Recurring Drive Failure

Hello,

firstly, sorry for the cross-post.

I'm in the process of building a RAID 1 array around a Promise Fasttrak PCI
card with two identical 160Gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives. On receipt of
my order from Aria [Manchester, UK], I slotted the card in and followed the
instructions to the letter, powered-up and one of the hard drives was making
a regular, loud 'tapping' noise and was not recognised in the BIOS, or the
OS [XP Home].

I took the offending drive back to Aria, they gave me an identical,
replacement drive [sealed in an anti-static bag, so not just the drive I had
brought in for them!]. I get the drive home, plug it in, power up my system
and the drive is reocgnised [hurrah!] but half way through formatting, it
starts clanking just like its predecessor and 'fails' on me... I tried both
drives on a couple of different power supplies, away from the RAID PCI card,
and as part of the primary and secondary mb IDE channels [which I know
work].

My question: is it possible that I am doing something to 'break' these
drives? Or, am I just unfortunate enough to be the recipient of two from a
bad batch?

thanks for your time and any advice,

yours

Adam

--
Adam Walton

Eclectic musical fireworks every Sunday night on BBC Radio Wales 9 -
midnight

http://www.themysterytour.co.uk

waltonic wrote:

> Hello,
>
> firstly, sorry for the cross-post.
>
> I'm in the process of building a RAID 1 array around a Promise Fasttrak PCI
> card with two identical 160Gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives. On receipt of
> my order from Aria [Manchester, UK], I slotted the card in and followed the
> instructions to the letter, powered-up and one of the hard drives was making
> a regular, loud 'tapping' noise and was not recognised in the BIOS, or the
> OS [XP Home].


I've had absolutely horrible luck with Maxtor drives. The max life
I've gotten out of one is approx 2 months. I just got one as an RMA
return the other day, so we'll see how long this one goes...

One thing that can cause premature failure of a drive is excess
temperature. Make sure that the drive doesn't go above 45C or so. But
yours seemed to fail right away, huh? That'd probably rule out temp,
so it was probably bad right from the start.

You may want to try/test the drives on a standard IDE controller, rather
than RAID. You can try Maxtor PowerMax (though take those results with
a grain of salt) or other diagnostic utilities. Expecially check the
drive temps with DTemp. (free)

-WD

Hi,

I had 4 dodgy Seagates in a row once. It was a couple of years ago, but
within a month they failed, got replaced, failed, got replaced, failed etc
etc...

Now have two IBM 120Gb drives running sweet :-)

>
>My question: is it possible that I am doing something to 'break' these
>drives? Or, am I just unfortunate enough to be the recipient of two from a
>bad batch?
>


Sounds like you're running screws in that are too long. Hitting the
platter or circuits. I've never had a Maxtor go bad but YMMV.
------------
When your PC gives a little they give a lot.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco

"<>" <> wrote:
>I had 4 dodgy Seagates in a row once. It was a couple of years ago, but
>within a month they failed, got replaced, failed, got replaced, failed etc
>etc...

Same retailer often equals same batch, which means if something fu^H^H
screwed up on the production line...

Try the drive(s) in a different setting (another PC or onboard IDE
connectors) and try to establish if it's the RAID card at fault or the
drive itself. If it's definitely the drive ask the retailer if they've
had another batch from which you can have a drive, otherwise return it
to the manufacturer. Perhaps you could wait another return-failure
iteration before you try the manufacturer, perhaps not.

Anything you can decode from the serial numbers on the drives you've
had to ensure you don't get another like it?


Tim
--
And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a
thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great
storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
- The Book of Mozilla, 3:31

>Hello,
>
>firstly, sorry for the cross-post.
>
>I'm in the process of building a RAID 1 array around a Promise Fasttrak PCI
>card with two identical 160Gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives.

BTW, 9 out of 10 SOHO users using RAID choose RAID 0.
Maybe since:
1 RAID 1 can be slow.
2. Virus hits drive one, drive two gets hosed.
3. OS goes bad on one, same with drive two.
4. RAID 1 is no substitute for good backups(see 2 and 3 above).
5. RAID 1 is mainly of benefit for a server where zero down time is
tolerable. SOHO users reload the OS on a new drive and use the backed
up files they had to make anyway.

------------
When your PC gives a little they give a lot.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco

AJ wrote:

>>Hello,
>>
>>firstly, sorry for the cross-post.
>>
>>I'm in the process of building a RAID 1 array around a Promise Fasttrak PCI
>>card with two identical 160Gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives.
>
>
> BTW, 9 out of 10 SOHO users using RAID choose RAID 0.
> Maybe since:



Suggesting RAID 0 to a person who has bad luck with hard drives failing?
Interesting...



-WD

"AJ" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >firstly, sorry for the cross-post.
> >
> >I'm in the process of building a RAID 1 array around a Promise Fasttrak
PCI
> >card with two identical 160Gb Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives.
>
> BTW, 9 out of 10 SOHO users using RAID choose RAID 0.
> Maybe since:
> 1 RAID 1 can be slow.

Thanks for the advice, AJ, but the RAID array is simply for data storage -
the system disk is elsewhere, and speed isn't an issue.

> 2. Virus hits drive one, drive two gets hosed.

The system is offline, so that minimises that risk.

> 3. OS goes bad on one, same with drive two.
> 4. RAID 1 is no substitute for good backups(see 2 and 3 above).

Yes, very true. There are other backup strategies in place.

> 5. RAID 1 is mainly of benefit for a server where zero down time is
> tolerable. SOHO users reload the OS on a new drive and use the backed
> up files they had to make anyway.
>
> ------------
> When your PC gives a little they give a lot.
> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco

"AJ" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> >
> >My question: is it possible that I am doing something to 'break' these
> >drives? Or, am I just unfortunate enough to be the recipient of two from
a
> >bad batch?
> >
>
> Sounds like you're running screws in that are too long. Hitting the
> platter or circuits. I've never had a Maxtor go bad but YMMV.

The screws are just your normal mounting screws - about 5mm long, including
the head! Surely it can't be them, can it?

> ------------
> When your PC gives a little they give a lot.
> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco

"waltonic" <> wrote in message
news:bjrnp4$2oh$...
>
> > 2. Virus hits drive one, drive two gets hosed.
>
> The system is offline, so that minimises that risk.
>

Offline, yeah, but there are many other ways to infect it, i.e. cd-rom,
floppy disk, etc

--

- Tony Sutton
- http://www.hyperboard.co.uk - The Biggest Message Board!
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