Please help identify the cause of this HD problem

S

silvscorp

Weaksauce
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Jun 30, 2005
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This is an old HD well it says 2001 as manf date. It's an 60gig ibm deskstar 7200rpm drive. It worked well for the past 4 -5 years untill yesterday. Recently, I have installed new video card, PSU, rouded IDE cable ,etc and I've been getting frequent system hang, during games mostly. I thought it was the video card + system OC related so I just kept on playing around with the FSB and ram timing. Finally yesterday I starting to get very slow windows boot up and then it would crash after about 1 hour or so of usage, eventually it won;'t boot up anymore.

Long story short, I was able to use the "freezing" trick to recover all my critical data. A 20 minutes in the fridge would make the HD work again. Based on different trials, it seems the HD will perform well when it's freezing cold, once I have backed up all the data and HD starts to warm up it will eventually become sluggish. Taking forever to read data and then it would just die.

I am just wondering, what could have possibily be causing the problem? Internal components got expanded due to the heat? Will it work as "normal" again if I freeze it long enough?

I am in the market for a new HD. I think I am going to try the seagate one this time.
 
These drives were called Deathstars because they were really faulty drives. I am surprised that yours lasted this long. The cause of your problem is age + faulty hdd model.
 
brom42 said:
These drives were called Deathstars because they were really faulty drives. I am surprised that yours lasted this long. The cause of your problem is age + faulty hdd model.
Click to expand...

I second this, and highly recommend your Seagate idea :) It will probably never work as well as it did previously. For now, store NOTHING on the drive you cannot afford to lose, because I can almost guarentee you it's going to die.
 
It's time to start shopping for a replacement drive. Totally freezing the drive will likely destroy it, as will continued use of the drive. Hard drives are mechnical devices that will fail - to think that one will last forever is merely a dream. Sorry about the loss of a drive that gave great service, but it's time to get a new one. Its replacement will be quieter, faster and bigger anyway.
 
thanks all. yeah apparently 2 years ago I had another deskstar died on me..so I think I am going to ditch the brand for now (thought those were manfed before IBM turned to hitachi on the HD line) I guess the new ones are much better?

Anyways, the seagate one in particular that I am looking at is the 160gb ATA one (many reasons that I do not wish to to for SATA for now). At the local compUSA has it possibily for 20 bucks after rebates and price match. Most importantly, I don't want to wait couple of days for delivery.

Based on the bechmarks, the 160gb ATA one is mostly slower than many others but I guess it's the best buy at the value? With that said, will this HD be ok to use as the system drive? (I also have a 200g WD ATA used as my data storage drive) Should I make the WD one as my system drive instead?
 
wow thanks for the link, wish I know about it earlier. Well I've been using the HD for 4-5 years without any problem. Do you think that firmware update could fix it problem it's experiencing now or it's too late?

anyways, I just got the seagate 160gb ATA HD for around $109, - $80 MIR it will be $29 bux :D.

I'll try the firmware update anyways, don't think it will work though. It just seems after the HD has warmed up to a certain temparature it will just stop responding.
 
It's probably too late. Just use it as scratch space or toss it. I'd just toss it. Actually, I'd take it apart and play with the shiny platters.
FWIW, Hitachi isn't a bad brand. IBM was considered one of the best hard disk manufacturers until the DeathStar debacle happened. I have to wonder if that PR disaster is what caused them to sell the business.
For some reason I still gag a bit at the thought of buying a Hitachi, but at this point I think it's more of a "that's not a Seagate" reaction than a reaction to it being a Hitachi. Basically I'm a Seagate fan with WD as my second choice.
If anyone needs some advice on what to get that's not just some guy's opinion, check out www.storagereview.com. You'll have to fill out thier survey to get access to the reliability info. It's mildly irritating, but it's a good way to limit the amout the numbers get skewed by the "my X broke and I'm mad an I'm gonna go bitch about it" effect since it gets people who are just looking for an upgrade to fill in thier info.
 
now now you dont "toss" HDDs
you use dead HDDs as window mod practice first
then salvage the rare earth magnets and grab the platters as coasters

geez :rolleyes: everyone knows that :p
 
Platters make much better toys than they do coasters. They're totally flat and have a hole in the middle, and do nothing to stop condensation from running all over the place. Of course, a true geek would hang them on the wall as decorations.
 
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