Here are the symptoms:

• Bad sectors on the Hard Drive
• Disk gets a huge amount of fragmentation in a matter of hours
• Resizing the NTFS partition gives Windows the BSoD
• I can't create backup images with recovery software

Solutions? Is this hard drive still usable?

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RMA that sucker.

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Cantina Cloud | BCF | The Massassian & A Very Massassian Xmas
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

RMA? Does that have to do with the garbage can? NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

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Return it for a replacement.....unless it's out of warranty.

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Cantina Cloud | BCF | The Massassian & A Very Massassian Xmas
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

Heh, I don't even know who manufactures it... it came with my Sony computer a couple years ago.

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Make of backup of everything you love. When it dies, you won't lay on the floor and cry like I di- I mean, ummm, backups are always good.

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"answer to life the universe and everything = 42" - Google calculator

The drive is going out. Chuck it.

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Fight the future.

Yeah... I've already had TONS of problems with it, so if getting a new drive means fixing it, then I'm for it. But I don't want to pay $70 and have nothing fixed...

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Alright... what is the best brand for hard disks? Maxtor? Western Digital? And should I get SATA or RAID?

(my motherboard DOES support both of those)

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[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited December 13, 2003).]

Western Digital were always a good brand for me, but that's about it.

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"You've all heard this before... how life has infinite possibilities. I don't believe that one bit. There weren't many paths for me to choose. Sometimes, there would only be one. From the limited possibilities I faced, the choices I made have brought me this far. That's why I value the path I chose..."

The only hard drives that have ever gone out on my while I was using them were Western Digitals. Of course, Ive come into posession of busted Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor, WD, IBM, etc, drives, but I cant speak for their treatment.


Ive used both Maxtor and WD extensively. Both have performed to my expectations. I can reccomend neither over the other.

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Fight the future.

Does anybody here use RAID 0? If so, is the price worth the performance?

BTW, I found a good looking product:
http://www.maxstore.com/product.asp?sku=2367533

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That's a horrible price.
Try going to www.slickdeals.net to check for good deals. There are two deals on hard drives there at the moment, http://www.burstnet.com/cgi-bin/ads/ad7127a.cgi/4187/RETURN-CODE and http://www.burstnet.com/cgi-bin/ads/ad7127a.cgi/4184/RETURN-CODE

If you shop around, especially now near the holidays, you can get huge drives, 120-160 for 80 dollars or so.

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MadQuack on Military school: Pro's: I get to shoot a gun. Con's: Everything else.
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RIP -MaDaVentor-. You will be missed.

Thanks. I didn't really look at the price (I was just getting the right model). But I could really use some sales right now.

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You can get a 7.2k RPM SATA drive for pretty much the same as a 7.2k RPM IDE drive now. The performance difference is minimal at best though.

Really it's just whichever you want, although SATA has the advantage of those tiny cables that are even a lot smaller than rounded IDE cables. There's a bit of airflow improvement there.

Thanks. What about RAID? I hear it's really fast.

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BINGO

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Not worth it unless you're going to be tons of handling of large files.

RAID, that is.

[This message has been edited by Darth (edited December 13, 2003).]

..The best thing is, the image isnt of a SATA hard drive...

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Fight the future.

wtf...

edit: dosn't matter, the model number is correct.
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[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited December 13, 2003).]

I've used Seagates, Western Digitals, and even the infamous IBM "Deathstar" drives... My current 120gb is a Maxtor, and the 80gb in my previous box was a Maxtor as well. Haven't had any problems with them. Seagates and Western Digitals are nice as well.

RAID can be fast.. well.. specific MODES of RAID can be fast.. Striping (RAID 1) essentially uses 2 (or more) drives as one giant drive.. or something to that effect.. never used it myself.. haven't read up on it. Do a search on RAID modes, I'm sure it'll pop up. Mirroring (RAID 0) is basically a waste of a drive. That's more meant for servers where its absolutely essential to have fault tolerance. (If one drive dies, the other(s) is/are exact replicas of it.) Mirroring and Striping (RAID 0+1) I don't think anyone has ever used in the history of RAID.

Also, realize that doing RAID automagically requires two or more HDDs. Obviously that's gonna cost more. As well, unless your motherboard has native RAID support (most only have RAID 0, 1, and 0+1), you'll need to buy a RAID card. (My motherboard, an Asus A7N8X supports SATA RAID, but not IDE RAID, oddly.) Depending on what you've crammed in your case, you may or may not have the space required for this extra hardware. (Mainly the drives, but whatever.)

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I'll admit to Reactor CTF, Duel Abyss, Duel Turbulent, and even the CCCP, but not Sky High! (my first, be kind!) Ok so maybe I will.

Got it backwards there Gonk.

0 is striping, 1 is mirroring.

And with raid 0, if one drive messes up, say goodbye to the data on that array.

I have the Intel D875PBZ which supports 2 SATA-150 drives.

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What do you mean 'messes up'? How often does that happen???

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As in if the drive fails in some way that the data is lost, then all of the data on the rest of the array is useless because it's missing the sectors from the failed drive.

Thus, your array is shot and has to be rebuilt.

[This message has been edited by Darth (edited December 13, 2003).]

Doh you're right. I haven't played with RAID at all, obviously.

He means if one drive has a mechanical fault or something.. like the platter getting scratched, or any number of freakish things that can possibly happen to a drive. At least I think he does. Data integrity with striping is extremely important, that I remember...

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I'll admit to Reactor CTF, Duel Abyss, Duel Turbulent, and even the CCCP, but not Sky High! (my first, be kind!) Ok so maybe I will.

I've not messed with it any either, heh. Just read a decent amount.

It's not even real RAID, since there's no redundancy.

...so your saying that the drive will be permanatly damaged and unfixable? And this will only happen with RAID 0?

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No, just the data is lost, even if that particular drive is functioning perfectly.

In short, we're telling you that RAID is basically never worth it for plain home use, heh. If you're not running a server or some crazy video editing freak, it's really not even worth considering.

[This message has been edited by Darth (edited December 13, 2003).]

Got it.

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If you want to read about the various incarnations of RAID and what they do, this site is fairly good at simplifying it.

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

Read that today, but thanks.

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AGH... can't... resist... RAID... must.... buy... AGH!!!

<THUMP>

*dies*

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