Repeated hard drive failures - Tech Support Forums

ragtop · January 18th, 2003, 12:54 AM

Sorry for the long story, but - I built a computer for my brother last spring with a 40 GB Maxtor HDD. About a week after it was built, the hard drive failed and was replaced under warantee. (It failed completely and could no longer even be detected)

Now, about nine months later, the replacement hard drive started having intermittent problems, blue screen data write errors, random lockups, occasional system disc errors on startup, etc. When he brought it back to me for diagnosis, the problems were accompanied by occasional loud clunking noises from the drive. I ran the Maxtor diagnostics four times, one time I got an error code. It took a couple tries, but I was able to image the failing drive to a new 60 GB Maxtor.

For the past two days I've been running his system continuously, throwing everything I could at it - and it was running flawlessly with the new drive.

Then, just now I was browsing a few posts here at TIMO when the new HDD suddenly gave two loud clunks followed by BSOD - and the new 60 GB drive is dead. The BIOS won't even detect it.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before??

Is this the worst ever run of bad luck, or is there something wrong with the MB or other components that is causing his machine to eat hard drives??

I thought there was an off chance that there was a power supply problem, so I was keeping a log of system voltages with MBM, and I hadn't noticed any voltage fluctuations. Unfortunately, the latest drive is completely dead so I can't recover the file to see what happened just before the failure.

FYI - system specs:

MB - Shuttle AK31A
CPU - XP1800
RAM - 256MB Kingston PC2100
VID - GF3 Ti200
SND - SB Audigy
CDROM - Afreey 50X
WIN 98 SE
Generic KB, mouse, monitor, NIC, Modem.

thronka · January 18th, 2003, 01:04 AM

I have had the same problems with Maxtor drives. Maybe just a bad batch. I just switched to Western Digital Drives and all the problems went away. I don't even get hesitation with WD drives. Did your drive turn off at all during the months of problems? If thats it, then the drive might have crappy bearings and read/write heads.

ragtop · January 18th, 2003, 01:13 AM

I know Maxtor's have been known to fail every now & then, but this really seems to go beyond a coincidence. Three drives in nine months, with two of them lasting less than a week

The only other factor here that is slightly unusual, is that he has a LianLi case with the hard drives mounted vertically. Any idea if that would make a difference?? (It seems like this has been debated before too - and I don't think that vertical vs horizontal mounting should make a difference)

Wizzard~Of~Ozz · January 18th, 2003, 01:20 AM

Sounds to me like a bad bunch of drives, I only buy WD now (have a maxtor 8.4 that makes some wierd noises (like a head park) 3-4 times during boot up, (but never any other time) Really strange, are they all the exact same model? 0/3 is some really bad odds.

ragtop · January 18th, 2003, 01:39 AM

The two 40 GB drives are the same model, but the 60 GB is obviously a different model. Any chance that a problem with the motherboard IDE controller could cause drives to fail??

I'm to the point where I'm afraid to plug another HD into this motherboard.

mlee97 · January 18th, 2003, 01:49 AM

First off I don't agree that Maxtor has bad quality drives, I've buried dozens more Western Digitals than Maxtors. It sounds like the guy has a bad power supply. probably spiking low, brownout spikes. What power supply / wattage are you using?

mlee97 · January 18th, 2003, 01:53 AM

oooooo ... maxtors do get pretty hot though. Not as bad as IBM'ers but pretty hot. hows the air circulation in the system? .. is the fan working well on the ps?

DanU · January 18th, 2003, 04:58 AM

IMO, maxtor makes good drives. I've got a handful, and they're all still running. The only one I've lost was due to a cheap power supply killing it. I've learned the hard way that hard drives are particularly suseptible to bad power supplies.

ragtop · January 18th, 2003, 10:12 AM

mlee97 - cooling is not an issue here. The drive is mounted vertically, at the front of the case - with two 80mm fans blowing right across it.

As far as power supply, Its a 350W Codegen unit. Not the highest quality, but it is adequately sized and AMD approved. I was keeping a log of voltages at 5 second intervals with Motherboard Monitor. I had checked it a couple times and everything was right on and perfectly stable - I believe the voltages were right at 12.28/4.98/3.32.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to recover the log file to see if there was any kind of a major spike just before the latest drive failure.

Any other ideas??

Richard Cranium · January 18th, 2003, 10:39 AM

Are you running a UPS on the system ?

Mini-Power outages cause bad sectors, don't know about total deaths like you see.