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?
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