AHHHH!! DAMNIT!! What am I doing WRONG??? Why ME??

[Valhalla1]

I can't believe this... I killed my Maxtor 40gb drive. This is the fourth harddrive I've killed in the last 6 months. Please, someone tell me what in the hell is going on? Its all on this one system. I have two other computers in my room, my father has 2 I built, his office has 5 I built, none in 4+ years have killed a harddrive, mine has killed 4 in 6 months. I've put a new motherboard in since the first 3 kills but now I kill a 40gig new drive.

I lost all the data, I can't function without all this data. I don't know what happened. Everything was 100% great since I got the drive in Win2k. Then I try and defrag it, and I decided its taking too long, so I cancel it. I restart, and BAM.. BSOD. I try reinstalling Win2k, BSOD. So I take the drive out, put a 7 gig I had in another system in, format, install win2k, and put my 40 gig in as slave so I can pull off the data I need from it.

When I turn on the computer, the thing freezes after it counts the ram and a loud whining noise comes from the 40gig. I turn off the computer, pray silenty, and turn it on again.. same thing.

I might as well sell all my computer sh!t and never screw with them again, I lost all the data that meant so much, all my old icq messages, emails, movies, favorites, work databases.. I am a broken man. I can't believe this..

Can't I sue Maxtor or something??? DAMN IT.

Rest in peace - kills in last 6 months

Maxtor 10.2gb
Western Digital 8.4gb
Seagate 4.3 gb
Maxtor 40gb


Why me?? I've even rigged a fan on the front of my case blowing over my harddrive, since after the first dead one I thought it was overheating. What is going on?? I've got a 300a@450, 100mhz FSB, so its not overclocking the drive. Why would it kill it?

 

[JellyBaby]

I murdered a WD once by firing up the PC when the drive wasn't properly grounded. I noticed it too late, issued the normal stream of curses, then sniffed the air for that tell-tale odor of death. ::sniff:: Yep, a fried component.

But I'm no where near your record of 4 drives. Excellent! Keep up the good work!

 

[Descend492]

yeah dude, seriously get a ground tester from a hardware store or something. That's fried millions of hd's and computer parts in th epast. If your socket isn't grounded, then you'll continue to kill things.

 

[Descend492]

Either that, or get one of those new sockets that tests the ground (y'know, with the reset button and the test button). THey test the ground too

 

[Edski]

Vahalla, download Maxtors diagnostic program and test the drive. If it passes the quick and the read test, you have about a 95% chance that the drive is not screwed. If data is that valuable to you, I recommend data recovery...it is NOT cheap. If it is not worth the money, I recommend that you run the write test, it will low level format the drive. No, you can not sue Maxtor, if you read their warrantee/guarantee, you will see that they do not cover any data loss. They will get you into a new drive if it fails any of the tests. With having 4 different drives go bad, I highly doubt that the problem is the drives. You have a serious problem somewhere else in your system.
I can truely understand how you feel about losing a lot of data, it sucks. I can only recommend that you backup any important data, to a cd burner, tape drive, or a NAS device. It just depends on how much you want to spend. I went with the NAS.

 

[Czar]

get a UPS, it regulats the voltage comming into your computer so it doesnt get fryed

 

[Windogg]

After I got my first UPS, I noticed that WIN98 First Edition basically stopped crashing. I swore by them ever since. If you do get one get an APC (Excellent hardware plus the company I work for makes the chipsets )

Windogg

 

[Valhalla1]

well I can't even test the drive, when i turn on the computer with the drive in there, it whines/clicks and the computer locks during POST

 

[Dennis Travis]

The suggestion about checking your grounding is a good one. Also is the Power Supply ok? I have ran into some Power Supply's that would put out some trancient of some kind and before I caught it two SCSI drives were toast. This was on an old Mac SE that I was messing with and the power supply in the Exteral hard drive case I had was bad. It appeared fine then all of a sudden after hours of use it put out something and the drives motor went 5 times speed and then blew out! I am glad I found what it was as I would hate to have lost any more SCSI HDD's as at the time they were quite expensive even for a small HDD. You might try a new Power Supply if you have not. The one thing that is bothering me is it does not seem to be hurting your motherboard and Motherboards are quite sensivitive to spikes. Check the grounds like was also suggested. Also could anything be shorting to the Circuit Board on the bottom of the drive at all? Just curious. From the way you are describing the noise from the HDD and that the computer freezes makes me wonder what is going on. Usually a drive that just will not work will not lock the whole motherboard! Have you tried booting the system without the Maxtor installed? Put in a boot floppie and yank the HDD and try and see if the system will boot all the way. I am wondering if something else is wrong.

Good luck and I totally understand where you are coming from. When that many drives or anything for that matter fail in that short of a time it makes one want to give up! Loosing all your data is not cool. I had Two brand new Seagage 2.1 Gig Medalist's go one in 2 months and the other in 4. I lost my whole Linux and NT 4.0 Server installs as well as some data I could never get back!

Hang in there.

 

[John]

M, you are killing a lot of sh*t man, sorry to hear about your misfortune. I really don't see how all of these components are dying on you. You might consider a new P/S (or case) since the HDD is not the only thing that has gone up in flames.

Gimme a holler and I will try to hook you up with an Inwin MidTower w/ 300w

 

[Edski]

Well, pull the 40 out of the system that it was in and try it in a different system as a slave or on the secondary IDE as a master. Make sure that the system that you put it in will support that size drive. If it does the same thing in the testing system, just call Maxtor and tell them you are unable to run their diagnostic program, they should get you an RMA for that drive. If you are able to boot up, try to get your data off the drive. Make sure to set your bios to boot to floppy and then boot to a Windows Startup Disk, then run the Maxdiag program.