Hard disks, computer questions, whatever

[Tapewolf]

Last night I managed to drop a 500GB Maxtor 3200 on the floor during operation.  Before anyone asks, no there wasn't anything irreplaceable on it.

However, when powered up, it just sits there buzzing.  I've never heard a disk make a noise like that before - I'd almost say that the disk had deformed to the point at which it was no longer able to rotate, though how that would be possible with an 18-inch fall when the disk was mounted in an allegedly 'shockproof' chassis is a bit of a mystery to me.

I'll probably open it up when I can get hold of a Torx driver but I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had this happen.

And if anyone else has random computer questions, feel free to tack them onto the thread...

EDIT:
Supposedly they are rated to a shock of up to 63Gs in operation...

[Netrogo]

I have a similiar problem with a 500gb maxtor external of my own. Don't remember what model it was, it came in a fance bluish green casing though. I left it alone for a few weeks, it never moved or anything, went to get something off it and it just made random noises and that was it. No detection by the comp. Opened up the casing took out the hd and tried manually connecting the hd into a pc and still nada.

Maybe it's a specific problem with maxtor 500gb externals

[Tapewolf]

Maybe it's a specific problem with maxtor 500gb externals

Possibly.  I managed to open mine, and it seems like the bearings have failed.  The platters have completely seized up and will not rotate.

[GabrielsThoughts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRyLwgpxpcU

Important need to know information.... took me a half hour to find out how to remove it and it had been on my system since a little after 4pst, the virus broke through the Cox/Mcaffe antivirus software. It was on my system a total of 40 something minutes.

and now calls itself "Wnpc Antivirus"  software the executable file name has changed as well

[Brownie]

My father has a buzzing hard-drive problem.
It just won't stop.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Turnsky]

that's the thing, even though they're rated to a 63g shock, you'll find that things with moving parts rarely take impacts fairly well.

[superluser]

I suppose the real question isn't what acceleration they can withstand, but what jerk (change in acceleration)?

After all, you're going from 1G to 0G relatively quickly.

(yes, I've heard the joke about inauguration)

[Lushin]

Maxtor hardrives are know to have bearing issues. I say this cause I used to have to replace Maxtor hardrives alot when I worked as a computer tech for a  repair shop.

[Tapewolf]

Maxtor hardrives are know to have bearing issues. I say this cause I used to have to replace Maxtor hardrives alot when I worked as a computer tech for a  repair shop.

What about the Seagate Barracuda?  That's what was actually inside the thing.  Gave me a surprise until I remembered that Seagate had bought them out a few years back.

[Turnsky]

Maxtor hardrives are know to have bearing issues. I say this cause I used to have to replace Maxtor hardrives alot when I worked as a computer tech for a  repair shop.

What about the Seagate Barracuda?  That's what was actually inside the thing.  Gave me a surprise until I remembered that Seagate had bought them out a few years back.

been running 'cudas for years, had no worries with 'em.

[Tapewolf]

been running 'cudas for years, had no worries with 'em.

Well, I was specifically curious about whether he had many in for repair/replacement.

I think I've used disks from nearly much every manufacturer in recent years.  IBM, Hitachi, Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Samsung, Conner, WD... the only ones which had chronic failures were the Seagate Medallists, one of which ate my brother's data years ago, resulting in the loss of several fantastic Doom and Duke3D maps he was working on.  He wasn't the only one either - they redesigned them shortly after.

EDIT:
The fun part was recovering the data.  Because I wasn't entirely sure what I had been backing up on the Mac, I didn't really want to take the only copy home, so I duplicated the dead disks' twin onto the new disk at work.

The problem is that Linux can't write to HFS+ partitions and I'm not sure I 100% trust it to read them either, so I imaged the HFS partition into a file on the rest of the disk.
I couldn't use it natively because I wanted it to be bigger on the target disk.

The problem is that the Mac can't read EXT3 so I couldn't get the image out again.  What I had to do when I got home was copy the 80GB image from the EXT3 partition to an NTFS-formatted disk which both of them could read, and then mount the image in the Mac, create the new partition on the target disk and copy it across.  Fiddly, but doable.

[Netrogo]

Yeah it's official Tape, you HAVE to have the exact same external I do. Mine had a seagate inside too.

[Tapewolf]

Yeah it's official Tape, you HAVE to have the exact same external I do. Mine had a seagate inside too.

Like this?

[Azlan]

I've overcome physical shock considerations by using SSDs.  They are just too cost prohibitive and tiny on storage capacity.

[Tapewolf]

I've overcome physical shock considerations by using SSDs.  They are just too cost prohibitive and tiny on storage capacity.

Funnily enough I've converted my laptop using a CF->Laptop IDE bridge.  I could only easily source a 4GB CF card, but for the job this laptop does (running a MIDI sequencer under Linux) it's quite sufficient.

Similarly, I used an IDE->CF bridge to convert an old Dell 575 which I was on the verge of throwing away.  It runs DR OpenDOS 7.03 off a 32MB CF card and is used for driving an EPROM programmer.  I also have another old machine which I used to run a softsynth.  Again, DOS booting from a 512MB  Compactflash card.

I must admit I'm dismayed that more and more Netbooks seem to be fitted with hard disks instead of flash modules these days - to me, that was part of what made them neat.

Unfortunately SSD isn't yet going to do the job of acting as a backup medium, which is what the Maxtor was doing.  Tape is still outside my budget for the capacities I need here.

[superluser]

The problem is that Linux can't write to HFS+ partitions and I'm not sure I 100% trust it to read them either, so I imaged the HFS partition into a file on the rest of the disk.

Are you sure?

I'm constantly running into trouble at print shops because I have a HFS+ drive, and I read and write to it from my Linux box.

When I mount it, I have to add the option `-t hfsplus', so I'm pretty sure it's HFS+.  I think I had to add that support into the kernel, but if you use Macs regularly, it's more than worth the trouble.

[Tapewolf]

Are you sure?

Certainly it didn't on the dev machine at work.  That's a fairly basic Ubuntu setup, no custom kernel.  If there is a way to enable HFS writing in Ubuntu I wasn't aware of it.  I might look into it, but to be honest, I don't usually need to write to HFS anyway.

In this case I would have needed to create the HFS filesystem in the first place - again, if there are tools to do that on Linux, I wasn't aware of it and I'm not entirely sure I'd trust it to do it either

[Netrogo]

Yeah it's official Tape, you HAVE to have the exact same external I do. Mine had a seagate inside too.

Like this?

Mine was a similar shape, but bluish green.

[LionHeart]

I must admit I'm dismayed that more and more Netbooks seem to be fitted with hard disks instead of flash modules these days - to me, that was part of what made them neat.

I think the cost is a factor - SSDs are still fairly expensive compared to hard drives, and netbooks are largely built to a budget.

[superluser]

Certainly it didn't on the dev machine at work.  That's a fairly basic Ubuntu setup, no custom kernel.  If there is a way to enable HFS writing in Ubuntu I wasn't aware of it.  I might look into it, but to be honest, I don't usually need to write to HFS anyway.

In this case I would have needed to create the HFS filesystem in the first place - again, if there are tools to do that on Linux, I wasn't aware of it and I'm not entirely sure I'd trust it to do it either

I've got it set this way in my kernel:

Code Select Expand

#
# Miscellaneous filesystems
#
CONFIG_HFS_FS=m
CONFIG_HFSPLUS_FS=m

They're modules, so you can simply make oldconfig;make modules;make modules_install .  No full recompile needed.  I think you're right about formatting, though.

[Dekari]

I've overcome physical shock considerations by using SSDs.  They are just too cost prohibitive and tiny on storage capacity.

Unfortunately SSD isn't yet going to do the job of acting as a backup medium, which is what the Maxtor was doing.  Tape is still outside my budget for the capacities I need here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=SubCatDeals&N=2013240636&StoreType=2&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=False&Order=REVIEWS
Give them time, they are getting there.  Largest they have now is 256 GB

But for HDD's in general I gave up on maxtor and others a long time ago...had a few drives fail on me.  I'm a pure Western Digital guy, they've been good to me and I have yet to find better deals.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

Come on, $100 for 1TB.

[Jack McSlay]

Meh, I just use a bunch of DVD-RWs for most backups myself.

Current Lowest Cost/Storage ratio, easily/cheaply replaceable, unsusceptible to damage via impact...

Granted, there might be a problem when needing to store files larger than 4.38GiB, if that's an actual requirement, that is

[Tapewolf]

Granted, there might be a problem when needing to store files larger than 4.38GiB, if that's an actual requirement, that is

Yes.

The backup set is:

5x 2GB MSDOS partitions
1x 500GB EXT3 partition
1x 500GB NTFS partition
1x 128GB NTFS partition (partial backup)
1x 160GB HFS+ partition

...not all of these are fully populated, however the total amount of data on the backup device is something to the tune of 400GB.  That is a lot of DVDs.  Also, the mac can only write CDs.

[Teroniss]

I have been havingh trouble of late with my web browsers. It seems no matter which one I use, or which search engine I use (Google, Yahoo, etc.) Whenever I perform a search, it'll bring up the regular links expected, but when I try to click on one of the links, rather than get the page it says, the url will change to about:blank, and I'll suddenly be sent to some random ad site.

I have tried scanning my hard drive with all manner of anti-spyware, anti-malware, etc. and it never brings up anything. It's driving me nuts. Any tech people out there that can help?

[Ryudo Lee]

Sounds like a virus.  Restart into safe mode and run a virus scan.

[Reese Tora]

Sounds like a virus.  Restart into safe mode and run a virus scan.

I agree, but it sounds like more than your run of the mill virus.  You should find software to make a CD bootable and some virus scan software that can be run from it and run that to scan if a safe mode scan doesn't work.

[Cvstos]

Yeah, that's definitely some kind of malware. A OS wipe and re-install might be in order.

[Tapewolf]

Yeah, that's definitely some kind of malware. A OS wipe and re-install might be in order.

Well, the other possibility is that his ISP is doing something funky at the proxy level.  I have - unfortunately - come across that kind of thing, though it's more the preserve of mobile data operators than landlines.

I'll admit malware sounds more likely, though.  If you're just using a straight wifi network or an ethernet cable into a router (rather than some weird-ass USB modem) it might be worth booting up a Knoppix CD or similar linux-on-a-disk thing.  If firefox in linux does the same, it's further upstream.