==Hard Disk Meltdown==3x In as Many Months==

[Apples]

Hi ,
just a note that 75 gig IBM drives fail a lot from what I have read on www.hardwarezone.com forums.

I have replaced several drives and all new drive now go in to removable alloy trays with front mounted fans.

Alloy trays = heat sinks.

so far I have not had a 7200 rpm drive die as yet, fingers crossed all drive in my system are now 1 year old.

I use a ATA100 controller and fat32 on my 98se drive and NTFS on all my other winxp drives.

my system is not in air conditioning and average day temp of 32C so my system and the server run hot 24/7.

I am now fitting Maxtor drives with extra front fans in all my customer system.

Apples

[Stringent]

[quote:9c4a45a0fa][i:9c4a45a0fa]Originally posted by Grzyb [/i:9c4a45a0fa]
[b]I think I will fork out for another Power Supply............

The Maxtor was next to the IBM..........because of the ATA100 cable being of standard lenth it was the only place I could fit it.......Maybe with the controller I might have more options to play with.............. [/quote:9c4a45a0fa]

Enermax are a good PSU, pricey though I think a 430W is about £60. Just a suggestion.

[unicorn]

One often gets back to the fact that every part in the box is important. (That's why it always is better to build it by yourself, carefully choosing every part.) I have a Enermax 450W psu, two fans, nice neat and working. Put it in a Lian-Li alu box where the harddrives are mounted vertically just inside the two fans blowing air into the box. You might like it or not, I like it a lot, but it's a solution that works very well.

Another thing, advise needed: For the moment I have three hard-drives in the box, all IBM. It's about time to switch the smalles of heese to a larger model. Do you advise me to stick to IBM (which never caused me a problem) and their 120-series, or should I aim for something else this time as I hear ppl talking about crashed IBM-drives?

[Stringent]

I used to swear by IBM drives, then I had a whole lot of problems with them, and had to send them back for replacements. So far none of the replacements have been faulty. On paper they are a good drive.

I have a Maxtor ATA 133 DX7something or other 80GB 7200 rpm and its a decent hard drive. Despite the meltdown in this thread is caused by a Maxtor, I suggest you give them a try.

[unicorn]

...with me telling you I bought another IBM. Then when it melts down I'll remeber your words here Flanderz and then there is noone else to blame but myself...
The three IBM-drives in my box reports temperatures as 32, 31 and 34 degrees Celsius respectively, steady state I guess after 24 hours of continues running.

another note if it hasn't been mentioned, as i only skimmed the thread, your drive needs to be "checked for consistency". basically, that's a fancy way of windows telling you it wants to run scandisk and compare what's on the drive to the fat table.

dead links are the result of files that were reported to be a certain size to the FAT, but in reality are a different size on disk. this usually happens in non-NTFS drives when you shut down improperly when files are in use. This can also be a result of a read/write head crash to the platter.

best way to prevent link problems, in power options, tell it to either always keep your harddrive on, or set the power off time to something like 4 hours, so your drive stays on even when you're not using the disk or you're away. next, always ALWAYS shut down properly. third, if it wants to run scandisk, let it run scandisk. and four, never jostle your computer, kick it, smack it, etc. be gentle with the beast, and the beast should serve you well.