3 Hard Drives Dead--What am I doing wrong!?

samuraisam · Mar 19, 2005

I used to have 4 40 gig hard drives, IDE, 2 maxtor, 2 seagate and now they're all dead but one! There was really important stuff on there, is there anyway to get it back without spending a **** load of money?

Also, these drives aren't old, some of them are a year old some of them are at max 2.5 years old. Before this year, they haven't run 24/7. I have them in a CoolerMaster WaveMaster case, open case door with the two 80mm fans blowing over them. What am I doing wrong that my drives aren't lasting at all!?

-Sam

jcw122 · Mar 19, 2005

how did they die??

seadave77 · Mar 19, 2005

Do you have a surge surpressor? Maybe a crap power supply?

samuraisam · Mar 19, 2005

I have a Thermaltake PurePower 480 watt power supply. It puts out really good voltages and amps all around.

Yes, I have a surge supressor on these at all times.

They just gave up and stopped spinning one day. Well, they try every time I move my PC (like bring it to a LAN or something) but they never spin up and go wrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (for about 30 seconds) and is REALLY LOUD.

-Sam

d94 · Mar 19, 2005

power spike?

Mr.Guvernment · Mar 20, 2005

case was not handled well when gong to lans and got damaged.

DuckDodgers · Mar 20, 2005

Mr.Guvernment said:
case was not handled well when gong to lans and got damaged.

I remember in the old days of DOS, you could "Park" the drives before powering down and moving a machine. In fact it was highly recommended. Is that still option or do the drives self park at shutdown?

samuraisam · Mar 20, 2005

Mr.Guvernment said:
case was not handled well when gong to lans and got damaged.

Heh, I doubt it because the first one died before I ever started going to LANs and the only ones I go to are in my house.

Is there any methods like smacking with an ice pick or something to attempt to get them working again?

-Sam

telexen · Mar 20, 2005

Perhaps your motherboard's IDE interface is killing them

but have you tried putting them in another system?

Cerberus2k7 · Mar 20, 2005

Well, Seagates I can see. Most 20-40gig Seagates that i've messed with have failed early on. My moms is about to crap so I got her a new 80gig WD. The higher capacity Seagates 80+gig are really good from what i've heard though.

And yes, you can hit the cover of the HDD with the end of a large screw driver to "jolt" the platters into spinning.

XTTX · Mar 20, 2005

I've never had a HDD failure, so I don't know what you're doing wrong. Nevermind, scratch that. I did have one HDD fail, but it still spun. It seems something inside was damaged (one little part). It is still detected, but it just can't put anything on it.

TrIpL3-X · Mar 20, 2005

What are you psu rails like? Could be spiking and killing the drive...

shadowdr · Mar 20, 2005

Older Maxtor's with the metal bearings can wear out quickly and are very hot compared to the fluid drive models.I had two of the 40's and one died within six months.The other is now in my son's system and is very, very noisy.Temps measured with Speedfan say it is hotter then the CPU,around 49c.The newer ones read about 30c or 1c hotter then current system temps.I think that their last metal bearing drive may be the reason Maxtor lowered their warranty to one year.

I have gotten some seized drives to spin by reorienting their position out of the case and striking it lightly on the side.One of them is still running after several months in it's new laid down position.It came out of an old Dell that had been ejected from the back of a pickup and run over by a car.In fact the whole system works after putting it in a different case.I was able to retrieve 20 gigs of family pictures for them.

moz_21 · Mar 20, 2005

DuckDodgers said:
I remember in the old days of DOS, you could "Park" the drives before powering down and moving a machine. In fact it was highly recommended. Is that still option or do the drives self park at shutdown?

All new drives will self park when they are shut down.

shadowdr said:
Older Maxtor's with the metal bearings can wear out quickly and are very hot compared to the fluid drive models.I had two of the 40's and one died within six months.The other is now in my son's system and is very, very noisy.Temps measured with Speedfan say it is hotter then the CPU,around 49c.The newer ones read about 30c or 1c hotter then current system temps.I think that their last metal bearing drive may be the reason Maxtor lowered their warranty to one year......

I had one of those 40Gb's fail. RMA'd, and now I run a fan over it. Haven't had any problems since, other that it is really whiny.

samuraisam · Mar 20, 2005

Yeah, they were really winey drives.

I'll try some abuse and report back to see if they work.

-Sam

3 Hard Drives Dead--What am I doing wrong!?

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