What are these small and big "click" sounds in my hd??

[Piru]

@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 about the "Low level format" for reference.

[voytech]

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 about the "Low level format" for reference.

And that's what I thought bout this LLF'ing hdds..

[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.

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.

[Piru]

@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.

[ami500]

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 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.

[Waccoon]

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.

[Piru]

@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.

[ami500]

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.

[Cyberus]

No no no! You aren't supposed to be humble! It makes the rest of us on Amiga.org look arrogant....hang on....

[Cyberus]

I happen to be one of the ones with a big click...



 :-) sorry, what remained of my sense of humour has long since disappeared...

[Wain]

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.)

[that_punk_guy]

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

[Ilwrath]

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.

[Neo]

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.   :-(