Computer HD ?

disneyjoe7

Hello anyone know what's or how accurate is the Hard drive life monitor?

My wife's which she was having issues with Vista 32 home with, that I then placed Win7 RC on. It gives an error that the Hard drive is about to die? :eek:

So with Hinders boot CD it also gives a "Life rating" of 0% :eek::eek::eek: But if 0% how this working at all? :rolleyes::rolleyes:

disneyjoe7

Sal,

I see some WD drives with 3 year and some with 5 year warranty? Also ok if drive 86 itself as I have data saved else where due to the OS change.

Marty913

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

Sal,

I see some WD drives with 3 year and some with 5 year warranty? Also ok if drive 86 itself as I have data saved else where due to the OS change.

From Western Digital as implemented in 2005:

The new warranty periods will apply to bulk desktop hard drives shipped to our authorized distributors. WD Scorpio®, WD Caviar®, WD Caviar SE and WD Caviar SE16, will be supported with a 3-year warranty. All enterprise products, including WD Caviar RE and WD Raptor®, will be supported with a 5-year warranty. There is no policy change to WD's retail packaged products. Please check your most current price list to see details on product family descriptions.

It should be noted that replacement is pro-rated based on years. In the 3rd year the "credit" is 50%, etc. Realistically, the way HD prices are falling and capacity id growing, it's difficult to project what a hard drive will look like or cost in 5 years. Probably a solid state plug-in. Still, WD hard drives are about as good as it gets.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I prefer Seagate drives personally, but everyone you talk to is going to tell you something different when it comes to hard drives.

VSchneider

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

Hello anyone know what's or how accurate is the Hard drive life monitor?

My wife's which she was having issues with Vista 32 home with, that I then placed Win7 RC on. It gives an error that the Hard drive is about to die? :eek:

So with Hinders boot CD it also gives a "Life rating" of 0% :eek::eek::eek: But if 0% how this working at all? :rolleyes::rolleyes:

HD Tune is a good simple diagnostics and benchmarking tool that can check if the drive is reporting any problems, and also run performance benchmarks for a healthy drive. The latest free version is 2.55.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the drive you want to work with in the drop-down menu, and if it support S.M.A.R.T. feature on the Info tab, you can get details on the Health tab.

disneyjoe7

It's the S.M.A.R.T. reporting drives life. Sad thing this laptop is about 1.5 yr old, a Toshiba drive a POS IMHO

Marty913

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

It's the S.M.A.R.T. reporting drives life. Sad thing this laptop is about 1.5 yr old, a Toshiba drive a POS IMHO

I have replaced more than a few Toshiba and Hitachi drives in the past 2 years (friends, relatives, customers). I don't know whether they are prone to failure because of heat or shock issues, but they seem to die pretty early in life. For the past several years I've replaced them with WD Scopio drives. I haven't had one come back yet.

I do like USB Seagate Free Agent Go drives versus the WD Passport but for internal use I like the Scorpio a little better. They seem to run a little quieter and faster.

mshan242700

Windows 7 has a back up function that can include files and complete disk image:

http://lifehacker.com/5144757/first-look-at-windows-7s-backup-and-restore-center

Probably makes sense to back up all important files to dvd, but might also want to pop in a second hard drive and configure it as back file.

I think you have to burn some sort of boot disk to recover from disk image on second hard drive.

If your family has multiple Windows computers, Windows Home Server 2003 seems to get a lot of rave reviews. Acer has a nice new stylish WHS box and HP has some too. MSRP is high, but there appear to be discounts and additional hard drive thrown in if you google around:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=2297513&highlight_key=y&keyword1=windows+home+server

nguyendot

With hard drives it's not IF it will die, it's WHEN will it die...

If it's telling you it's going to die, it's just the SMART (someone above already pointed this out) diagnostics telling you it's detected a set of criteria that it deems will end the life of the drive soon.

Laptop hard drives die faster generally, they run hotter and are subjected to more abuse than desktop ones. I'd go with Seagate personally - they're all 5 years now (Except externals)

disneyjoe7

Could a power surge have killed the drive? My wife states the power went out and on again during a afternoon storm which started the "Hardware Error" message. Or do all Toshiba drives die anyway. And yes I believe WD drives are best with Seagate a close second. Just my $.02

wizzy

Laptop?

I would suggest replacing it with a 7200 RPM unit.

The Western Digital Black (WD3200BEKT)

or

Seagate (7200.4)

should be good choices. Assuming it uses SATA, I would guess so at 1.5yo.

Of course, maybe your OS is full of shi* and you may want to use a third party utility to check your drive's SMART status.

Also the manufacturer should have a utility you can d/l and burn to an ISO to do a surface scan. Make sure it's a non-destructive scan.

W

disneyjoe7

I did a clean install using Win7 RC os. When up powered it gives me the "Hardware Error". I used a third party utility to check your drive's SMART for those errors. It gives me the "Life" 0%, and the Toshiba drive test gives me a "FAILED" very sweet.

Is those Toshiba Hard drive a POS? Or did the surge power problem blow up the hard drive?

messiah

Not sure, would have to look at it. Either way back up to an external if you can asap.

Ender

IMO, Samsung makes a close third... I built a computer for a friend with the Samsung Spinpoint series (their most forward, fast, and reliable hard drive series) and it is an excellent hard drive... but it might be a tad loud.

renowilliams

Again, all drive manufacturers have had bad runs of drives at one time or another. People tend to recommend what they ave had good luck with in the past. For me, that is Seagate or Western Digital. Others I'm sure have had poor luck with these manufacturers. The important thing is to get a drive to replace one that is starting to fail as its better to do this before the existing one dies. Especially important if you have important data on it.

Yes Joe its possible that a power surge during a storm can kill a drive although is more likely to take a motherboard out.

By the way Ender, is tad a technical term....lol



Tim

Marty913

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

I did a clean install using Win7 RC os. When up powered it gives me the "Hardware Error". I used a third party utility to check your drive's SMART for those errors. It gives me the "Life" 0%, and the Toshiba drive test gives me a "FAILED" very sweet.

Is those Toshiba Hard drive a POS? Or did the surge power problem blow up the hard drive?

It may be a little bit of both. The read/write head actually floats on a cushion of air over the spinning disk surface. Although almost all modern drives have a "retract immediately upon power loss" capability, some do it better than others. Then again, there's always the definition and implementation of "immediately". Once the head touches the disk surface, it's pretty much over with.

My area happens to be one of the lightning capitals of the world (as is most of the Southeast + Texas) and I see a lot of hard drive failures. Laptops especially because rarely are they plugged into surge suppressors. Assuming your 1 1/2 year old laptop hasn't been banged around a lot, my guess would be that the power surge caused the failure but the Toshiba drives seem to be more susceptible to them than some other brands.

I guess it doesn't really matter.

disneyjoe7

Well I began to over think this again... The drive is SATA it may of died yes. Or is the mother board shot? Being SATA I can't test it in another laptop as mine is IDE, and because of it being a laptop can't place it in my desk top computer SATA connections. So my question, is the boot cd giving my the correct error?

John30_30

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

Could a power surge have killed the drive? My wife states the power went out and on again during a afternoon storm which started the "Hardware Error" message. Or do all Toshiba drives die anyway. And yes I believe WD drives are best with Seagate a close second. Just my $.02

Yes, power surges are probably the #1 cause of hard drive & mainboard failure, with laptops left on bedspreads overheating running second.
Back up your data asap, toss that drive.
Spend the $40 for a UPS.

Well I began to over think this again... The drive is SATA it may of died yes. Or is the mother board shot? Being SATA I can't test it in another laptop as mine is IDE, and because of it being a laptop can't place it in my desk top computer SATA connections. So my question, is the boot cd giving my the correct error?

Get a SATA to USB for 2.5" drive converter, 10 bucks, then hook it up to a USB on your IDE machine.

disneyjoe7

John30_30 wrote: »

Yes, power surges are probably the #1 cause of hard drive & mainboard failure, with laptops left on bedspreads overheating running second.
Back up your data asap, toss that drive.
Spend the $40 for a UPS.

I would consider a surge protection outlet thing, but not an UPS. I have too many around house and the batteries are killing me. I got 3 UPS that need batteries right now, I own 5 UPS's now. No more.

Get a SATA to USB for 2.5" drive converter, 10 bucks, then hook it up to a USB on your IDE machine.

Do you think I need that? Does the software look at the drive direct? Does the S.M.A.R.T. looking at the drive, or is this between the mother board and the drive? If so I see that I need the SATA to USB to check this drive again.

wizzy

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

Well I began to over think this again... The drive is SATA it may of died yes. Or is the mother board shot?

Assuming you can boot a bootable CD, and that's what the "Toshiba drive test utility" is you are speaking of, then I would say it's a safe bet it's just a simple hard drive failure.

Check out the two 7200RPM notebook drives I posted links to above. They are fine replacements, and will speed up the notebook considerably over a 1.5yo 4200/5400RPM drive.

$70 some bucks for 320GB is quite reasonable.

Steve

wizzy

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

I would consider a surge protection outlet thing, but not an UPS. I have too many around house and the batteries are killing me. I got 3 UPS that need batteries right now, I own 5 UPS's now. No more.

A lot of people make the mistake of letting their UPS run down on a power failure, and/or not having the PC setup to shutdown automagically.

Most UPS's use sealed lead-acid batteries which while they may be somewhat better than a car battery at surviving deep discharge, they ain't really made to handle it.

Always turn off your PC/whatever when the UPS still has at least 33% battery life left, preferably 50%. Your batteries will last 2-3x as long.

disneyjoe7

I have many USB that power other stuff, DVR's, my DSL and wireless hub, a large UPS for my stereo stuff / tv / DVR. So not everything can be auto power down, but I like them because if they need to power off they do after the surge time. When power back on they wait a little before they power back up. But my thinking is they power off when the batteries are getting low, before they are dead for sure. Just with 5 UPS's battery time sucks.

wizzy

Yes, if you are out of the house and they go until they power themselves off they are almost always very low on the battery, like 3-5% left. This type of deep discharge will kill the batteries longevity after very few cycles.

Steve

wizzy

Also I just went through a round of battery replacements.

http://batteriesasap.com

Reasonable shipping, good prices.

Serendipity

wizzy wrote: »

Yes, if you are out of the house and they go until they power themselves off they are almost always very low on the battery, like 3-5% left. This type of deep discharge will kill the batteries longevity after very few cycles.

Steve

Whooops, I've used my APC Smart-UPS 1500 to power a drill and other power tools when there is no outlet around. I've run it completely out of battery a few times.

WilliamM2

That drive should have a three year warranty. Go here, check the warranty staus, and request a replacement :

http://216.102.195.13/gcs/toshiba/

disneyjoe7

Hmmm.......

I thought that an UPS would down power when a 12v battery got about 10.5v would that be 3%?

disneyjoe7

wizzy wrote: »

The Western Digital Black (WD3200BEKT)

W

Ordered. Nice price for a killer drive.

Thanks for the recommandation.

disneyjoe7

WilliamM2 wrote: »

That drive should have a three year warranty. Go here, check the warranty staus, and request a replacement :

http://216.102.195.13/gcs/toshiba/

I check later, but I'm sure it would state something like OEM drive you're SOL :rolleyes:

But then again being so reliable I'm concern about using it as a portable drive.
As those USB SATA drive cases look really nice, but seeing it die wouldn't be. :eek:

Ender

Oh, also, you might want to check out your power supply. I've known cases where computers would use unreliable power supplies which results in the motherboard, hard drive, or CPU dying. Most power supply brands and product lines are not reliable, especially when it comes from pre-assembled big names like Dell or HP.

disneyjoe7

Not sure on how to check for power supply, and I assume you mean the plug in box supply? I can check with a meter, but I can state I'm on a laptop now myself, a Dell also with a Samsung drive which uses the same power supply's. Nothing as given me that the supply is bad, on either computer. A for the record my computer is 2+ years old, no problems like my wifes but run XP pro and hard drive came back as 93% life.