Harddrive troubles

D

DITC

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 27, 2006
Messages
394
Could use some help here.

In the last year, I have had two Seagate disks "die" on me, both times I've just booted up Windows like always and suddenly the disk is gone. No partitions in explorer, nothing in disk manager.

Now, both of these disks have been part of the series that had firmware problems, a friend of mine also had two of his Seagate disks, same series, "die" on him. Happened the same way. I know the data is there and it's locked in a busy state, I just need some cables ordered to be able to connect to it, unlock and copy it.

Anyway.

When my last Seagate stopped working, the second one, I ordered a WD Black 1TB which I installed today. I thought it had some strange noises, some clicking noises, but not as bad as the kind of clicking/grinding/locking sound you usually hear when a harddrive starts dying on you.

But when I started copying to the disk it froze on me, Windows grinded to a halt, etc. I rebooted, and bios is real slow on recognizing it, but it do recognize it. The first time bios got through quick.

When I get back in Windows the disk is gone.

I mean... I'm starting to think all kinds of shit, could it be something with my motherboard, or is this all just random, unlucky and got a bad disk now as well.
 
Do you have another system to try the disks in? Try a different SATA cable? Try a different port on the mobo?
 
No, but I have no doubt anymore that this particular harddrive is defect. It started making more and more noises. Just grinding and clicking, not being able to move on. Returning it.
 
The Seagate thing -- did you have the latest firmware? AFAIK, the bug was that when the remap table reached a # of remaps, the drive would basically brick. If you didn't flash it before, now it's too late for you to do it. I believe Seagate can flash it with their special hook-ups and send it back to you, though, so contact Seagate.
 
The Seagates wasn't flashed, so that's why they bricked yeah, since they just had the faulty firmware on.

But I don't need to send them in to get my data back, I can send them in and get them replaced though, but getting the data back is just a simple matter of some cables I need to buy so you can connect to the disk and unlock it from its busy state.

The harddrive is a WD1002FAEX, and it seems it has arrived faulty.

I will take it to a friend today, try it on his computer.

If it is indeed faulty, I find it hard to trust/know what to buy for a secure and stable harddrive these days? I will never use Seagate again after that whole firmware scandal, that was indeed a scandal and should have serious repercussions for them, but it didn't, and it won't. Other than losing just a handful of customers who know about it. Local stores are still pushing these disks with no knowledge of the issue, I've told them about it several times but they seem completely oblivious, tools.

I thought I'd try Western Digital then, as I have 2 black caviar's in my disk and they've worked great, but receiving a brand new disk faulty? That's not good. Do they not run any testing on the disks before shipping them out or what?

How are SSDs when it comes to things like firmware failure, or general hardware failure? They should be a lot better off than traditional HDDs because of the whole no-moving-parts thing, right?
 
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