WTF is it with hard drives failing?

[Cleo]

Damn, I'm sitting here working and my 120 gig AcomData FireWire drive that I use for backups makes this horrible grinding sound and dies.

It's dead, less then a year old so I just mailed their tech support about its warranty.

So far this year I've lost my boot drive, it was a Maxtor drive, lost the IBM drive that I used to replace it with, both 60 gig drives. I have a Western Digital drive now for my boot drive.

My clients have been losing a lot of drives this year as well, mostly Maxtor drives. All the drives have suffered mechanical failures where the drive breaks up inside.

Nothing is lost, it was just used for backups, but until it is replaced I'm working without a backup. Guess I better go pick up some blank DVD+R disks tomorrow.

[digifan]

Damn Cleo,

you made me worrying about the new Powerbook which I did not even comment yet.. phew

Are they cheaper or more popular? Or just too big? Well compared to mine

It sucks big time but the most important thing is that you did not lose anything.

[Cleo]

I think it is just that they have gotten so cheap that they are being made with cheap parts.

I remember paying like $2000 for a 10,000 RPM 8 gig SCSI drive only 10 years ago. But then I also remember paying something insane like $3000 for 256 megs of RAM. Everything has gotten so cheap, but it has also gotten less reliable.

I think it is also that modem systems demand more of a drives with the huge scratch files that they make and Photoshop does some major disk accesses when working with large files.

But damn, this drive is just used for nightly backups.

[digifan]

Sure.. it is understandable, not that I like that.. would you believe that i still have two small 10 yr old hds, 2 gigs and 800 MB? And they work. They are good for backup

[Extreme John]

Ill tell you what happend, everyone in the world wanted lower prices, meaning cheap and in the end something has to give, computers are made with shit, and that goes for HD's and just about everything else.. What ever happend to quality!!!

[DangerDave]

John.. I think your right...


Cleo was the IBM a "deskstar" - also commonly known as DEATHstar! |raygun|

DD

[Cleo]

Damn girl, I was actually thinking of you the other day. One of my accounts, Pubset is moving to a new warehouse and we were throwing away everything that we felt that was no longer needed. This included any drive under 40 gigs, any beige boxes, Syquest drives,all kinds of shit. We filled up a huge dumpster with obsolete equipment. They have been in the same location for about ten years and I've been their tech since they started.

[Cleo]

Originally posted by DangerDave
Cleo was the IBM a "deskstar" - also commonly known as DEATHstar! |raygun|

It sure was. I needed something fast on the weekend and all the store had was Maxtor and IBM. I've had more then my share of bad Maxtor drives so I took my chances with the IBM drive. It died less then six months later. I didn't even get a new one under warranty, just checked it in the trash.

[digifan]

Must have been fun... and I bet you made quite a few poorer folks happy.
I hope someone buys that pay site design in my sig and can buy a beige G3.
Thanks for thinking of me Oh and nice 'account" and site, I love it.

[SandManHI]

I have been replacing a bunch of drives as of late too. Of course all the drives I have been replacing are from one big shipment of computers we picked up 4 years ago so I haven't been complaining about the failures as after time I expect them to fail.

But, I just had to replace 2 Seagate SCSI drives out of my raid array this past month, and they were only about 6 months old. First one dies, so I pick up a replacement Seagate drive and tried to replace the failed drive, yet the new drive only worked long enough to rebuild the array and then it failed. Note that I don't count this in the two failed drives as it was so new that it was probably a dud. Switched and bought a new Fujitsu 73 gig drive (it was less expensive and carries a 5 year warantee) and had that in for about a day when another of the orriginal Segate drives failed. Decided I would switch them all out for the Fujitsu drives and give them a try for a while.

I agree with the cheap parts theory, but we also have to realize that as these drives get larger capacity and smaller form factor, the parts are getting more and more complicated to manufacture too. Some of these parts are so small that if you used your bare fingers to pick them up, they might just enter your blood stream without you even knowing it.

Not that I want to give excuses for the manufacturers now... I just don't want to have to wait for the drives to get shipped out and back to me anymore.

[spookyx]

Originally posted by Cleo
Damn girl, I was actually thinking of you the other day. One of my accounts, Pubset is moving to a new warehouse and we were throwing away everything that we felt that was no longer needed. This included any drive under 40 gigs, any beige boxes, Syquest drives,all kinds of shit. We filled up a huge dumpster with obsolete equipment. They have been in the same location for about ten years and I've been their tech since they started.

ACK!!!!

next time you want to throw away hardware like that send it my way...

[Ramster]

I just put a new harddrive in my pc yesterday afternoon. Mine didn't fail it was just too small and full so I had to add a new one and move the old one as a slave.

[Cleo]

Originally posted by spookyx
next time you want to throw away hardware like that send it my way...

The trouble is that it costs time and money to ship stuff and anyway it is piles of parts with the drives and memory having been striped out, although the striped out parts are often also in the pile.

[amber438]

I gotta tell ya..I'd never ever by a Maxtor drive..They are pos9000
(piece of shit 9000)
I have always had Western Digital drives and never had problems..seriously..and I always put em in my customers pc's too..u
I have 3wd 120 gig hard drives in this baby now..all on a raid controller ..

IBM Deskstar was ok, and was one of the fastest hd's around in it's day..I have a 60 gig in here just because....it never died..it's my os hd


I have the 3/120 gig hard drives in removeable chassis (I like the chassis cause it's so damned easy to replace em or remove em)
I also put removable chassis on my customers pc for the hard drives..they stay cooler that way too..maybe it's a heat issue..

[MrMaryLou]

Its Western Digital or nothning for me Maxtor's remind me of meat grinders LOL

[JanTM]

Originally posted by Cleo
It sure was. I needed something fast on the weekend and all the store had was Maxtor and IBM. I've had more then my share of bad Maxtor drives so I took my chances with the IBM drive. It died less then six months later. I didn't even get a new one under warranty, just checked it in the trash.

Now now you guys... I have two of those inside my machine and they have been working fine for more than a year now *knock wood*

Are you sure its not just because Macs don't have a harddisk controller?

[mist]

Originally posted by Extreme John
...and that goes for HD's and just about everything else.. What ever happend to quality!!!

I have an really old monitor, a IBM 8512 it's like 20 years and has outlived some of my newer ones, that's quality!

[DangerDave]

Originally posted by Cleo
It sure was. ....... I didn't even get a new one under warranty, just checked it in the trash.

I have lost two IBM DEATHstar's , a 40G content drive that pissed me right off.. and another that I managed to save the info off before it clapped out completely.

IBM DEATHstar's have a bad rep... |pissed|

I believe IBM have sold out their HDD division to Hitachi now.. don't know if that will mean improvement or not..

I run Seagates now.. but Western Dig, would probaly still be my top choice.

IBM |raygun| http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...skstar+failure

DD

[JanTM]

LOL... do I detect a little hostility towards IBM from you DDave?

[Cleo]

Personally I find that Maxtor and IBM drives make really good paper weights. They are also good for throwing at your neighbor's dog when they will not stop barking.

[DangerDave]

Jan when you have three PC's running multiple IBM drives and they start-a-failing... ya get a little ticked off |skull|

DD

[wicked1]

Just about all drive Brands have had problems in the last 5 years.

Quite some time ago now Western Digital had short life spans on Cavair drives.

Fujuitsu have always sucked.
At least they are consistently bad

Seagate have had mixed success with older models the medialist were real suspect drives.
Newer Drives have been quite good in my experiences with them.

Maxtor drives have let a lot of people down over the years. Even the newer models ATA133 I refuse to deal in ,not worth the grief.

Yes DD ,

Intermittent Business Machines HDD arm was bought out by Hitachi and to my knowledge they denied any responsability to IBM's customers for failed IBM drives warranty.

Unfortunately Fujitsu drives are one of the most common drives in notebooks today,witht he exception of Toshiba notebooks they use Toshiba drives.

Notebooks are dropping like flies with Hdd failure as well.

When people tell me "ohh but I don't have time to back that up all the time,I ask them "do you have time to rebuild all that data from scratch ?."

Drive is all to common these days, and it shows the manufacturers have little faith in thier products by the recent warranty reduction from 3 years to 12 months.

Regards,

Wicked1