
Windows. The drive is properly detected in the BIOS. Something really
strange is happening here, so if there is anything going on related to
ReplayTV, I hope someone can shed some light on the problem.

Is it possible that Replay can write things to the drive that cannot be
erased or reset, or am I just dealing with a defective drive? While the
drive is still in warranty, I don't want to return it if there is
something that I have done to it or if there is something that can be
corrected in the field.

Theoretically, it could have set an ATA password. But unless
SpinRite is completely demented, it should give an error message
for that. It could also have set a host protected area. Again,
this should result in an error message, but given that SpinRite
is historical software at best, it may not.

Arno

 

[mcp6453]

Try it again and again and again. You will probably get exactly the
same "invalid" report every time, but there will be nothing wrong with
your MBR. It's a bug.

See "Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command":
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266745/


I have no idea how ReplayTV is configured, but whatever you do, *do
not* execute FIXBOOT on a FAT32 partition. You *will* destroy your
data.

See my disastrous experience:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3334yh
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...4/88f3f04d4f9e4925?lnk=st&q=#88f3f04d4f9e4925


In my limited experience, CHKDSK has been useless when executed from
the Recovery Console. I have had better luck from within the GUI (with
the drive in a USB enclosure).


Normally I would suspect that your HDD is jumpered incorrectly or
attached to the secondary IDE port ...


I still use the following old Seagate DOS utility to capture the
Identify Drive data:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/FIND-ATA.EXE
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/FIND-ATA.DOC

The following command line retrieves the Identify Drive data from the
(p)rimary (m)aster and (d)umps it to a binary file.

find-ata p m d

Here are two examples:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/DRIVE0.ATA (512 bytes)
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/IDE-identify/DRIVE1.ATA (512 bytes)

See this document for an explanation of the above data:
http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/project/d1321r3-ATA-ATAPI-5.pdf

Otherwise feel free to email me your Identify Drive data files and
I'll post them on my web space for others to look at.

- Franc Zabkar

Thanks, Frank. After additional experimentation, it is clear to me that
the problem is a compatibility issue with this model of WD drives. Not
only does this WD3200AAJB drive not work, neither does a brand new,
out-of-the-box, unformatted WD5000AAJB drive. (Both drives were
delivered in incorrectly labeled WD3200JBRTL and WD5000JBRTL boxes.) Any
other drive I install in this computer works perfectly. Neither AA drive
works correctly.

For at least the near term, I'm done with WD drives. This problem is the
first one I have had with them. My next choice is Seagate with their
five-year warranty. If history repeats itself, Seagate will probably go
off on some tangent in the future, and I'll have to dump them in favor
of WD drives.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks, Frank. After additional experimentation, it is clear to me that
the problem is a compatibility issue with this model of WD drives. Not
only does this WD3200AAJB drive not work, neither does a brand new,
out-of-the-box, unformatted WD5000AAJB drive. (Both drives were
delivered in incorrectly labeled WD3200JBRTL and WD5000JBRTL boxes.) Any
other drive I install in this computer works perfectly. Neither AA drive
works correctly.

I have one WD drive that works in one external enclosure, but not one
other. Shoddy engineering.

For at least the near term, I'm done with WD drives. This problem is the
first one I have had with them. My next choice is Seagate with their
five-year warranty. If history repeats itself, Seagate will probably go
off on some tangent in the future, and I'll have to dump them in favor
of WD drives.

You should avoid Seagate at the moment. After they started
manufacturing in China, their droves are very unreliable now.

Arno

 

[Brad Isaac]

Previously mcp6453 <[email protected]> wrote:

Sort of off topic...but not too far. I have had spinrite going on a
WD drive for the past week and it reports there is still 4169 hours
left. That's almost 6 months!

I bought the license for a client with the expectation it would take a
month or less. But had no idea it would be 6 months. Do you think
it's falsely reporting that time or what would you do??

Thanks

 

[Arno Wagner]

Sort of off topic...but not too far. I have had spinrite going on a
WD drive for the past week and it reports there is still 4169 hours
left. That's almost 6 months!

I bought the license for a client with the expectation it would take a
month or less. But had no idea it would be 6 months. Do you think
it's falsely reporting that time or what would you do??

SpinRite is practically useless today. Run a long SMART selftest,
it does effectively the same.

Arno

 

[Brad Isaac]

SpinRiteis practically useless today. Run a long SMART selftest,
it does effectively the same.

Arno

Thanks. So I should stop this test and restart it with the SMART
selftest?

Also, why do you say useless? Is there something better?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks. So I should stop this test and restart it with the SMART
selftest?

I definitely think so.

Also, why do you say useless? Is there something better?

SpinRite claims to use knowledge of the on-disk encoding to
do a better choice. In historic MFM and RLL times it did that
and really was better. Today you have maximum-likelyhood-
partial-response decoders in the disk, that read the analog
signal. These are already at the maximum that is possible
and no external program can improve on the read quality.

So, no, there is no external software. The only thing
you can do it read retries. The disk typically already does
a lot of these. If they are not enough the chance of additional
ones helping is very, very small. A long SMART selftest
just (besides some other tests) tries to read the whole surface.

BTW, if your disk has a problem, running it often will make
the problem more serious. If you consider professional
recovery, power down the drive now.

Arno

 

[Squeeze]

GMAN wrote in news:[email protected]
Just a month. Really. Wow.

Spinrite 6 uses the SMART info from the drive

To what purpose?