jay pettitt on 31/3/2009 at 19:32
Hard drive failure is supposed to be rare, not every six months or so. I checked with Mr Probability and he say something is probably wrong.
(last drive I lost - to be fair I dropped it - was an external thing I used as a backup. I was doing a reinstall at the time. doh!)
Jay wonders if Renz attempts troubleshooting his drives by trying them out in another PC or something. Jay remembers one time, at band camp, when there was this PC that kept stalling on boot and Windows reported an unrecoverable hard drive error when really it was a conflict between a Windows update, the BIOS and a missing CPU stepping process on Celeron Processors. It kept recurring every now and then when the update got re-downloaded. Took me a while to work that one out I can tell you ho ho ho. I think that was when I finally decided windows wasn't worth the bother and refused to ever look at it ever again. Wasn't a SATA thing though.
Quote Posted by Renz
At least I can take one good thing away from all this. It's made me really anal
fixed that for ya :D
Renzatic on 31/3/2009 at 20:38
You forgot to put a period after Mr., Jay. Jeezus. :rolleyes:
I've heard of harddrive density issues before. Hence the reason why I went from a 500Gb drive to an itty bitty 80Gb. Truthfully, I don't think that becomes a problem until you start getting into the 800Gb range, but I figured I'd try a smaller drive for the shits and giggles. See how it'd go. You all can see how that turned out.
And yeah, Jay. I've tried them out in other computers. Whatever is wrong with my PC, it kills drives completely and utterly. Yet...weirdly...everything else works as usual before and after a crash (furiously knocks on wood).
The only thing I can think of beyond weird power issues or electromagnetic anomalies or ley lines or whatever is that I have a weird motherboard, an Asrock Dual SATA2 939. It isn't a bad board at all, thing performs great and could easily keep pace with the then top of the line mobos. But it isn't one of the usual big names everyone picks up, and didn't receive much support after release. I could have something going on there I don't know about.
...hmmm.
lost_soul on 31/3/2009 at 21:27
Well, I do not speak from experience (I've only heard stories), but apparently Windows installs are a pain in the butt with SATA drives. Apparently you have to load the drivers with floppies during the install.
Renzatic on 31/3/2009 at 22:20
It a little bit of a pain if you've got an older untweaked copy of XP. The more recent disc with Service Pack 2 or 3 have the drivers onboard, all you have to do is pop it in and let it do things naturally.
bikerdude on 31/3/2009 at 23:18
Quote Posted by Renzatic
It a little bit of a pain if you've got an older untweaked copy of XP. The more recent disc with Service Pack 2 or 3 have the drivers onboard, all you have to do is pop it in and let it do things naturally.
Sometimes, but windows only has a small selection of sata motherboard drivers installed on the disc, this is why you have to go the F6 method more often than not.
Bjossi on 31/3/2009 at 23:39
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I've heard of harddrive density issues before. Hence the reason why I went from a 500Gb drive to an itty bitty 80Gb. Truthfully, I don't think that becomes a problem until you start getting into the 800Gb range, but I figured I'd try a smaller drive for the shits and giggles. See how it'd go. You all can see how that turned out.
Picking a smaller hard drive isn't going to guarantee longer life, you'll need to be lucky as well. ;)
deathshadow on 1/4/2009 at 01:29
I've run large size SATA drives without problems... But I only buy WD and Samsung. I would not go near Maxtor or Seagate if you paid me - they are pure rubbish and have been for years.
One company that has REALLY cleaned up thier act lately is hitachi... gone are the days of joking about Hibachi Deathstars as since the 500 gig barrier was broken they've made some quality drives... But if it's a hibachi smaller than 500 gigs, it's going to be rubbish so bad you'd long for Connor to still be in business.
As to the drives 'sucking' the one place SATA drives REALLY blow is the wiring. Whoever designed the SATA connector must have been very 'special' - in the same way some olympics are 'special'. I used to work in plastics manufacturing and design - and you cannot mold thermoset resin that thin and expect it to hold together. The slightest stresses chip the connectors leading to intermittent contact that can short out/fry the drive... Such rinky little crap is enough to make one wish for the days of PATA again.
The newer cables with the metal clips on them help, but not if you screw up the drive side of the equation which is just as poorly made.
It's funny, when USB came out I ragged on them for being rinky (I'd probably have gone with a classic round 5 pin din) but SATA took it to all new levels of "how cheap can we make this ****" - at least USB uses METAL hoods around the stupid little wad of plastic with contact pads larger than a sewing needle.
It would probably be a little better if manufacturers used polyvinyl like the old connectors instead of the cheap injection molded thermoset resin... But really it's just a case of the connector being too damned small for it's own good.
But really, it's a technology that screams corner cutting and should have been sent back to the drawing board, but because it's so cheap to manufacture it's an uphill battle to convince the hardware makers of that.
chis on 1/4/2009 at 15:41
I have a lot of old hard disks. I've had very very few EVER die on me. The only Western Digital drive that flaked out was one that was nearly DOA - it gave me SMART errors a few hours after using it. I've bought nearly 20 WD drives over the years and had no other problems.
I HAVE seen Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba drives all die in varying amounts. I'd say Maxtor and Hitachi are the worst culprits.
Here is a tip: use a decent power supply. Seriously, people underestimate how important this is. Buy Corsair, Tagan, Seasonic. I've seen a number of off-the-shelf PCs with dodgy old Lite-On, Bestec, FSP PSUs that end up with motherboards that occasionally refuse to POST, RAM that fails, and hard disks that just stop working.
Crappy power supplies kill components. Whomever is your preferred choice of hard disk manufacturer, if you want your drives to last as long as possible, make sure they are fed from a good PSU.
bikerdude on 1/4/2009 at 16:16
Quote Posted by chis
I have a lot of old hard disks. I HAVE seen Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba drives all die in varying amounts. I'd say Maxtor and Hitachi are the worst culprits.
Here is a tip: use a decent power supply. Seriously, people underestimate how important this is. Crappy power supplies kill components.
What he said.
Macha on 1/4/2009 at 22:42
Okay up front I'm going to admit I'm a rather big noob when it comes to whats inside the computer. Anyway, instead of starting another thread I'll post here. I'm going to upgrade my machine as it seems to be becoming sluggish. More ram and another hard drive would appear to be the answer. I currently have one SAMSUNG HD160JJ/P [Hard drive] (160.00 GB) which fills up fairly fast when you're a fan of music at nothing lower than 320kbps.
My machine is a Dell DM051. Opening it up I noticed that it has two spaces for hard drives. Only one of them is presently being used. I noticed that hard drives use a multi wired/coloured connecter (which i assume is for power transfer) and one blue one that connects straight to the mother board (which i assume is for data transfer). There is a spare multi coloured lead just waiting there but no spare one that goes to the mother board. Also what is this master/slave relationship I hear about all the time with hard drives?
On the topic of upgrading ram, I have four slots. Two of them are of different colour to the other two. Does this mean there is a difference in power or something?
