Detecting HDD failures

[Brasscutter]

Hi folks, I have just dispatched my second HDD to the big garbage can. Lucky for me I had recent back-ups but in both cases I think there was no warning about the failure except difficulty in booting.

Did I miss anything?

 

[edfair]

You probably should have run the manufacturer's diagnostics on the drives. That way you would know what happened.
There are things that can cause a drive not to boot, but with an idea what is wrong, and the proper tools, you can get it back.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[HardKnox]

Some faults ain't physical either like failed partitioning. The old manufacturer's diagnostics can some times tell ye if it was physical. The only way to fix this with out buy expensive tools is to remove the partition, to re-partition, reformat and to reinstall yer OS. The most common HDD physical faults are:

1) Ticking, clicking and clunking noise
this is failed drive mechanics
2) Drive failing to detect correctly in BIOS after some use. This is normally caused by bad circuit interface board
3) Missing or corrupt data.
Bad sectors but verify with a surface scan first.

Always remeber to make sure the drive is screwed in place tightly and can't move. Also to keep it cool cause heat is the number one killer.

 

[baltman]

I had a problem with a loose/bad cable that looked like bad sectors and lead to failed boot *sometimes*. Have you tested your cables?

Brian

 

[Brasscutter]

Fair comments from all. Unfortunatelyafter trying to reformat etc and loading the drive as a slave absolutely nothing happenned. There was no detectable sign of life in the HDD. The bios sometime detected the drive but then hung.
All ended well and the supplier refunded immedeately. Obviously a few users had returned similar units. By he way it was sold as an IBM but it was an excelstor. I wonder if there have been any other feed back on these drives?

 

[IONSystems]

If the data recovery isn't important to you, you can always RMA the drive too and get a new (refurbished) drive out to you for just the cost of shipping it to them (about $4). You can also use the S.M.A.R.T function in BIOS, which monitors the drive and "predicts" failures. It's not especially useful, but it's actually saved me a few times when it thought there was going to be a hard drive failure soon, and I mirrored the drive onto another one, and sure enough a couple days later the original drive failed.

Chris Biggers

http://www.ionsystems.net

ION Systems, Computer Sales and Service
Data Destruction services now!

 

[Brasscutter]

I must admit I always enable the SMART function, but usually I switch on the computer and then go away until it has booted. It is obvious that the monitoring does not interact with windows.