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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Im>bE on December 05, 2003, 02:45:47 PM
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Ive had this new supersilent hd with liquid or something inside it, for about 9 months,
and now it is periodically making small and big "click" sounds.
It started doing these sounds about a month back,
and it doesnt seem like it affects writing or reading.
I have placed the hd on firm, but yet soft 'feet'
so that it doesnt vibrate onto any of the towers metal. (thus more silent)
Maybe the liquid inside demands that it is tightly attached?...
other thing is that the temperature around it
might fall to around 5-15 degrees at night,
so can that harm it?
(since such things should have a room temperature)
It is a maxtor diamond plus 80 gig.
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for about 9 months
you've had it for 9 months now right?
and it's only recently been making noises?
does it do this when you access something, or in fact when you do ANYTHING. Is it random, like when the miggy is just sitting on the workbench with no processes rnning?
did you leave a magnet on it? :-D
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uh-oh! Another Maxtor Hard Drive case.
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A maxtor you say.. Men, get your warranty, or receipt, and go get a new one! I had a maxtor, with the same sympthoms, and it did crashed totally after about 10 or 11 months.. First it started to make those small clicks, afer reading or writing data on it, it was something like: "wzwzwzwzzz(thiswzwzwz is when I accessed the disk) click, click, click". Then teh clicks sounds were more intensive (disk was very silent), that i could hear them even the case was closed. And finally the disk died, I couldn't do nothing, it was starting to spin, but no sound of heads moving, it wasn't even recognised by my computer. Guy at store service told me, that there was something wrong with the electro magnet heads servo, I did an additional pay and exchangged it for Segate Barracuda V and it rocks bout a 1,5 year for now . So, I don't want to scary you, but you should think about exchanging this, and getting new one, and not a Maxtor brand .
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... I've used Maxtors for years without a problem. I don't think you can really say all HDs by a particular manufacturer are bad because of a couple of bad experiences. Hard drives occasionally fail - that's life, I'm afraid.
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All of the maxtor drives I've owned have eventually started making clicking noises. I have a 30Gb drive sitting on a shelf for that reason, and there's another drive (either 20Gb or 30) in my 4000T that's starting to do the same thing. (Makes noises on accesses sometimes.)
Don't know exactly what's going on with the drive, but I usually wind up replacing the darned things as soon as I can before they get worse.
If I were you, see if it's still under warrenty.
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Samsung sounds like a better mint! :-)
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bought two ibm hard drives once. 120 gigs each, @ the same time they started going:
WIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUWIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
then they both died within a day of each other
:-(
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@CU_AMIGA
the same suggested from my dealer (and friend) here in Italy.
Samsung= 3 years warranty.
Ciao
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CU_AMiGA wrote:
Samsung sounds like a better mint! :-)
No way Man! I've count bout a 19 Maxtor hdds that dided the same way as mine, and bout a 23 Samsungs drives that kicked off at my friends systems. I dont trust Maxtor and Samsung. WD and Segate's are the best I think. But of course, nobody has to listen me..
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People, am i right in saying that slapping two cream crakers on either side of a CD is more reliable than a Maxtor Hard Drive?
I may try Seagate next time.
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CU_AMiGA wrote:
People, am i right in saying that slapping two cream crakers on either side of a CD is more reliable than a Maxtor Hard Drive?
I may try Seagate next time.
depends, if the cream crackers are from "jacobs", then yes, if it's from sainsbury's value economy, i'm not sure... :-D
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:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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:lol:
Jacobs, nothing but the best :-D
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Have experienced more or less the same problem a year ago, had to replace a faulty 40 GB Maxtor HD in my Win98 SE equipped PC running also Amithlon on a separate partition. One day the HD started to make some strange "clicks" which lasted about 2-3 months and at the end the HD definitely died. Since then I have always had a redunded system, with 2 mirrored disks, it has been a pain in the neck already having to reinstall all my Win98 stuff. I originally thought it could have been a faulty drive due, may be, to the shipping which wasn't carried out properly and that might have damaged the drive while on its way to me. Anyway, I still have an A3000 which, after nearly 12 years is still running properly where one of the installed HDs is a WD. So, forget Maxtor!
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AMIGA-FAN wrote:
Have experienced more or less the same problem a year ago, had to replace a faulty 40 GB Maxtor HD in my Win98 SE equipped PC running also Amithlon on a separate partition. One day the HD started to make some strange "clicks" which lasted about 2-3 months and at the end the HD definitely died. Since then I have always had a redunded system, with 2 mirrored disks, it has been a pain in the neck already having to reinstall all my Win98 stuff. I originally thought it could have been a faulty drive due, may be, to the shipping which wasn't carried out properly and that might have damaged the drive while on its way to me. Anyway, I still have an A3000 which, after nearly 12 years is still running properly where one of the installed HDs is a WD. So, forget Maxtor!
See! Another one! I think i have the right to complain here. :-x
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Yes, occasionally drives do fail but in my opinion this is not just .... occasionally. I think this happens far too often. Some manufacturers do sell crap items, believe me, they cost less because they last less, they just rip you off and make money with this disgusting practice.
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installed HDs is a WD
waitrose deluxe, they're reliable too... :-D
but yeah maxtor are LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
just like that mp3 encoder... :-)
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hmm indeed... i have had problems with maxtor but i have heard bad things about ibm , but i use IBM drives for my IDE chains and for scsi i use SEAGATE (them fast ones :D)
and theese sounds , sounds like METAL against metal, i had them on a Segate IDE and a Western disk back many years but my QUANTUM still makes this noise and i dont thrust it all so i use it in my cd32 for now and have a backup of the hdd on my a1200, just incase...
anyway what might have killed it is thati had to put it UPSIDE down inside my SX-1 on the cd32. after that is when all the problems happened..
anyway... IBM and Seagate has VERY bad power connectors on all later drives ;( , i have ruined quite a few this way and i hate to get repaired (fast job really , but very annoying,..)
goodluck imbe!
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goodluck imbe!
oh yeah, i forgot there was a point to all this :-D
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lempkee wrote:
anyway... IBM and Seagate has VERY bad power connectors on all later drives ;( , i have ruined quite a few this way and i hate to get repaired (fast job really , but very annoying,..)
goodluck imbe!
If I need to choose between loosing everything I got on my HDD (maxtor, samsung), and poor pwr conn in segate, I choose the second option (not even 5 min with solder gun resolves the problem)
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You gotta be loving the sound effects on this thread :-)
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From what I gather, besides normal "seeking" click noises, a HD will try and recalibrate itself if its gone a bit funny, with the result of a louder clicking noise.
This can happen if a change in temperature etc.
Also with drives getting so much larger in terms of capacity, they seem to give up the ghost after 2-3 years. Infact many manufacturers warranties now reflect this as they are shorter.
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uh-oh! Another Maxtor Hard Drive case.
Dont know what you lot do to your maxtors but i have been using these drives for more than 4 years and have had no problems at all even the 120 gig in my pc is on for about 8 to 10 hours a day for a year and it is still fine. :-)
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Samsung sounds like a better mint!
Your joking i hope mine lasted a week and almost set fire to my pc i exchanged it for a maxtor never had any problems with it.
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I still have an A3000 which, after nearly 12 years is still running properly where one of the installed HDs is a WD. So, forget Maxtor!
Western digital made a load of drives wich were rubbish a few years ago.
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Wow, I thought Maxtor was good.
Now I feel I have been ripped off
because I hate it when companies
make their products crappy on purpose.
The world should have laws
that benefit those who make quality.
I try to be as gentle as possible to my hds,
but when they are made to die, then whats the point?
ARGH!!...
Are cheap hds really crap?
Are there any expensive hds that have quality?
I let Datakompaniet choose between Maxtor and Seagate for me,
and they chose Maxtor.
Maybe because they had the most of them... dunno.
Is there anything I can do to save my hd before it dies?
Only way is prb to buy a better one,
but wich brands should I go for?
Maybe someone can make a list
with the best brands on top
and the worst on the bottom...?
TheJackall says it is recalibrating,
so maybe its 'normal' and im afraid of nothing?
Ive not however heard any such noise
in any of my Quantum Fireball hds wich I used before
and wich still work after 4-5 years of heavy usage.
btw, what did you mean by
"they seem to give up the ghost after 2-3 years."
PS: I also wonder if a game ive been playing much recently
wich access the disk very very frequently (rapid blinking hd light)
could have caused any damage inside the hd...
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I had the same problem with my ibm gxp disk.. Those clicks was rare to begin with, but ended up killing it... one day when i rebooted my pc, the disk would just constantly click and would not even identify anymore :-(
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Never another IBM drive for myself.
I've owned a few IBM "Deathstars" and they make that wonderfull click of death usually within 9 months.
And.. to add insult to injury, my GF's laptop has an IBM (Hitachi) Travelstar, which after 1 year light service now makes it's own unique click of death. All the SMART utilities i have say it's ok.. but that can't fool a wise one like me.. especially when I hear the Deathstar click and windows XP grinds to a screeching halt. Also, my IBM Travelstar off of e-bay failed in my Amiga 1200 after about 3 weeks of VERY light use..
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Hardrives are the devil.
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Should I publicly confess that I misread the "cl" in the Subject as a "d"?
Naaah...
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The drive in my AmigaOne was a Western Digital and starting making terrible noises after about a month. Fortunately there was nothing but a base Debian install on it and I could still get it replaced by the manufacturer.
In the past few days I've read some other WD horror stories around the web. I've added them to my personal blacklist. ;-)
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@ Seehund
That would make the thread a bit more nontrivial, huh? *
-Tweek
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EEeehhh......hard drive filled with liquid???
I've never heard of that before.
I rather stick with Seagate than anything else.
Western Digital I don't have any problems except the fact that it's one of my several drives I put them on sleep mode when not being used in 15mins. :-) The Seagate which I have for a few years now are very relialable.
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amigamad wrote:
uh-oh! Another Maxtor Hard Drive case.
my pc is on for about 8 to 10 hours a day for a year and it is still fine. :-)
mine is usually on for 15-17 hours... :-)
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They reckon that you should LLF your drives every 3-4 months so they "recalibrate" themselves. As mentioned earlier in this topic, it's due to lost calibration (constant expanding and contracting does that to moving parts), and the clicking and whirring is the drive trying to align itself (seek) "on the fly" so to speak. Yea, a big hissy fit. :)
As for deathstars, their problem was found to be lubricant would fly up onto the heads. Their new firmware makes it so there is a random movement of the heads if it's been sitting idle for a while. But, I've had to replace one of my deathstars last year. :(
And the fluid in the drive is the fluid bearing for the poster that asked about that. :)
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Conner lasts, but I gather they got bought out? I have an old 420MB Conner, still works, how stable are 10,000 RPM drives and FlashROM drives, I'm thinking of buying a nice harddrive for my 2000. Also, I maybe? shouldn't be looking at 10,000 cause of the fact my HD controller tis Z2 and is limtied to 3.28Meg/Sec or some such similiar IIRC...
Anyhow... I've yet to get a bad HD, I'm really lucky with some stuff I guess, but even the 65MB SCSI2 drive that came with my Amiga 2000 (I think Quantum something) still works. Although the 1GB Scsi2 drive I have in there now has a bunch of bad blocks (confined to one partition though oddly enough, I think it ran out of space to store the bad blocks, and hdtoolbox hates the SCSI controller I'm replacing)
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ami500 wrote:
They reckon that you should LLF your drives every 3-4 months (...)
Low Lewel Format?? You gotta be kiddin, right?? :-?
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voytech wrote:
ami500 wrote:
They reckon that you should LLF your drives every 3-4 months (...)
Low Lewel Format?? You gotta be kiddin, right?? :-?
Nope. Serious.
If only I could remember where I read it. But when I read it, it made perfect sense on why to do that. But who could really be bothered to do a LLF 4 times a year? :) But with alignment issues being the big killer and drives with only 1 year warranties now, I think I might make the time to make them last longer.
Of course you use the software provided by your HDD manufacturer as it has the proper parameters in it for those operations. :)
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by DanDude on 2003/12/6 0:10:59
EEeehhh......hard drive filled with liquid???
I've never heard of that before.
Hi DanDude
yes, a really interesting thing.
The Maxtor DiamondMax Plus-9 series (http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/desktop/diamondmax_plus_9/index.htm) uses those "fluid dynamic bearing motors" technology.
Is there someone who knows in deep those interesting technology? which kind of fluid?
Cheers
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I've used both maxtor and samsung for many years now... Never had any bad stuff happening...
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by LP on 2003/12/6 14:01:46
I've used both maxtor and samsung for many years now... Never had any bad stuff happening...
the same here, plus some Seagate but all that, doesn't make Maxtor, Samsung and Seagate the BEST or the WORSE hd in the world.
Some of them works perfectly, others one not. :-)
Ciao
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If someone does consider a Hard Drive to be useless then LOW LEVEL FORMAT should be the last roll of the dice. I heard it is not recommended and could ruin the whole HD.
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the same here, plus some Seagate but all that, doesn't make Maxtor, Samsung and Seagate the BEST or the WORSE hd in the world.
True some of us have been ok with drives while others with the same drives have had lots of problems .Seagate are the ones i have not heard of anyone having real problems with and i have a seagate 80 gig in my amigaone. :-)
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@ami500
They reckon that you should LLF your drives every 3-4 months so they "recalibrate" themselves. As mentioned earlier in this topic, it's due to lost calibration (constant expanding and contracting does that to moving parts), and the clicking and whirring is the drive trying to align itself (seek) "on the fly" so to speak. Yea, a big hissy fit. :)
That is utter nonsense.
Nope. Serious.
If only I could remember where I read it. But when I read it, it made perfect sense on why to do that. But who could really be bothered to do a LLF 4 times a year? :) But with alignment issues being the big killer and drives with only 1 year warranties now, I think I might make the time to make them last longer.
That is total nonsense.
You can't low level format a modern hard drive anyway, it is done at the factory. The "low level format" you speak about is just writing the whole disk with zeros or given pattern. This does not recalibrate anything, and most certainly won't fix a dead drive.
See the previous thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3895) about the "Low level format" for reference.
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Piru wrote:
You can't low level format a modern hard drive anyway, it is done at the factory. The "low level format" you speak about is just writing the whole disk with zeros or given pattern. This does not recalibrate anything, and most certainly won't fix a dead drive.
See the previous thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3895) about the "Low level format" for reference.
And that's what I thought bout this LLF'ing hdds..
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Yes, the firmware in modern hardrives prevents you from low level formating it in most cases. However, you can download utilities usually from the HD manufacturer that allow you to do this type of thing. I'm not really sure they actually reset all the bits to zero though.
I have currently a >1 year old Travelstar hardrive that won't work unless I poll it with a S.M.A.R.T utilitiy every 60 seconds or so. Well.. It works but VERY slowly. If I use the smart monitor in windows it runs almost normal... If you discount the occasional scraping noises and the once in a while Deathstar click of Death'ish noise that I'm ohh so familar with. I should make an MP3 of that SCRAPING noise.. it's really horrorific! Like a screwdrive through an alluminum can or something.
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@GreggBz
Yes, the firmware in modern hardrives prevents you from low level formating it in most cases. However, you can download utilities usually from the HD manufacturer that allow you to do this type of thing. I'm not really sure they actually reset all the bits to zero though.
These tools don't low level format, they just write the disk full of 0 or 1 or some specific pattern.
Again: Modern drives are low level formatted only once, at the factory.
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Piru wrote:
@ami500
They reckon that you should LLF your drives every 3-4 months so they "recalibrate" themselves. As mentioned earlier in this topic, it's due to lost calibration (constant expanding and contracting does that to moving parts), and the clicking and whirring is the drive trying to align itself (seek) "on the fly" so to speak. Yea, a big hissy fit. :)
That is utter nonsense.
Nope. Serious.
If only I could remember where I read it. But when I read it, it made perfect sense on why to do that. But who could really be bothered to do a LLF 4 times a year? :) But with alignment issues being the big killer and drives with only 1 year warranties now, I think I might make the time to make them last longer.
That is total nonsense.
You can't low level format a modern hard drive anyway, it is done at the factory. The "low level format" you speak about is just writing the whole disk with zeros or given pattern. This does not recalibrate anything, and most certainly won't fix a dead drive.
See the previous thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3895) about the "Low level format" for reference.
Ok then. It seems I was misinformed.
But can you answer:
1. Why is it referred to with some utilities as "restoring factory settings"?
2. Why did it "fix" the bad sectors on my deathstar before the physical damage became too great for it?
I know that you should only use utilities to LLF with from the manufacturer because they have the correct settings for their drives. Maybe the people that say they killed their drives were using 3rd party utilities and not offical ones.
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If you have access to a PC, download the Maxtor SMART utility and run it. Also, try more than one IDE cable, and use both stock IDE and high-speed ATA100 cables, just in case. All the Maxtor failures I've dealt with showed up in the SMART utility (after the fact, however).
I have never heard funny noises from any hard drive as it ages. I have, however, had several run into prolems (random data loss and diagnostic failure), and a couple completely die (both were at work, they were both IBM SCSI, and died at different times).
I've owned 2 Connors, 1 Samsung, 6 Maxtors (including the 2.5" in my A1200), 4 Western Digitals, and 2 IBM drives. All the computers I use at work have IBM drives, which consists of 6 SCSI, and a dozen or so IDE.
4 out of 6 Maxtor drives consistently failed SMART tests within 6 months of purchase. One of the replacements I got (refurished) started having bad sector problems after a few weeks. I replaced it with a Western Digital, my preferred drive.
The Connors, Samsung, and Western Digital drives were used for at least 2 years each without incident. 2 IBM SCSI drives (out of 6) died during the 2 years I worked there; both were replaced with refurbished drives. I've never used IDE IBM drives personally (too expensive), but I've never seen any failures at work. Odd, I thought SCSI drives had better build quality than the IDE variety.
Curiously, the Samsung 3GB we had in the cash register worked almost 24/7 for three years without incident or bad sectors, until it was upgraded with a larger 8GB IBM drive. It seemed to do its job. All I can say about Samsung reliability is that their cameras SUCK. I won't even sell customers one! :-D
Voytech: Men, get your warranty, or receipt, and go get a new one!
Notice that many HD manufacturers have reduced their warantees. Western Digital is one of the few that still offers a 3 year warantee. I forget what Maxtor has done, but I'm not buying one of their drives again. I wouldn't even use the refurb replacement for a backup!
That_Punk_Guy: Hard drives occasionally fail - that's life, I'm afraid.
Yeah, but I've seen more Maxtors fail than any other brand. 4 out of 6 failures, in 6 months, is unacceptable.
IBM and Seagate has VERY bad power connectors on all later drives
Yeah, they are supported by the circuit board. My WD drives have unified power/data connectors that are screwed on. :-)
GreggBZ: I've owned a few IBM "Deathstars" and they make that wonderfull click of death usually within 9 months.
My dad had one too, but never had trouble. Wasn't it defective bearings (not necessarily the fluid itself) that caused failure?
1. Why is it referred to with some utilities as "restoring factory settings"?
What settings? Buzzwords, I guess. Maybe to fix a glitch with cable select?
2. Why did it "fix" the bad sectors on my deathstar before the physical damage became too great for it?
Anything can cause a bad sector. A slow read can signal a bad sector. A speck of dust in the casing can eventually unlodge itself and make a sector "good" again. Filesystem formatting is the only way to tell.
I know that you should only use utilities to LLF with from the manufacturer because they have the correct settings for their drives. Maybe the people that say they killed their drives were using 3rd party utilities and not offical ones.
Low-level format is probably just a term these days for wiping out the drive. I don't think any recalibration is done, since that's all done in realtime by the HD's internal controller. Hard drives automatically mask out bad sectors, remap addresses, sort tracks, and perform write-behind access in hardware. Hence, all modern hard drives have built-in caches. Sector 0 isn't necessarily at the very center of the disc.
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@ami500
1. Why is it referred to with some utilities as "restoring factory settings"?
Probably the disk is wiped with 0 and initial MBR is written. This is likely to be the "factory setup", so the tool restores it. It only restores the logical layout, not physical.
2. Why did it "fix" the bad sectors on my deathstar before the physical damage became too great for it?
Usually hard drives map out bad blocks automagically without ever letting the OS know about it (except perhaps thru SMART). Having bad blocks is normal to some extent, and each and every hard disk has them, no matter how high quality.
However, when the problems grow too severe, the error is actually passed to the caller aswell. If the drive ever report physical error to OS, it means the disk is seriously hosed, and needs to be replaced. Recovering it by "format" might help temporarily, but you should not use the disk for storing any important data, as the problem is likely to get only worse. Eventually the disk will go permanently dead.
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Thanks guys. :)
I don't mind being told I'm wrong, just as long as it's explained and I can learn from it. Thanks. :)
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No no no! You aren't supposed to be humble! It makes the rest of us on Amiga.org look arrogant....hang on....
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I happen to be one of the ones with a big click...
:-) sorry, what remained of my sense of humour has long since disappeared...
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I happen to be one of the ones with a big click...
[:smack::smack:
:roflmao:
Hey guys, don't forget, it's not always a manufacturer wide problem, often times issues arise within certain lines of drives. (i.e. IBM Ultrastar LZX's were particularly known for strong stability as long as you stayed under the 73 line, but Z10's had big problems.)
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The Maxtor-bashers were right after all... Maxtor drives suck. Mine died just before Christmas. I only bought it last April. God damn it! :-x
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2. Why did it "fix" the bad sectors on my deathstar before the physical damage became too great for it?
You don't really "fix" bad sectors. As I understand it, what happens is if there is a verify error somewhere, that location gets marked as a "bad sector", and then the drive continues on it's merry way. You can go back through and use a program to remove the list of marked "bad sectors", and viola, you've got no more bad sectors listed. You've "fixed" the bad sectors. (Of course, you haven't fixed anything, and when those sectors are used again, they'll probably get a verify error again, and get marked as bad again, etc...)
As for general drive quality... I've never had a problem witn any brand in particular, with the possible exceptions of Maxtor and IBM. What is much more important is mounting and care.
1) Drives need to be mounted firmly so they can't vibrate.
2) Drives need to be mounted level so they can spin properly.
3) Drives need to be protected from rapid changes in temperature while in operation.
4) Drives shouldn't be operated in extreme heat.
5) Drives need to be protected from outside shock and impact.
Following these five simple rules, pretty much any hard drive should live quite a long life. There are, of course, exceptions, but even those are usually less severe. I had a Maxtor croak on me, but it gave some warning time, so I was able to easily ghost the drive image onto a new HD before it totally failed. I only suffered about a half-hour of downtime.
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Got a 60GB IBM drive that failed during operation. (Power loss?) And after that Windows wouldn't recognise it as a harddisk. Had to use my Amiga to overwrite some bad blocks before it could be recognised.
The anoying thing was that It crashed when I was doing a backup of another harddisk to it. :-x
Oh! Beware of P2P software like Kazaa. Kills your harddisk very fast if your not careful. :-(