Hard drive failure

[Scikar]

Well it seems I have found the source of my motherboard problem I posted about a while back. The motherboard itself is being replaced, but I decided to use the replacement in my other comp and bought an Abit NF7-S. Stuck the mobo in, everything worked perfectly except neither hard disk was detected by BIOS. After swapping cables around I found that my old 14GB disk was recognised straight away, yet the 2 new ones wouldn't even wind up or anything at all. A check of the bottom of one drive revealed the problem - one of the chips has a big white lump on it where it appears to have melted, and the silicon around it is scorched. So it seems a hard disk has blown up and taken the other disk and the mobo with it.

The disk with the melted chip is a Maxtor Diamond 9 80GB 133 with 8MB cache, the smaller disk is a Diamond 8 40GB 133 with 2 MB cache, and the mobo was an Asus A7V600.

I'd like to know, has anyone else had problems like this, and with what drives? I can probably send the drives back and get them replaced, but if the new ones are going to blow up and take the new motherboard with them then I'd rather get something more reliable. ;)

[Lathuc]

sounds like you had some electrical poroblems that would have overloaded your hdd. i would check your power converter for defaults

[Clyde]

also, if you feel like its worth saving the data on the 2 hds with fried chips, buy 2 exact models of them and swap the circut boards. My hd failed do to mechanical problems last month (makes a ticking sound), So me and my bro are buying 3 exact same model ones. Were going to put info on lets say New drive A and B, then in a sterile enviroment, take them apart and swap the platters (my hd maxtor 50t0h6, has 3 platters/20gb) and see if that will work. If it does then were going to try it on my failed hd with the remainder new one. The info on my hd is extremely valuable and completely unreplaceable (it contains music i have created in the past 5 years). I have tried this with 2 800mb hds of the exact same model, while in a non sterile enviorment (1 spec of dust is supposed to ruin a platter) and my finger touched the surface a few times, The harddrives still booted up and i was able to retreive 98% of the data off of it.

[Stigmata]

i wouldn't worry about maxtor reliability, they are pretty much as good as every other major brand.

if their is/was a known problem maxtor would of either recalled them or put out a fix.

all HDD manufacturers have had batch problems at times, although i have not heard of a problem with maxtor for some time.

for 2 HDD's and a Mobo to go i would suspect a problme with your PSU and/or power cable, energy spike of some kind

[Keyol45743241]

Maxtor is the only company which gives their mean time before failure for their consumer (non scsi) in continuous use, all other companies consider 8 hours a day normal and give you a "days" value. :rolleyes:

Have you tried to contact maxtor? Do you have a dedicated fan for your HDs? They generate a lot of heat, having them run cooler ist always a good idea. I use two 40G Maxtors in a raid-0 setup. Nobody zones faster than I do ;)

[subsys]

ive had two maxtor +9's arrive DOA, the third arrived today (about 2 mins ago in fact) so when i put that in ill let you know my thoughts on maxtor

[DannyJ]

Sounds much more like a PSU problem / Power spike..

There's no way, well its very unlikely, that one malfunctioning hard drive, a mxtor one at that, would cause that amount of damage

[Argent]

Originally posted by Clyde
My hd failed do to mechanical problems last month (makes a ticking sound), So me and my bro are buying 3 exact same model ones. Were going to put info on lets say New drive A and B, then in a sterile enviroment, take them apart and swap the platters (my hd maxtor 50t0h6, has 3 platters/20gb) and see if that will work. If it does then were going to try it on my failed hd with the remainder new one. The info on my hd is extremely valuable and completely unreplaceable (it contains music i have created in the past 5 years). I have tried this with 2 800mb hds of the exact same model, while in a non sterile enviorment (1 spec of dust is supposed to ruin a platter) and my finger touched the surface a few times, The harddrives still booted up and i was able to retreive 98% of the data off of it.

My guess it is that it won't work. Nowadays the data density is so much higher that only removing the top cover can fuck up the HD completely. And don't even think about touching or replacing the platters, you need special equipment for that (balancing it, etc). If you look up some HD-modification articles with 80+GB HDs you'll see that none of them have succeeded (at least I haven't found one so far). They usually only try to take of the lid and modify it and put back, not even touching the platters, still resulting in failure. Also, where are you able to use sterile environment?

If the data is really important to you take the disc to professional data rescuers, it costs though. A lot.

If you still are going to try to replace the platters : good luck!

[Scikar]

Something with the power seems to make sense actually. The issue with the motherboard itself was with power - switching the PSU on turned all the fans and lights on, though I couldn't get it to boot up or turn off.

Is there a problem with having long chains on the 12v cables? I've got quite a lot in there, 7 case fans, 2 HDDs, 1 DVD-RW, and a Radeon 9800 XT, and there's only 2 12v chains coming from the PSU to chain them on to. The PSU is 450W so I don't know if there might be a problem there. Is there anything I should be thinking about regarding the setup with power that might have caused the problem in the first place?

4 of the case fans were directly in front of the drives so I don't think cooling could have been a problem.

EDIT: There's nothing on the drives that I don't have on my other comp so there's no worries there.

[Clyde]

Originally posted by Argent
My guess it is that it won't work. Nowadays the data density is so much higher that only removing the top cover can fuck up the HD completely. And don't even think about touching or replacing the platters, you need special equipment for that (balancing it, etc). If you look up some HD-modification articles with 80+GB HDs you'll see that none of them have succeeded (at least I haven't found one so far). They usually only try to take of the lid and modify it and put back, not even touching the platters, still resulting in failure. Also, where are you able to use sterile environment?

If the data is really important to you take the disc to professional data rescuers, it costs though. A lot.

If you still are going to try to replace the platters : good luck!

thats why we are going to do a test run first. To see how everything works out. It might not work at all and will be a waste of 2 hds, but thats a chance ill easily take considering if it does work, I'll save about 2 grand. Now if the test run doesnt work, fuck it. I wouldnt risk perminently loosing my data unless there was a good chance that i could get it back. Back on topic tho

Scikar, you should watch the voltage levels in your systems bios for a hour. if theres something wrong with your psu then youll see mad fluxuations

A decent brand 450w psu you can run all those things with no sweat. Now if this is a generic psu, then thats another story

[L0KI]

I woke up this morning, hard drive grinding, after i left it WIDE open to hackers (reinstalled windows at 11pm last night, couldnt be arsed to firewall it)...


Most sectors = fucked, HDD = fucked.

Nice little READMENOW file in the drive's root:

HAHAHA YOU DUMB FUCKER, YOU LEFT IT WIDE OPEN. HAHAHA THNX

OpTi gave me an old 15gb beast for now... :D

[Keyol45743241]

Originally posted by Scikar
Something with the power seems to make sense actually. The issue with the motherboard itself was with power - switching the PSU on turned all the fans and lights on, though I couldn't get it to boot up or turn off.Something blocking your CPU fan? Or making it draw too much power, as it is turned too fast? Or maybe too slow, and the RPM don't suffice for the BIOS safety settings so it powers the whole thing down right away? Especialy consider your graphics card.

Try to balance the loads on your 12v lines, too... is the power supply a brand name one? I use Enermax and am completely happy with its performance

[Scikar]

Nah it wasn't the CPU or BIOS - the power came on straight away before I could press the power button so there was something wrong before the BIOS. It's being fixed anyway.

I think the problem was that the power cable was on too long an extension. I had one 4-way extension lead plugged into another which was plugged into the wall, and the comp was connected to the last one so I think the voltage was too high there.

The biggest problem is I'm out of money for now to replace anything, so I'm on a 13GB ATA 33 drive for the time being. :p

The PSU is made by EYE-T, it's a custom case which they make and the PSU came with it. Says designed for P4 on it but I doubt that will have any effect.

[Gotterdammerung]

If whatever is on those HD's is very important to you there is a company in the US called disksavers. Manufacturers will always replace a HD with a fresh & new one if yours is under warranty but that don't repair or transfer the data. Disksavers is the only source authorized & sanctioned by all the HD manufacturers to actually repair & recover a HD & it's data.

Be prepared to spend about $900 per HD though

[Scikar]

Well the 40GB disk was formatted but apart from that completely empty, and the 80GB disk had nothing on that I don't have on my other comp, except my saves from Icewind Dale 2 which I stopped playing anyway. :)

[RuriHoshino]

Originally posted by Gotterdammerung
If whatever is on those HD's is very important to you there is a company in the US called disksavers. Manufacturers will always replace a HD with a fresh & new one if yours is under warranty but that don't repair or transfer the data. Disksavers is the only source authorized & sanctioned by all the HD manufacturers to actually repair & recover a HD & it's data.

Be prepared to spend about $900 per HD though

When I worked for a local computer repair shop, we sent Disksavers a few drives. The only one they were unable to get the data off of turned out to be the head landed on the platter, twisted and literally gouged the hell out of the platter. They do very good work.

[Kugero]

Actually if anything it was a voltage drop. The longer the cable the higher the overall resistance. Run too long and you might have a voltage loss at the power supply input that exceeds operating parameters or at least causes funky supply issues.

you can test it by messuring the voltage at the plug - just don't kill yourself. You should be able to figure out from the power specs the max and min operating voltages. If it fall within param then that wasn't the problem and you should be safe to continue using your daisy chain. Otherwise, don't plug it up to a new power supply until you shorten the total length of the power chain ...

[-Demon-]

You can get em replaced no problems.

Goto the maxtor site and download thier utilitys for the disks you have. If there's errors which sounds like there are plenty then the utilitys should produce an error code which you need to enter onto the online form and get a RMA number that you send the kit to maxtor.

Also worth mentioning they do two types of returns one you just send back and wait for them to check the hdd and then send replacements.

Or number two is you give them a credit card number I never tried this but assume that if not faulty they charge you. The good thing about this option is they send a replacement straightaway without receiving the bust drive(s).

[Agent L]

By using too many extensions you can only lower voltage if load is high. With 450W load it *could* exceed allowable +/- 10% aberrance but switching supply shouldn't be affected.
After few hours of running everything dismount your chain and check temperature of plugs bolts. If they're cold = no loss occured = no danger and negative efects.

About powering 12/5V devices - as voltage is low, the load is much higher here and therefore too long chain is much more dangerous. So link high-power consumpting and critical devices directly, like HDDs or GPUs and sacrifice one plug to chain all fans and lights. They don't took that much power and tolerate lower voltage better.