Defective Hard Drive?

[Jedis]

My hard drive has been giving me issues as of late. It takes a good 30 minutes to unrar a 600mb archive, when it normally took about 45 seconds or so. The drive has been making clunking sounds as well.

When Windows starts, it tries to scan the hard drive to check for errors, and the computer freezes up. Scandisk freezes when scanning the drive as well. I tried running SpinRite, a hard disk diagnostic tool, and SpinRite exits with a fatal error.

Now.. in Windows, I can still see the drive, and all of my files. The few files I've tried to open, DO open, but the larger ones take forever. I haven't tried to open every file, obviously... that's too much.

I ran the PowerMax diagnostic tool from Maxtor, and it indeed gives me a a six digit error code, which is supposedly used as an RMA to return the drive because it's failing. (Or so I came to understand reading the website.) It said it could try to fix the error, but I would probably lose data in the process. I have a new 160GB hard drive on the way. When I receive it, I plan to try to copy everything over to it to salvage what I can.

Now, the drive says on the box it has a 3 year warranty, and it hasn't even been 2 years. I think I can send it in to Maxtor to get a replacement.... However, I do not want to send it in with all of my files on it. I would like to make them unrecoverable, if possible, but I'm not sure it is possible due to the drives wacky behavior.

Any suggestions on what I can try to make it work? Does Maxtor dump defective drives when they get them, or do they try to fix them? I have my online banking info saved along with gigs of other files I do not want them to see

Has anyone had experience returning a drive to Maxtor? Any suggestions?

[Shiromagius]

When you move your data over to your new hard drive, i would copy all of it (instead of cutting and pasting) just in case something goes wrong. Once everything is copied, I would delete all the files on the bad drive, then try to low level format, and that should be good. If you want to, there are programs out there that will do a more efficient job of formatting (writing 0s nine times over or something like that), but i cant remember the program name. I think you will be ok as far as Maxtor not reading the data. I am sure there is some license agreement stating that Maxtor will not exploit data on RMA drives... its just bad etiquette and practice. I think you'll be fine.

I think that companies first try to fix the drive, and if they cant, then they replace it. Sometimes you get a drive bigger than what you sent in I have had that happen a few times with Western Digital. Hope this helps.

[Dave]

Better safe than sorry.
Use a zero-fill tool to overwrite the drive more than once.
If the drive is too screwed up to run the tool, use a big magnet on it.
Dave

[unicorn]

I think you can format it a few times in different configurations. Make a lot if partitions and format them ntfs, delete them all, make a few partitions in different sizes and format them FAT, make some and format them ext2fs and linux swap. For example.

I don't think you should go for that big magnet - what happens with the warranty then?

[Jedis]

Quote:

Originally posted by Shiromagius+Jun 30 2003, 12:02 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Shiromagius @ Jun 30 2003, 12:02 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> When you move your data over to your new hard drive, i would copy all of it (instead of cutting and pasting) just in case something goes wrong.[/b]

I'm not sure what you mean here?

<!--QuoteBegin-Dave@Jun 30 2003, 03:12 AM
Use a zero-fill tool to overwrite the drive more than once. If the drive is too screwed up to run the tool, use a big magnet on it.[/quote]
Thanks, I'll try doing that... Using the magnet would void the warranty, I'd think... I actually thought of that idea myself, but don't want to risk that.

[Shiromagius]

Quote:

Quote:

When you move your data over to your new hard drive, i would copy all of it (instead of cutting and pasting) just in case something goes wrong

I'm not sure what you mean here?

What I mean is that when you are moving your files from your defective drive over to your brand spanking new drive in windows, copy the files instead of cutting the files and pasting. Basically what this does is just make a copy of the files on your new drive instead of moving files. So you will have an entire copy of your defective drive on your new drive. This way if something should go wrong while transferring data (ie: two jedi knights saber dueling and accidently hit the power pole and knock out electricity ), you are in better shape of not having lost any data because you still have the originals on your defective drive. I hope this explains things a little better.

[Firefox]

I would use Ghost to Image the whole drive. It is fairly fast and you will build up less heat than a 5-6 hour copy from the PowerMax tools. Then I would use this DOS TOOL


Active@ KillDisk is a quality security application that destroys data permanently from any computer that can be started using a DOS floppy disk. Access to the drive's data is made on the physical level via the Basic Input-Output Subsystem (BIOS), bypassing the operating systems logical drive structure organization. Regardless of the operating system, file systems or type of machine, this utility can destroy all data on all storage devices. Thus it does not matter operating systems and file systems located on the machine, it can be DOS, Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT/2000/XP, Linux, Unix for PC. Active@ KillDisk Professional conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. You can be sure that once you wipe a disk with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is destroyed forever

SHAREWARE

I hav'nt used it before, but you could run it 8X just to be sure.

[Jedis]

Hmm...

Well, I was going to pop the new drive into my computer and image it, but I can only mount 2 drives in here. And I don't have Windows installed on the failing drive, it's on the other. So I'd have had to reinstall Windows :/

Instead, I popped the failing drive into another computer, and am copying all of the files over the network to the new drive. It's been running about 24 hours straight now and copied about 25 gigs.... 55 gigs to go :/ Is this bad for either drives? They aren't copying very fast over the wireless connection, only about 180kb/sec. The computers are in the basement, and the new drive is in a system on a table, directly under a register vent. The AC is blowing directly onto the case itself. I think this should keep it cool? The old damage drive is in the computer next to mine, sitting on the floor under the table.

Thanks for the info on that tool, will definately look into it!

[Shiromagius]

That sounds like its gonna take a long time to copy =/ Couldnt you just have disconnected a CDROM drive or something? As for being bad to spend so much time copying, I dont think its going to hurt anything. They are machines, they are meant to be used for hard grueling work The fan will probably keep things cool too. Let us know how it all goes.

[griz]

With yer puter freezin and taking so long to open and unarchive large files, could there be a memory chip gone bad as well? ...griz