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OT - Hard Drive

I

IBhacknU

Diamond Member
Well, it's not really OFF TOPIC as it's costing us 4 WU's per day.

What are the chances I got two bad replacement drives from IBM?

Two different drives fail to boot after being re-imaged. Our imaging software formats and partitions the drives, so I should be able to rule that out.

I've even wasted the time by erasing the drive, fdisk'n, and formating. Then, put a virgin Win98 install BUT it can get past the reboot.

What gives? What is it i have to do with these NEW (or maybe refurbished) drives to get them crunchin again???

Who wants to be a HERO and get me through this?
 
/me raises me hand and jumps up and down yelling "pick me, pick me, I want to be a HERO". 😀😀😀



I then realize that I don't have an answer for the question at hand so I go back to sitting in the corner like a good little boy😛

CADkindaGUY
 
If you don't get errors when you FDISK and FORMAT then its likely to be the controller. I've had this on both IDE and SCSI drives. Try a different machine, or take a working drive from another machine and try to boot.
 
Don't laugh, it appears the remaining couple of Hard Drive manufacturers are having problems with quality and /or an engineering issues due to the speeds and density they are pushing. I got a 7200 rpm Western Digital 400bb and it continously gets stuck and I get the BSOD with "Unable to write to drive C: ;Data will be lost" error message. Even a reset will not unstick the drive, I have to turn the machine off and then the drive runs OK for a while until it feels like getting stuck again. I will be imaging the whole drive setup back to my old 20 gig and sending the drive off to Western Digital. They mention problems on their site and have a diagnostic program but the drive passes diagnostics. I had a 60 Gig IBM deskstar that I finally threw away after sending it to IBM and back three different times, the problems with those drives are well documented. Is there a reliable drive out there?
 
Originally posted by: IBhacknU


What are the chances I got two bad replacement drives from IBM?
Click to expand...

The odds are excellent if they're the 75GXP series (worst), 60GXP or 120GXP.

Try using a regular MS bootdisk, then fdisk, delete/create partition (if needed), format c: /s. I have used 3rd party utilities that wouldn't work with Windows. If you don't have a bootdisk, try
here.
 
After having two IBM Deathstar drives fail on me, I just threw down some $$ on the FT/S forums here and ebay for Seagate's Cheetah scsi drives. I can say I'm impressed, damn fast, 5 year warranties, and no more rma hell.
 
Well, these are Maxtor 20GB drives (Model 2B020H1). We have them in about 2 dozen machines and this was the first to fail.

The two drives IBM sent were made within 4 days of each other. Bad batch???

Either way, I had no errors using disk diagnostics. Fdisk and Format went fine without any errors. The images go on just fine. I can even use a boot disk, change directories, and see everything I image on the drives.

For some reason though, it's like the 'boot sector' is bad. BIOS will boot off a floppy (and yes, it's set to goto C next). It just tries the floppy for an OS, and then you hear the PC cycling power. It starts all over again:disgust: It never finds the HardDrive (though the BIOS sees it).

As I mentioned before, the controller and IDE channels are all fine. I good drive from another machine boots up just fine. Take the 'bad' drive to another machine and the problem follows.

I'm tired of calling IBM.
 
Sounds like the "cache flush" issue froma couple yrs.(?) back. I beat it by loading the 1st 2 W2K boot disks (makeboot) on the HDD using FAT32, then followed up with a clean W98 install or format using another W2K box. For some reason that's the only way I could make the mbr seen.

A shot in the dark from my feeble mind.
 
Check to see if they have a firmware flash for that drive. I saw some Fujitsu drives that did something like that and they wouldn't show a problem in diagnostics. We found a firmware update and all of the sudden the problem was gone.
 
Tempted to offer advice, then I realize that I'm drunk off my @$$...therefore I'll STFU till I can look at this in the morning. 🙂

Anyone got a bottle of SoCo? I'm out and don't feel like crashing yet. 🙂
 
OT
Thats one of the problems I have with DC projects. I wish more would be written with the option to use more memory and less of the hard drive or all in memory to decrease wear on the hard drive.

For many of the things that I do I'll take a (current) 5400 drive over the heat of the 7200 drive. As long as the 5400 is current tested and trusted brand.

I bought in the past the latest greatest maxtor largest 7200prm drives when they cost $250 and first come out and I feel I had to pay for them many times over in RMA's and shipping costs.

WD had some chip problems and I use WD and have good results.

Now with prices the way they are RAID mirror is sure the way to go.

muttley

 
>Deathstar's 😀 😀

>I'm tired of calling IBM.

After 3 drives that was 3 strikes and they were out. Interestingly though most of the drives out there now are based on the IBM design.

>Sounds like the "cache flush" issue froma couple yrs.(?) back.

This is what it seems like too. The drive tends to get stuck when it is time for an App dump from Memory to the drive.

>Bad Boot Sector?

Normally running the Fdisk/mbr command will overwrite and place a new Master Boot Record on the drive to get it bootable again provided you have valid system files loaded on it.

>Check to see if they have a firmware flash for that drive. I saw some Fujitsu drives that did something like that and they wouldn't show a problem in diagnostics. We found a firmware update and all of the sudden the problem was gone.

I didn't see anything about being able to flash the Western Digital 400bb drive.

>I'll take a (current) 5400 drive over the heat of the 7200 drive.

Absolutely, it sure doesn't appear to be any more of a benefit running the 7200's with the burst speed capability of drives running at 5400 now. As fast as the data can come off the drive platters it gets through the data controller to the CPU's now.

 
IBHacknU, you have a real good chance. I went into work the other day and got like 3 RMA's back from IBM and the funniest part is, that when I opened em up to use them 2 out of 3 had head crashes and the other had over 60% bad sectors. What type of quality control is that?
 
Sorta OT...

But maybe that's why IBM has now SOLD it's Hard drive division (to a Japanese company....don't remember which one...Maybe Fugitsu ?)

Too much headache with IBM drives......

I've had the best luck with Maxtor's.......non dead so far....WD, IBM and Quantums have all had failures for me 🙁
 
You guys are scaring me ... :Q

I thought hard drives went on forever! 😛

rolleye.gif
 
If you haven't already, you might want to try fdisk /mbr to rebuild the master boot record. But you already fdisk'ed and partitioned which should rebuild the MBR, anyway.

How about trying a different IDE cable?

Worth a shot...
 
Of the four major brands Seagate has been the most dependable for me. I use 5400 rpm drives myself. seem to last longer when you are running them 24/7 like i do.
Just keep rmaing until you get one that works
 
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