Ok...I have had 4 Maxtor drives go out in the last 6 months....I just bought a Brand New one (not a refurb replacement) and stuck it in my Gateway system.
Everything seemed fine....and then as I came back after lunch and hit the power button once to revive the drive from standby mode...I hear the telltale loud "KA - LICK" noise that always seems to proceed a hard drive failure.
I shut the computer down and wait a few seconds, and then start it back up and I hear a single "Ka - LICK" again......like the write head is banging against something.
What do you make of this?? Is it user error somehow?
Windows XP comes up without a problem...but I have heard this "click of death" too many times before.
What do you suggest? A guy at Comp USA told me that Seagate's are the best hard drives....
Should I just keep working and ignore the devil in my computer...or should I yank it out by the tail and chuck it into the burning barrel?
I have a Maxtor One Touch 2 - 300gb drive that just went out and they are sending a replacement for that......Please Lord...have mercy!
Posted by Kimberly Zanetti (Member # 2546) on :
Please Todd, don't tell me that. I just put a 250 in my computer! My tech said they were good. URRGGHH!
Posted by Paul McDowell (Member # 5092) on :
Check your power feeding into the computer. You may have a bad ground, computers always need to be well grounded. Also put all lines feeding into the computer on a surge protector. This includes power, phone/modem/fax, power for speakers or network devices, printers...
As for good drives.. I have used Seagate and Western Digital and havent had a problem with either. Ive never used Maxtor but I know people who use them exclusively.
Have someone check out you computer and check Gateway for motherboard problems on your model with symptoms like yours. Your motherboard may have some issues.
Posted by Todd Gill (Member # 2569) on :
Paul - the computer is plugged into an APC Backups Pro 650...with a line conditioner to keep voltage constant.
Everything else is plugged in through a surge protector....
The last couple drives that started clicking...Gateway had me run their internal disk checker and they came out without any errors...
But I called Maxtor and had them listen to the drive(s) and they said they would replace them?!!
Could I have a defective hard drive that could be causing problems??? Any way to test one?
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
Large drives make lots more heat.. They will get HOT if they are in the same hard drive bay and only have the space of a dime betweem them. They will get hot enuf to burn you. Heat is the killer of the mechanical systems inside. There seems to be a connection between closely spaced drives, heat and failures. Modern cases have lots of fans inside but the air cannot move between the drives where it matters.
There are two forms of failure: logical and physical. Logic failures are a result of file-system corruption. This occurs a virus, deletion of key files even electro-static. In most cases where a logical failure has occurred, the drive is recognized by BIOS, but it will not boot. Your data should still be intact on the drive, even though it appears inaccessible.
If the system BIOS does not detect a hard drive, chances are its a physical failure. Heat causes problems with the internal movement parts and teh electonics. Head movements will exceed limts and bang and click. If you hear these noise back up NOW!
Sometimes you can freeze your drive to get important data back.
Posted by Steve Eisenreich (Member # 1444) on :
I don't know if I would look totally at the hard drive so much as maybe the Gateway system causing the problem. I have two Maxtors running fine in my system with two Seagate drives and all four of them are fine. The Maxtors are 3 and 2 years old and the Seagates are just about 1 year old. But I do think if going from suspend mode is the first tell tale cause I would stop doing that. Then I would be looking to the motherboard since the harddrive is connected to it and the built in harddrive controller. Maybe Gateway has an issue with their systems a fix might be a pci card hard drive controller card.
I highly doubt you got 4 bad maxtor hard drives in a row.
Posted by Paul McDowell (Member # 5092) on :
The tester they sent you will be the most reliable method of finding a true problem with the drive. The problem is that they might have the tester tuned to only find full failures, ignoring the minor flaws that cause complete failure.
Bah, I just reread your post and noticed that the HD checker was from gateway. Try the Maxtor one here. It might help.
If you are experiencing that head clicking I would do everything I could to make sure I am not relying on that drive anymore. The two best identifiers of a failing hard drive are corrupted files and system crashes. After copying the files, run scandisk to see if your files are getting corrupted (keep an eye on it, it only displays the results for a few seconds before booting)
As a side note, As tight as your system is protected, unless your computer has no fans you should not be having this problem. Not that I dissagree with Curtis but laptops have no ventilation and the HD's are still guaranteed for 2 years.
Two questions...1- Ever had virus problems on this Hard Drive? 2- Do you work with really large files on a computer with low Ram?
Yes to either means you were working the Hd too much (although it should still be able to take the punishment).
Hope this helps
[ January 28, 2005, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: Paul McDowell ]
Posted by Keith Myers (Member # 5051) on :
Todd, This is just my observance, but in my day job I am the IT person for a staffing company with many offices. I have set everyone's computer so that they never go into standby mode. Before I did this we had 2-3 hard drive crashes a year. Since then I have only had one in the past 2 years. I don't know that there is really any advantage to having the computer go into standby mode. Mine has been running for 3 years non-stop and nothing major has ever gone wrong with it.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
YOur comparing birds to dogs. You cannot combine a bird and a dog to make a birdog.. lol
quote: laptops have no ventilation
Every laptop I ever worked on had ventilation.. All of them had some kind of cooling too such as heat pipes, heat sinks and fans. Lap top hard drives are very small and run on lower voltages. They do not produce the heat the large high capacity drives do. Nor are laptop hard drives stacked into a case like they are in desktop systems.
Back to desktops. I have observed a number of high capacity drive mechanical failures due to HEAT. Especially 7200 RPM drives.. Clicking sounds are a good sign of a Mechanical failure.. In all cases I seperated the hard drives so that they can disipate the heat. Results are no failures afterwords. In no case should you stack 10,000 RPM drives without using heat spreaders.
Posted by Todd Gill (Member # 2569) on :
Guys - I believe I found the solution!!
(Well, in part thanks to a young computer kid at work)
He thought it bizzare that so many hard drives would act up and we got to discussing if a power supply could cause spikes to a hard drive...
Initially he thought maybe the power wires that go directly to the device were carrying spiked currents to the drives....
Well, in discussing this theory he asked, "What size power supply do you have and what kind of devices do you have hooked up to it?"
I checked and told him that I had a 250watt power supply and had a Radeon 128mb ddr card, a second hard drive, two cd drives (one a dvd burner), a 4 port usb pci card, a 3 port firewire pci card, sound card, floppy drive, wireless adapter pci card, monitor, 2 printers, scanner, usb palm, and 2 external hard drives (one of which just went out).
He said, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
He told me he believed I was very underpowered on the power supply to run all those devices and suspected the hard drive might not be bad at all....that during bootup, the power supply may not be getting proper juice to all the components because of the load demand and it's inability to keep up.
He thought that the hard drive might be "stuttering" and half starting initially from weak or sporatic "juice" from the power supply causing it to bang about a bit before going into windows.....
So...we tested this theory by him having me put the hard drive in another system I have with fewer components and a 300 watt power supply.....NO NOISE.
I did this a couple times without the clicking sound.
Then, he had me put it back into the Gateway system, but had me unplug all the peripheral devices I could and still have the computer start up...so I unplugged all my usb connections, sound card and firewire card....
I restarted the computer from a cold start 4 times and had no "CA-LICKING" noise....
The thought is is that I need to get a 400+ power supply and then recheck it with everything plugged in....as we think that might be the culprit.
[ January 29, 2005, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: Todd Gill ]
Posted by Dave Draper (Member # 102) on :
Todd,
My sons computer just went in to the repair shop, and the first thing they said:
"How many times have we had to stress not to get a Maxtor hard drive. We see these failures everyday....when will they learn?
So I guess we shouldn't have gotten one. bummer
Posted by share-in y. reardon (Member # 1512) on :
I have a 200 gig external Maxtor one touch (backup and storage) - figured when we were moving our shop, I'd back everything up. Good. Until I went to retrieve something and there was NOTHING!
Posted by David Wright (Member # 111) on :
Well they should know, but there is no way that 4 hard drives go bad. Something with your system has to cause that and an inadequate power supply sounds right. Even two harddrives and a power sucking high end video card will tax your system robbing something else of the needed power.
Posted by Steve Eisenreich (Member # 1444) on :
I am running a 450 Watt power supply see I built my computer and I knew that if I started with good components I would not see problems like you have found. Like I said it was hard to beleive you had 4 hard drives go bad in a row. Poor power to your system can cause lots of problems.
