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WD raptors dying like flies!

S

Slash621

Member
OK.. So back in June I bought my 74 gig raptor. It came in on HD tach at the same speed that the HD tach document had theirs at (compare drives).

It worked great till about september, in september it dropped about 3mb/s per day until bottoming out at about 3mb/s. I RMA'd it. Got a refurbished one, it lasted 1 month starting at normal and degrading down to crap.. I RMA'd it.. Got a 3rd one also refurbished. It lasted now 2 weeks and now its down at 3mb/s.


Does anyone know if maybe its NOT the drives? is there a hardware patch or soemthing I should be looking for my my motherboard or powersupply?

Heres what I have (see if you think it might be a powersupply)

Enermax 300w
Athlon 2500+ (OC'd to 3200+ at 1.675v)
1gig Buffalo ram (2.8v)
DFI Lan Party 2 NF2 Rev. A
WD Raptor 74 gig on SATA
2x Hitatchi 72K50 160gigs on IDE RAID 1
ATI 9600 Pro 128mb

Thats it.... is it possible for me to be shorting out the raptor due to my powersupply being too weak? any ideas? I love how they keep RMAing me new drives but I really wanna have a drive that lasts longer than 2weeks!!!
 
Originally posted by: Slash621
WD Hard disk utility finds no errors (and hasnt found any on the older drives i've had either)
Click to expand...

You need to ask S.M.A.R.T. for its status. That is a standard interface to ask the drive how healthy it think it is. Under Linux, you need to install smartutils, and there's probably a free tool on Windows, too.

S.M.A.R.T. will give you a summary of health and also individual values like frequency of hard errors and similar stuff.

I don't know WD's test tool but I just used Maxtors. It is useless. It uses the IDE controllers in BIos mode and hence doesn't push the data fast enough to show many brokenness. I nearly got into a big fight with Maxtor but they gave me a RMA anyway.
 
OK I got a smart tool called ACTIVE SMART and the only value beyond its "factory threshold" is temperature but it says 22*C Since when was 22C beyond factory temps? how many systems actually have internal temps of 22C or lower.....


ALSO!!

I have a case fan that blows over the drive from the front to the rear? do you think maybe the temperature difference from 1 edge of the drive to the other would cause a problem?
 
Originally posted by: Slash621
OK I got a smart tool called ACTIVE SMART and the only value beyond its "factory threshold" is temperature but it says 22*C Since when was 22C beyond factory temps? how many systems actually have internal temps of 22C or lower.....


ALSO!!

I have a case fan that blows over the drive from the front to the rear? do you think maybe the temperature difference from 1 edge of the drive to the other would cause a problem?
Click to expand...

Well, 22 C is too low assumign you have approximately 21 C in your room. What other values does SMART display?

The temperature difference from just blowing normal air shouldn't matter. If you constantly drop ice on one side then maybe.

Are you sure it's not your OS?

How do you measure performance?

You could try a Linux live CD would would allow you to read (and write depending on filesystem) the drive, ruling out Windoze.
 

Are you sure the SATA controller you are using is locked with the PCI bus? I high bus speed can kill a hard drive.
 
Did you try replacing the SATA cable with another one. I had a similar problem with my SATA drive and after RMAing it and everything it ended up being a faulty SATA cable.
 
if all these things aer true.. why do the raptors work well for 3-4 weeks at full speed.. if it was a bad cable it would be bad all the time, same with the mobo. it wouldnt " slowly die"
 
Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
Originally posted by: Slash621
OK I got a smart tool called ACTIVE SMART and the only value beyond its "factory threshold" is temperature but it says 22*C Since when was 22C beyond factory temps? how many systems actually have internal temps of 22C or lower.....


ALSO!!

I have a case fan that blows over the drive from the front to the rear? do you think maybe the temperature difference from 1 edge of the drive to the other would cause a problem?
Click to expand...

Well, 22 C is too low assumign you have approximately 21 C in your room. What other values does SMART display?

The temperature difference from just blowing normal air shouldn't matter. If you constantly drop ice on one side then maybe.

Are you sure it's not your OS?

How do you measure performance?

You could try a Linux live CD would would allow you to read (and write depending on filesystem) the drive, ruling out Windoze.
Click to expand...


I use HD tach... I take a HD tach every 3-4 days. Usually its fine for a while then it slowly dropps off at a rate of 3-5 mb/s per day until ending up down at 3mb/s total
 
my first one ran for a long time before dying. Oh well. WD is sending me a new one and one of their "secure connect" cables just to make sure
 
Are SCSI drives physically-built to better standards? I've had the same three 9 gig SCSI drives for almost 5 years, extensive abuse, no problems (knock on wood). Although, the 36 gig 10k Quantum Atlas I had for A/V scratch went bad after about 3 years, but jeez, I used the hell out of that thing.
 
I'm running two 74GB raptors in a RAID 1, use it everyday at work for 4 months, test it with HD tach every couple of weeks - no speed loss, no problems at all. 125MB/s always. These drives rock and are FAST FAST FAST!
 
What about viruses or Spyware??? Have you updated your ASPI layer software (download from Adaptec.com)???
.bh.

 
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