PC HD on last legs

[gary]

Well my HD has started giving up the ghost. The W2K PC crashed last week and continously rebooted. I ended putting an new install of XP on it. I did not format the HD as I still need some stuff on it.

After putting on all the patches and drivers (about 30 reboots) I got it up and running. It ran about 4 hours and crashed again. chkdsk reports all kind of problems including unreadable and crosslinked sectors.

I'm going to go out tomorrow and buy a pair of 160GB drives to put in it. I have a RAID controller in it that I've never used and I plan on mirroring the drives. This is why I have not been on much as I hate bumming the wife's PC.

[Ken Weaver]

Let us know when the memorial service is Gary - all HDs go there some day.

[JoeyGee]

Just think of it as real expensive magnets...

Make sure the you take the magnets out of the bad drive. There are about 1.6 gabillion uses for them.

[gsmittle]

Make sure the you take the magnets out of the bad drive. There are about 1.6 gabillion uses for them.

Funny you should mention the magnets--I'm watching Modern Marvels about magnets. Woo, synchronicity!

How many zillions in a gabillion?

g.

[BobSch]

How many zillions in a gabillion?

g.

About a googol worth.

[WayneJ]

When I first read the headline I thought Home Depot was giving up Porter Cable.
Wayne

[LarryG]

When I first read the headline I thought Home Depot was giving up Porter Cable.

... and I was trying to figure out what kind of tool Porter-Cable makes that would be abbreviated "HD."

[JSUPreston]

Before trashing the drive, try the manufacturer's website to see if they have a low level format utility for it. Although I haven't had to do it in a couple of years, I've had drives act like yours, and thinking that it was dying, I'd replace it and put it in the parts bin. I'd go back a while later, do the low level, and it would work fine again. Chkdsk/scandisk would show a clean drive, and no new errors were found. However, if you do this, and new errors show up, use Darik's Boot and Nuke at http://dban.sourceforge.net/ to do at least a 7 pass DOD wipe. Then, since it is bad, take the cover off, remove the platters and destroy them. My understanding is that DOD and other classifed government agencies actually do the 7 pass wipe, remove the platters, drill them, then crush and shred until nothing is left but dust, which is then incenerated.

However, if it is a Western Digital, destroy it. I've been building and supporting computers since '93, and every single WD that I've worked with hasn't been worth squat. Except for a bad batch of Seagate drives in '96, I've never had a problem with them.

Good luck, and if you are going to make a RAID array of your boot drive, be sure to make a floppy for the RAID drivers. Then again, you probably know all of this stuff anyway.

[mater]

... and I was trying to figure out what kind of tool Porter-Cable makes that would be abbreviated "HD."

So was I when I first read the title.

[mac_daddy]

However, if it is a Western Digital, destroy it. I've been building and supporting computers since '93, and every single WD that I've worked with hasn't been worth squat. Except for a bad batch of Seagate drives in '96, I've never had a problem with them.

Weird, because recently I've noticed better reliability and performance from WD HDDs, Seagates, of course are tops (cuda-wise), Maxtor is fair to worse. But this is what I've experienced.

Best option for failed HD is to get another one, they are cheap, install solo on same IDE with CD. Once up and running, place bad drive onto secondary IDE, copy contents off, and then DESTROY the old drive by whatever means. That's just to be safe.

[DaveW]

... and I was trying to figure out what kind of tool Porter-Cable makes that would be abbreviated "HD."

So was I when I first read the title.

Ditto!

(and here's some padding text to get past the minimum post length!)

[JSUPreston]

Weird, because recently I've noticed better reliability and performance from WD HDDs, Seagates, of course are tops (cuda-wise), Maxtor is fair to worse. But this is what I've experienced.

Other than what comes OEM at work, I haven't personally dealt with WD in a long time. However, sure as the world, we had a WD hard drive fail last week here at the office. Then again, it was a 40GB that was only 3.5 years old.

IIRC, Maxtor was recently bought out by Seagate, so the quality should improve. I'll take a WD over a Maxtor any day!

[onedash]

Im in the Marine Corps and I have never heard all that...We do wipe them Times 3 which actually writes over deletes writes etc.....so they are clean....and thats up to secret. TS and above might have more but I dont think so.

[gary]

Going to pull the trigger on a pair of Hitachi 160GB SATA drives this weekend. Newegg appears to have the best prices.

I'm not sure what the confusion was on HD and PC lol. It was clear to me whan I wrote it

[JoeyGee]

Maybe try hdd next time...

I, too thought it was Porter Cable and Home Depot--and I'm a computer guy...