Maxtor hard drive issue

[bullion416]

Recently (within the past few weeks), my Maxtor 80 gig ATA/133 (8mb cache) hard drive has been acting up. I am almost certain the drive is going bad, but I want to make sure with you guys first. Every once in a while I had issues with the drive not being recognized upon power-on of the system, but eventually after restarting it a few times it would turn over and work (this didn't happen often so I never concerned myself with the issue). Now, every once in a while the hard drive will make a single, "click" noise and the system will freeze up and I will get that Windows XP blue screen of death about "if this is the first time you have seen this screen, etc etc." I ran Maxtor's Power Max software and everything tested fine which makes sense to me because the hard drive works great most of the time except on these occations that is gets hung up. Has anyone else had similar problems like this? I basically need someone to confirm that I have a bad drive and that I need to purchase a replacement.


By the way, if I do need a new one, does anyone see a problem with buying a Segate or Western Digital drive (is one better than the other)? I was also going to get a SATA drive this time......have there been any issues with that new technology or would it be worth my while to upgrade from ATA/133 to SATA/150?

 

[Jeff7]

Download Everest, and install it. In its Storage section, click on SMART, and then on the drive. Right-click on the drive and select Copy. Paste those results back here.

Right now, Seagate is popular because they've upped their warranties to 5 years. And they make quiet drives.

No comment on SATA - never used it.

 

[bullion416]

Yeah, like I said the drive works great most of the time....in fact it hasn't crashed today (it will even go a day or two without any problems). Here are the results from that program you told me to run:

ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status
03 Spin Up Time 63 201 200 11924 OK: Value is normal
04 Start/Stop Count 0 253 253 1355 OK: Always passing
05 Reallocated Sector Count 63 253 253 0 OK: Value is normal
06 Read Channel Margin 100 253 253 0 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 0 253 252 0 OK: Always passing
08 Seek Time Performance 187 253 248 51768 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 240 240 16773 OK: Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 157 253 245 0 OK: Value is normal
0B Calibration Retry Count 223 253 252 0 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 0 250 250 1394 OK: Always passing
C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
C2 Temperature 0 253 253 29 OK: Always passing
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 253 252 709 OK: Always passing
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 199 199 0 OK: Always passing
C8 Write Error Rate 0 253 252 0 OK: Always passing
C9 <vendor-specific> 0 253 252 10 OK: Always passing
CA <vendor-specific> 0 253 231 1 OK: Always passing
CB <vendor-specific> 180 253 252 7 OK: Value is normal
CC <vendor-specific> 0 253 252 0 OK: Always passing
CD <vendor-specific> 0 253 252 0 OK: Always passing
CF <vendor-specific> 0 253 250 0 OK: Always passing
D0 <vendor-specific> 0 253 250 0 OK: Always passing
D1 <vendor-specific> 0 202 202 0 OK: Always passing
63 <vendor-specific> 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
64 <vendor-specific> 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing
65 <vendor-specific> 0 253 253 0 OK: Always passing

 

[xbassman]

Is your drive under warranty?
If it is I would run the exhaustive test in Power Max until I got an rma code.

Usually clunks and such are a sign that your drive is goin down.

If warranty is not an option I think it's time to get a new one.
I just bought a new Seagate 200GB and it is soooo quiet. 5yr Warranty is probably the best reason to use Seagates though.

 

[bullion416]

Nope, it is 6 months out of warranty which is why I am thinking I will just have to buy a new one.

 

[Jeff7]

Just looking at that list, I don't see any read/write/seek errors, nor any new reallocated sectors. The only errors I see are Hardware ECC Corrected, and I always see a decent number of these on any Maxtor drive, so it seems to be normal.
For the record though, drives can die even as their SMART reports that all's well. I had an IBM die on me recently, and even as the heads were skidding across the platters, it kept saying "I'm perfectly alright! Tis but a scratch!"


One other thought though - what is your power supply? I had a hard drive start acting up once, just clicking and power cycling once, which would usually lock the system. It turned out that my generic 300W power supply was starting to show its age.

 

[bullion416]

That was my only other thought as to what could be causing this problem and that is a bad power supply. However, this power supply is only a year old and it is a decent one.......it is an Antec 400 Watt (model: SL 400). I was actually debating sending it back to antec but that rma process seems like it could be a little slow. At this point I am debating on wether or not to just buy a new hard drive or wait until I am home from school and throw a different power supply in my computer and see if the problem goes away.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: bullion416
That was my only other thought as to what could be causing this problem and that is a bad power supply. However, this power supply is only a year old and it is a decent one.......it is an Antec 400 Watt (model: SL 400). I was actually debating sending it back to antec but that rma process seems like it could be a little slow. At this point I am debating on wether or not to just buy a new hard drive or wait until I am home from school and throw a different power supply in my computer and see if the problem goes away.

Yeah, I'd expect an Antec 400W to be able to power most people's systems. My one 430W Truepower is able to keep 5 hard drives, 1 DVD-RW, a Radeon 9500, Hauppauge PVR-350, and a T-bred CPU and motherboard all running without any problems. The CPU voltage is a little erratic, but that's probably the motherboard's doing, and not directly the power supply.

And yes, Antec's RMA process does take awhile, though it depends on how far you are from them. They ship their replacements by UPS ground. I think they're in California - I think it took the full 10 days for UPS to get the replacement across the country to me.