Happens without warning

[pfrcom]

This morning, happily checking out Badcaps, when the computer started a continuous quiet "clack-clack clack-clack clack-clack"

Thought "Hope that's not a disk", leaned towards the box to have a closer listen, and it rebooted itself

Then the Primary disk was no longer detected by P.O.S.T.

Had to swap in a replacement disk, and do a complete O.S. rebuild

Lost some email, hopefully nothing else will show up missing - data's stored on the Secondary

The irony is, it still clacks when connected to another computer/motherboard, but is recognised with message "Smart capable and status OK"

Not so Smart though - XP doesn't cope very well with faulty hardware, even when it's not booting from it - after >30 minutes boot was still in progress

The lesson is, don't depend on Software/Firmware like Smart to anticipate catastrophic failure

[ratdude747]

what brand/ model hdd?

[pfrcom]

Samsung SP1213N

[ratdude747]

not surprised. Samsung has never had the greatest quality... and the hdds are no exception.

I suggest a good WD to fix that.

[c_hegge]

I hate samsung HDDs, although TBH, I don't think anyone makes a reliable HDD anymore. Out of 10, Here's how I would score them all

Seagate: 5
WD: 4
Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu : 3
Toshiba: 1

In other words, the only reliable drives nowadays are SSDs

[dumpystig]

That's a blanket statement - SSD as a newer technology is great, but HDD's still have a (very important) place in most peoples setups, and will do for ages to come. Although the quicker SSD prices start to drop the quicker their uptake will be - simple economics.

Out of around 15 HDD's I've owned only one - a WD Scorpio Blue - has failed, but not before I salvaged my data. I'm now using 3x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3's that I'm very pleased with.

[kc8adu]

smart cant tell you anything when a head,preamp,or switch dies suddenly.
seen many totally inaccessable drives with perfect smart.at least those do well with a head stack swap if the clients data is worth it to them.

[pfrcom]

I deliberately omitted Brand from the original, to avoid the Samsung bashing - they've been OK for me, until now

The clacker got replaced by a spare SP0802N

[shovenose]

I buy new WD exclusively. I end up using a bunch of used Seagate drives but when I buy new I ALWAYS buy WD. No seagate or samsung shit for me. There's a reason that Seagate and Samsung begin with the same letter as Shit :P

[lti]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

Toshiba: 1

I would agree.

Originally Posted by shovenose

There's a reason that Seagate and Samsung begin with the same letter as Shit :P

[Uranium-235]

I've always had good luck with WD. I've had only one 320 sata doa, one 320 die later (other customer). 95% of my WD's have lasted for years, this includes old 80gb ide's i've taken from computers I get/have given to me/taken forceably at gunpoint

[Ami Sapphire]

@shovenose, post 9:

I had four Seagate drives fail on me. (Recently brought two of them back as experimental drives.) Also, an example of an old Seagate drive [model no. ST34311A] and massive data corruption, taken March 10, 2010: 1, 2. Yep, it was a 4.3GB drive. Lost data I was going to get on that drive, thanks to my procrastination. That drive also didn't boot since. Can't say all Seagate drives are bad, though; there's one installed in my old '90s retro gaming computer, and one in my 2002 eMachines computer!


@Uranium-235, post 11:

Western Digital drives are my preferred drives for that reason. Rarely have WD drives crash on me. The WD drives that did die on me were a 1GB Caviar drive due to user stupidity (me), and a 120GB Caviar drive due to frequent power surges. The second one had an original Dell Windows XP Pro install that lasted nine years. Heck, I have one with 82 bad (and since reallocated) sectors still going in my current server, while I have to replace a Seagate drive in the same machine.


@c_hegge, post 5:

Yeah, Toshiba drives aren't really reliable. One's in my dead drive pile, a second one has 11 bad sectors and rarely to occasionally makes a chirping noise. Tough drive, though. My current laptop has a Toshiba drive, nothing wrong yet.

[lti]

My laptop's Toshiba hard drive has 160 reallocated sectors and 300 pending.

I had a 20GB IBM laptop drive that worked fine until I put it in a cheap hard drive enclosure. Since then, the drive has been unreadable. Windows shows that space is being used, but only one empty folder can be seen.

I also have a Seagate 4.3GB drive that was in a Compaq. The computer was so unstable that Scandisk found errors every time it ran. Eventually, ScanDisk would run automatically every time the computer was booted, as if Windows had never been shut down properly. The drive still works on another computer.

[dumpystig]

HAHA after my previous comments the drive in my laptop has just instructed Windows to inform me it's giving up the ghost - marvellous...

[Ami Sapphire]

That's... eerie timing.

[momaka]

I've been given many failed HDDs from work, but I've never had one of mine fail on me yet - which is weird because all of my HDDs are old, used-and-abused junk. I did have have one HDD close to failing about 2 weeks ago, though - that one was an antique 3.2 GB Quantum Bigfoot 5.25" drive. I have Windows 2000 on it for an antique Dell Dimension XPS R400 computer with a PII 400 MHz proc. I was trying to test some hardware that time (as I usually do when I get junk hardware that looks like it might explode ), and heard a funny "melodic" sound from the computer. Took me a few minutes to realize that this sound was coming from the HDD and that it was not spinning up. The sound was the hard drive trying to free up the heads from the platters. I tried cycling the power a few times and whacking the hard drive as it was in the computer, but that didn't help. Finally, I took out the hard drive and *gently* hit it with the handle of a big screwdriver. Put it back in and it's working *fine* again (fine, as in it clicks and re-calibrates every once in a while - but it used to do that before, too, and I don't blame it, since it does have quite a few bad sectors). lol.

Other than that *special* drive above, everything else is still working.
The 80 GB 7200.7 Seagate in my family's computer has started making weird sounds now when it sits idle. It started doing that about 2 years ago, but it did it only very rarely. Now it does it almost every other 5 minutes or so. I have been watching the SMART log on it pretty much since 2008, and everything is still good, with no reallocated or pending sectors, 9600 hours of ON time, and about 5500 ON/OFF cycles. Still I'm worried since I've seen a considerable amount of these 7200.7 HDD fail at work. Quite a few have begun developing bad sectors too - anywhere from single digit numbers to a few hundred. And the pattern I've seen so far is that it only happens on the ones that have more than 10k ON hours (which my drive is very close to).

[dumpystig]

Originally Posted by Ami Sapphire

That's... eerie timing.

Yeah - shit timing too.

Not to mention inconvenient...

[shovenose]

And a big pain to deal with

[HLewis]

Thumbs up on Seagate.
My Freenas File Server has 1 TB, from systems that went bad, but the Seagate SATA 250's were fine. I abuse the crap out of it, Linux ISO's, Firewall Distros, PDF's up the Wazoo, Family pics, and network backups every-night.

The funny part is, the Freenas OS was on a 80 GB Maxtor that cooked about a month after install, but I had saved the config, put a Seagate 120 GB in, reinstalled Freenas, imported config, back in business. That was a little over 3 years ago. I have a 250, and a 160GB sitting on the shelf now, no SATA connectors left on the Motherboard, guess I will have to put a SATA card in, it will probably go POOF out of Spite.

[dumpystig]

Originally Posted by shovenose

And a big pain to deal with

Actually it wasn't too bad, things could have been much worse. But with the several automatic S.M.A.R.T. warnings that were given it was obvious I had to backup that drive. PITA like I said, but at least I've saved all my data, the most important of which are irreplaceable pics/vids of my young son, so I'm now happy again.

Still, REALLY WIERD with the timing though...