Author Topic: IBM drive death progression?  (Read 501 times)

Offline eagl

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IBM drive death progression?
« on: January 12, 2003, 07:07:05 PM »
Hi guys,

Today my computer started making a steady "tick... tick... tick" sound and since I use 2 IBM drives for a RAID0 array, I naturally panicked.

As I began moving files around to hopefully prepare for a backup/restore effort before the drive(s) failed completely, I noticed that it would take up to 10 minutes for a single folder to be deleted and in that time, the computer would be unresponsive.  Then the operation would finish and the computer would then act normally until I did another file transfer or deletion...

Is this how the IBM drives usually die, or am I just lucky enough that it didn't die all at once?

Right now I'm in the middle of a 3 hour drive copy using a crummy utility in win98 safe mode because the best utility I have doesn't recognize the raid array...  I hope it works because my last backup was a few months ago and I've gotten a lot of new stuff since then, and I really don't want to re-install windows either.
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Offline AKDejaVu

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2003, 07:16:00 PM »
Hope that works out for you eagl.  I had something similar happen do to a power outage followed by a spike and another outage.

If you get the backup complete, try doing a surface inspection and see if you can recover that way.  Mine was making a god awful noise until I blocked out a few sectors.. then all was well.

AKDejaVu

Offline eagl

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2003, 07:42:52 PM »
Thx.  Hopefully that's all it is.  It's almost like the file allocation tables are tubed though, since it takes so damn long to delete files.  It reads just fine, and in the copy process I'm getting 27 meg/second, but deleting and moving files onto the RAID array is sloooooow.  The ticking sound has gone away but short of a virus problem, there has to be some sort of problem with the HD.
Everyone I know, goes away, in the end.

Offline bloom25

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2003, 10:41:49 PM »
I've got bad news for you...

Thats the sound they usually make before they die.  :(

I'd back up your data now.  It's hard to say how much longer the drive will last.

Offline Reschke

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2003, 11:06:52 PM »
I have an 80GB Maxtor ATA133 sitting here right now ready to go back to Maxtor that did something similar. At first it would take 3-4 minutes to boot up the WinXP system. However once I got going I had no trouble. Then it would not let me start moving anything around in a decent speed and finally I started getting 'SMART' errors on boot up. After running the Maxtor utility to get the drive code and calling Maxtor the guy did nothing other than say "hold on while I get your RMA number".

End of story and they have another waiting on me to send this one back.
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Offline hardcase

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2003, 12:38:12 AM »
Are your fat files corrupted?

HC

Offline mrsid2

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2003, 05:09:43 AM »
IBM Deskstar drives in raid-0 array is like voluntarily putting your head in front of the gun AND pulling the trigger.

I've read literally dozens of accounts of them clicking to eternity plus I personally own one which I had to shelf because of the click, backed it up before it failed totally.

There is a class action suit against IBM in the states so if you live in US and your drive crapped out, you may be able to demand money from them.

Offline qts

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2003, 03:08:50 PM »
Apparently, it's the IBM drives made in Hungaria that caused the bad reputation.

With drives so cheap these days, there is no reason not to mirror your drives.

Offline bloom25

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2003, 07:16:29 PM »
That wouldn't surprise me.  I'm still using a 75GXP series 45GB drive in my own system.  It's run almost 12 hours a day for the past 2 years now.  It has no bad sectors.

Offline Vipermann

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #9 on: January 14, 2003, 11:07:16 AM »
Reschke

I also have the 80GB ata133 drives, 2 in a RAID 0.  On ocasion it takes an abnormally long time to boot up, other times its fine. Was yours a random problem in the beginning that got worse or did it start taking that long and keep it up till it failed?

I would say maybe once out of 10 boot ups it seems to take longer, never 3 minutes but maybe 1 or 2. Also when it does take longer it sits at the splash screen (the one with the progress bar and Windows XP logo). Is that where yours waited?

Sorry for all the questions but if mine is going I want to increase my backup rate just in case.
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Offline MwXX

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Uh Oh
« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2003, 09:21:24 PM »
Same thing happend to me as well. MAXTOR of course! This is the second maxtor to do this to me! and lets say, it was the last!

got a deal on a Seagate and just recently installed it and used the bad one as a slave til I got all the important stuff off of it, pics ect!

All I can say is that its going bad...mine clicked so loud when i ran scandisk, i thought my kid was banging on something!! LOL

GOOD LUCK! MAXTOR SUKS


LOL

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Offline maxtor

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2003, 11:27:47 AM »
Do you have SMART enabled?

Offline maxtor

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2003, 11:50:22 AM »
Don't use RAID 0, you don't need it and you open youself to 2x the mechanical risk.  If one drive fail you will lose the whole array.

Offline Vipermann

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IBM drive death progression?
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2003, 02:00:27 PM »
I believe that SMART is enabled but I'll have to check.

Also the RAID Array is much faster for my video editing.
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