Problems with my hard-disks

limsandy

n00b
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Jul 8, 2006
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Hello, all. I'm having problems with my hard-disks. These are the four that I currently own, although not all of them are used at the same time:

WD Raptor 74GB (SATA)
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L250R0 250GB (IDE)
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L250R0 250GB (IDE)
Brand new Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB (SATA) with SD15 firmware, made in Thailand.

One of the Maxtor drives is dying (clicking and very slow transfer speed) so I bought a brand new Seagate ST31000340AS to backup my data. If you read the reviews from newegg.com, you can find that many people are experiencing failures, especially those with firmware SD15 from Thailand. Mine is not yet dying, but it's showing symptoms. For example, sometimes during start-up, BIOS wouldn't recognize the drive and the hd would make clicking noise. So my quesiton is.... is it possible to request an RMA for the same drive with a different firmware, like SD04 from Singapore? I'm afraid they're gonna send me a replacement with the same firmware from Thailand and the hd would fail me again in no time. :mad:

Then I tried to copy a large file from one of the good Maxtor drives into the same drive. It takes approximately 19 seconds to copy a 348MB file, or roughly 18.3MB/sec. I did the same test to my Raptor drive, and to my surprise, it took 66 seconds to copy the same file to the same drive, or less than 5.3MB/sec! I also noticed that with the Maxtor drive, CPU utilization was between 0-7%. With the Raptor, it was 91-100%. Something is definitely wrong. Can anyone help me point out the error? I did a defrag on the Raptor before copying the file and it was still very slow. It has only 13.9GB free, 55.2 used space.

Any kind of help is very much appreciated and I thank you in advance. I am desperate.... :confused:
 
On the RMA bit you are most likely out of luck, The drives they send out will be in bins and the people there will just pick them up put them in a box and away it goes. Most companies will not maintain seperate inventories for firmware revisions. As for your raptor You may try a reformat or a low level format, sounds like it is corrupt or you have a controller failure.
 
Seagate RMA's in particular, you get a refurbished drive, there's no new stock for replacements. And it is completely luck of the draw on the revision (hardware and firmware)
 
Seagate RMA's in particular, you get a refurbished drive, there's no new stock for replacements. And it is completely luck of the draw on the revision (hardware and firmware)

Actually it's more of a used drive than a refurbished drive. All they do when you send them back is plug them into a machine that rewrites the servo data to the drive.
 
Actually it's more of a used drive than a refurbished drive. All they do when you send them back is plug them into a machine that rewrites the servo data to the drive.


...and it comes with a label that implicitly says "refurbished" on it. But I agree with you, most manufacturers use the same method.
 
Have you tried running the manufactureres diagnostics on the drive in question?

Don
 
Thanks for all the help, guys. Yes, I have actually tried to run Seatools on all the drives and except for the clicking Maxtor, every one of them passed the short drive self-test.
 
With the Raptor, it was 91-100%. Something is definitely wrong. Can anyone help me point out the error? I did a defrag on the Raptor before copying the file and it was still very slow.

CPU usage is a hint. The last time this happened to me, it was because the controller transfer mode had set to PIO (due to a couple transient errors). Check to make sure it's still set to DMA. Instructions on this are at: http://www.onthegosoft.com/dma_setting_nt.htm
 
I have just re-installed 6.86_nforce Xp drivers and I am now seeing NVIDIA Nforce4 SATA Controller in my Device Manager. I'm on DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D, btw. And I am now rebooting into the BIOS to make sure DMA is enabled. BRB....
 
DMA is not enabled, but it's set to AUTO.

PIO settings are also set to AUTO.

My CPU utilization is now 2-5% during copy. :woot:

There is even a neat little tab on my Device Manager > nForce4 SATA Controller now, and I can use it to test the read speed of my Raptor 74GB.

Transfer mode: SATA Generation 1 - 1.5Gb
Burst Speed - 110.7
Sustained Speed - 70.9

Does that sound right? Expected from a Raptor 74GB?

Now I just have to RMA my 1TB Seagate with a different firmware. It's not technically dead yet, but it's making the clicking noise. Should I stress-test the Seagate so it'd break and I can RMA it? :D
 
Transfer mode: SATA Generation 1 - 1.5Gb
Burst Speed - 110.7
Sustained Speed - 70.9

Does that sound right? Expected from a Raptor 74GB?

Now I just have to RMA my 1TB Seagate with a different firmware. It's not technically dead yet, but it's making the clicking noise. Should I stress-test the Seagate so it'd break and I can RMA it? :D

Yes that sounds about right for a 74 G Raptor.

Loud clicking noises are grounds for an RMA. Just put that down as the "problem" with the drive. The manufacturers are not as picky about RMA's as a retailer might be.

Don
 
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