Telltale signs of drive dying?

[srg86]

Hi

I'm not totally sure about the internal disk drive in my A1200. Games seem to load up fine, but some disk that I thought were good have come up with read errors. I used my PC and Disk2FDI to make an adf of a disk and then the original amiga disk (the first time I tried it on an amiga) seemed to have read errors. Anyway, I managed to get the image onto the amiga and wrote it to 2 disks. They then worked fine. Anyway two days later the pair of them got errors in the exact same block, number 58.

Anyway, my drive is a Panasonic JU-253-243P which my suspision is that it's not the original.

any ideas?
thanks
srg

[pjhutch]

The usually signs are:
1. File corruption
2. Errors when read/writing data to disk
3. Disk fails to boot
4. Unexpected noise from drive.
5. Disk not recognised at bootup.

If a drive is more than 5 years old then it may be time for a replacement. Its not unusual to get 1 or 2 bad blocks on a disk and some utilities can map them out. I believe HDToolbox does have this facility to mark blocks as bad and save it in the RDB area.

[Brian]

@pjhutch
As he is talking about the diskdrive not the harddrive you're info isn't spot on even if some of it apply to a diskdrive being dead or dieng also.

@srg86
Diskfiles can be a hassle... if they are made of disks with errors the error will transferr to the disk and appear as a read/write error even if it's a healthy disk. That could be the reason why the error come on same block... it could be the diskddrive also though. Take it out and clean it with a qtip&alcohol and try again.

[Thomas]

Does it say read error or checksum error ? If it is a checksum error it could also be a virus (Lamer Exterminator or something like that).

Bye,
Thomas

[srg86]

I've scanned the image using WinUAE and it did have some errors on the root draw and a few has table errors. Mt quarterback tools image that I made scans as no errors but the disk gives read errors, I have cleaned the drive.

srg

[Brian]

If there's an error on the ADF (diskimage) you shouldn't assume reproducing the image onto a disk with magically remove the error.

Just because it's an diskimage it doesn't meen disk it came from was error free (I've found several ADF's online with errors in them).

[srg86]

I don't think that at all, it's just strange that any errors show up two days after writing the image.

srg

[CLS2086]

Hi,
The Panasonic drives are much more sensible than the others.
I use them to format and to create new disk. So i'm sure that the disk will be readable everywhere.

The Citizen drives (you can found them on old external unnamed white box) give me the best in reading old disks.

You can also take off the old grease on the displacement head's screw.

[Eco]

I've had a few HDs die on me during the last 15 years. And here they are!

Drive 1 - 40 MB Quantum SCSI drive (~1990): Bad smell, and a burnt chip on the PCB on the drive. No longer detects as a drive, as if there is nothing on the cable.

Drive 2 - 800 MB Seagate IDE drive (~1994): Finally quits after 8 years of normal desktop operation. Detects correctly, but nothing can be read from the drive. No seeking sounds, just silence.

Drive 3 - 20 GB IBM "Deathstar" 75 GXP: Dead on arrival. Made "struggling" noises when trying to spin up. Absolutely no operation whatsoever.

Drive 4 - 60 GB Maxtor Diamondmax 80: Died after 3 years of non-stop operation (emphasis on NON). Would detect correctly but would not read or write. No strange sounds though.

Drive 5 - 80 GB IBM "Deathstar" 60 GXP: Unrealiable after 2 years in normal desktop use. Makes extremely loud metallic noises, corrupts files and halts for a few seconds every now and then. Just recovered most of the data on it, at least it did not die outright..

So that's it. I'm going RAID in my next setup, level 5 or maybe 3.

The winner: 120 MB Quantum Prodrive LPS SCSI drive still in operation after 14 years. Man, that drive was worth the money :-D

[srg86]

I was thinking of floppy drives buy while we're here!

Coincidentally the 127MB that came with my A1200 died this week two days after I got the machine, I've replaced it with a  512MB drive anyway.

My 60GXP is solid as a rock after 3 years of desktop use.

srg

[Hyperspeed]

With regards to the floppy trouble:
There are two utils on Aminet you can use in conjunction with a
special floppy head cleaning diskette.

I noticed that in the UK, WHSmith are currently selling a little
all-in-one computer cleaning kit comprising a mini-vacuum, swabs,
cloths, isopropyl alcohol etc.

If you get a floppy drive cleaning diskette get this:
http://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/aminet/disk/misc/Scrub.lha

And this:
http://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/aminet/disk/misc/scrubber13.lha

With regards to hard disks, how do SCSI users scan the surface for bad
blocks without using HDToolBox? The Phase5 SCSI-Utils doesn't come
with a CheckDisk/ScanDisk style program.

:-(

[srg86]

Thanks for that, I currently have no means to write them to disk as I have no usable CrossDos'able workbench (old hard disk died and newer one doesn't have a proper workbench install, just a makeshift one, my first workbench floppy came corrupted), I'm not having much luck with this. I only have this Amiga.

I'm getting more positive it's the disk drive now because one game that I've been usign for the last couple of days has strangely developed read errors AND another game that I tested fine two days ago - today it can't even read the disk!!

what's your oppinion?

BTW I have quarterback tools on disk and the image I made is fine but the disk drive shows read errors.

From AmigaDeals.co.uk I can get either a "Used good" floppy drive for £29 or an Unused Amiga Technologies drive for £39, they say they've tested it and it seems to work fine, it's Panasonic BTW if that means anything.

thanks
srg

[srg86]

I have now ordered an unused Amiga technologies Panasonic Internal floppy drive for my A1200.

Did only a few of these drives have the problems, untill the circuit upgrade? Is the likelyhood small that I'll have troubles with this drive?

What software can I use to test this drive? I have xcopy and I heard once that it had troubles, would this be a good test?

thanks
srg

[Hyperspeed]

Hmmmm, X-Copy...

Thomas mentioned earlier on in the thread that you might have virus
trouble and according to the latest Virus-Z brainfile there appears to
be versions of X-Copy that are viruses.

I know X-Copy is good for duplicating disks precisely (with Nibble
mode) but there were a lot of illegal versions of it floating around.

I seem to remember there being a green GUI and a pink one.

Be careful that one infected disk isn't spreading a virus through
memory to another. If you have doubt then switch the power off for 20
seconds (a reset warm reboot may not be sufficient to clear the memory
of viruses).

Other than that it could be just the drive head needs recalibrating or
cleaning up with a cleaner diskette.

Before you dump your drive though, let us know the exact make, model
and revision for future reference!

:-D