Dead Hard Drives on 2 Poweredge SC420!!!

J

joecool234

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2001
Messages
433
Ok, about a year ago I jumped on the SC420 bandwagon like many others around here. A ridonculous server/workstation/desktop (shhhh, don't tell Dell) for about $200...how could you go wrong? With Maxtor hard drives, thats how. Ok, bear with me:

I bought my first SC420 for my brother for xmas and he hasn't had a problem since. After xmas, I told my boss about the deal and bought another 2. Those two machines came with Maxtor 80GB DiamondMax 9 SATA hard drives. Everything was fine with then until last week, when windows (XP) wouldn't boot. The XP logo would popup but after a second or two would go to the "Windows did not start normally...blah blah blah" screen. ANY option selected would simply cause the computer to restart...INCLUDING safe mode. Weird, huh?

Anyways, when I went to reinstall windows the partition list would show the C: partition, but it was listed as [UNKNOWN] instead of [NTFS]. So I deleted the partition and started over. Everything went smooth...until i tried to install Office the next day. I was getting all of these permission errors and the install simply needed to be cancelled. Enough of this bullshit....I restarted. Unfortunately, after I did this I would simply get an error before the logo would even post "Blah Blah Blah ....system32\hal.dll is missing please reinistall the file." Ok, the drive is hosed. I call tech support (all the while thinking my warranty expired already, but luckily it goes until Jan 5 2006!!!) The kind gentleman told me to run a hard drive diagnostic by hitting F12 at POST. Running the hard drive diagnostic would report a failure - code 7. We verified the hard drive was fried.

This normally wouldn't surprise me; however, yesterday morning I see my boss is lugging the other computer to the office. Fuck me. He was having THE SAME PROBLEM. Windows would continually cause the computer to reboot. After running the F12 diagnostic, the same error code popped up - 7. So, another drive was hosed, another RMA request.

So basically, this post is simply a notice to everyone with an 80GB Maxtor drive (6Y080M0)......BACKUP YO SHIT. Then run the F12 diagnostic ASAP to see if the drive is still healthy. This is WAY too coincidental to be anything less than a bad run of drives AKA, more drives are going to die out there. Heads up everyone.
 
im a little bit confused by error code 7

most dell techs have said code 7 = bad drive

however, one told me they're wrong and code 7 = read failure and does not mean bad hd.

oh well, just listen to them and get your new drives. well, hopefully new and not reconditioned :D
 
CCUABIDExORxDIE said:
do you mean Maxtor instead of Matrox? ive heard of issues with the maxtor DiamondMax 9's
Click to expand...

Yea, I'm retarded...my bad. As for the "new" drives, they are reconditioned Seagate's. I'll take reconditioned Seagate's over dead Maxtor's any day of the week.

P.S. What's pissing me off even more is the fact that Maxtor's own Diagnostic program keeps on crashing. Supposedly I can use that fix the bad blocks. I just really need to pull my shit off one of the drives.
 
joecool234 said:
This is WAY too coincidental to be anything less than a bad run of drives AKA, more drives are going to die out there. Heads up everyone.
Click to expand...
You have two drives that failed, and are jumping to the conclusion that there must be a "bad run of drives"?

Of course more drives are going to die. But concluding that there's a bad batch of drives is more Chicken Little than Engineering Statistics.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
While I am not a huge fan of Maxtor drives, especially ones that predate the DiamondMax10/MaxLineIII, the turth is that there are a variety of factors that can cause sotrage related errors. Have you checked cables? Have you noted the operating temperature of the drive? Have you made sure the drive is getting clean power?

I have seen IDE/SATA cables "grow bad" Not very often, but a cheap and quick fix if it works.

The second question is partly Maxtor's fault ,as their drives use more power (and by extension generate more heat) than their competitors. Is the drive being ventialted, or is it squirreled away in a cage that allows hot air to build up around the drive?

Have you checked the power supply? If the PSU is dropping voltage or causing other current irregularities to reach the HDD, it's a good bet that that HDD won't be around for long.

All questions that need to be answered before you blame Maxtor's quality control. The simple turth of the matter is that an environmental hazard is more likely to kill a drive than a manufacturing defect. See my sig? Have you seen my FS thread, where I've unloaded over 20 HDDs in the past 4 months? I've used well over 50 [H]ard Drives in the past five years, and all but two of them have lasted their life cycles in my care and subsequently been sold. One of them was killed by a power supply that was later found to be defective and immediately removed from service, the other actually was defective. Many of my drives are allegedly unreliable Maxtor and WD rebate specials. Many more are ancient cast off SCSI drives that are well beyond their five year warranties, yet they all happily spin away to this day. Why? Because I have uninterruptible battery backups and high quality power supplies for all of my systems - three Antec TruePower units, a pair of high end Enermaxes, and a Seasonic. In addition, all of my HDDs have cooling fans devoted to them.
 
Along with drives that fail, you may also want to look at any capacitors on the mainboard that look bulged or funky, the 400's had some issues with caps...

Just a quick check...

MD
 
Neither of the 2 SC420 systems I bought a year ago has hard drive problems. One is working as a server for me and another is used as the main desktop by my brother. Both are used daily.

BTW, the service tag doesn't indicate a "batch". The last 2 characters are a sequential date code though (when shipped).

I didn't see any rash of complaints about the SC420 hard drives on delltalk, so it might be some other problem.
 
at work our dell optiplex's and hp evo workstations use those diamondmax 9 drives, i call in maybe 5~10 a week... they come and replace them with barracudas, have only called in one of those ever

all those thin inexpensive maxtor drives have been nothing but crap, i wish dell and hp would stop using them, they are almost guaranteed to fail
 
FLECOM said:
at work our dell optiplex's and hp evo workstations use those diamondmax 9 drives, i call in maybe 5~10 a week... they come and replace them with barracudas, have only called in one of those ever

all those thin inexpensive maxtor drives have been nothing but crap, i wish dell and hp would stop using them, they are almost guaranteed to fail
Click to expand...

Nothing does justice like a moderator laying the smackdown. Thanks FLE.
 
So your assertion then, joecool24, is that the "bad batch" includes all the thin Maxtor drives? 'Cause, otherwise, you and FLECOM are making two different statements.

Oh, well. You can lead a horse to logic, but you can't make him think.
 
FLECOM said:
at work our dell optiplex's and hp evo workstations use those diamondmax 9 drives, i call in maybe 5~10 a week... they come and replace them with barracudas, have only called in one of those ever

all those thin inexpensive maxtor drives have been nothing but crap, i wish dell and hp would stop using them, they are almost guaranteed to fail
Click to expand...
Are those the thin Maxtors? At BOXX we had those in our RenderBOXX's (the 40GB) variant, and those things would fail like mad in the field if they were being paged too much due to not enough RAM.
 
The 160gb in my SC420 has been pulling almost constant duty as the primary recording/storage drive for my HTPC since I bought it last March. No problems yet, except for the fact that 160gb doesn't last long.
 
my SC420 Dive failed about 2 months ago... ( 6 months old) I got replacement and quickly sold it on Ebay.....I installed SCSI setup, so I really didnt need it anyway..the funny thing is, it was only used for storage, and was rarley ever acessed....one day I noticed it wasnt showing up... ...I tried to read/write to it..Nothing, put it in another system..Nothing....
 
If they are the slimline DM8s, then the OP is indeed correct that those drives have documented reliability issues.
 
DougLite said:
If they are the slimline DM8s, then the OP is indeed correct that those drives have documented reliability issues.
Click to expand...

The OP never said they have documented reliability issues. He said there's "a bad run of drives AKA, [sic] more drives are going to die out there."

Of course more drives are going to die "out there". This is like predicitng some trees will die, or about half the football teams that play on Sunday will loose.

That two of the drives he owns died nearly at the same time really is nothing more than coincidence. (Unless you think synchronicity is more than coincidence.)
 
maybe i am thinking of diamondmax 8's... they dont really say what they are on top since they are OEM drives... all i know is at work their failure rate is way beyond unacceptable and will probably mean i will never buy a maxtor hd again
 
Jeebus Mike....I guess you work for Maxtor. I never said ALL Maxtor drives are going to fail. I simply said that the two Diamondmax 9 Plus (not the slimline) I bought from Dell (same day, same delivery, Service Tag#s Bxxxxx and Cxxxxx) in my SC420s failed AT THE SAME TIME in completely different environments. All the stats courses and google searches in the world simply can't attribute this to statistical coincidence.

But I'm also not ruling out the fact that maybe something ELSE caused the drives to fail. Its just not worth my time to go to that extent for a $199 server thats under warranty. I'll let you guys know if the new drive fails again.

And seriously Mike, why is it so hard for you to believe that Maxtor sent out a bad batch? Maybe some Malaysian sneezed near these two drives before they were sealed up? Maxtow would be in serious financial hardship if they stress tested EVERY drive that comes off the assembly line. They pick random samples from each batch. Maybe the ones they tested didn't have Malaysian snot in them.
 
joecool234 said:
And seriously Mike, why is it so hard for you to believe that Maxtor sent out a bad batch?
Click to expand...
It isn't. I just don't think you've got adequate evidence that's what happened.
 
Good luck with the reconditioned Seagates. My friend purchased two reconditioned Seagate 160GB HDs at the same time, and within 6 months they were both dead...true story.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top