Hard drives failing, everywhere !

[NYJimbo]

I know we have had several threads on the sudden surge in hard drive failures and some of us feel it may be heat related, but I just wanted to start a new thread on this and ask people what hard drives they are pulling from machines with this surge of failures ?

Just minutes ago another customer dropped off a Dell Inspiron 8600 with a failing hard drive, standard 'unmountable_boot_device' and complaints of heat. I have had several of these kinds of failures this week and each has shown hard errors on cloning so they so far have been real drive failures.

Right now we are seeing alot of Toshiba drives. Todays is a MK6026GAX (60gb) but other size Toshibas are really popping up.

Maybe we can spot a trend or something.

 

[jschalk]

I just had a toshiba 120 gig unmountable_boot_device, sectors damaged everywhere. though was able to recover much of it. the laptop was satalite a100

a couple of days ago had a WD 320 gig, but that was because she dropped it.

 

[Puff]

I'm working on a Dell right now that came in last night. Has a WD Scorpio Blue. Customer was complaining that the machine would "freeze up".

I tried to get an image off it using Clonezilla but after about 78% I started getting media errors.

Checked it with WD's Lifeguard and it found some bad sectors which it claimed to have fixed.

I really don't like the cooling on this thing. The drive is right below where you would rest your left hand and you can really feel the warmth from the drive.

 

[mkeathley]

I had one WD green drive and two toshiba laptops drives bad this week.

 

[vdub12]

I had a seagate 250Gb 5400 fail in a DELL XPS notebook yesterday. I was able to get an image off of it but it had 2 read errors. The system still runs but locks up all the time and smart is listing a few critical problems. However, smart hasn't tripped on it yet but I think its a mater of time. I'm replacing it with a WD blue 250GB 5400. I love the WD drives I have only had one fail in the last year or two.

 

[emsbronco]

About a month ago, I had 4 brand new seagate OEM drives fail within a week. 2 SATA 250 GB (same lot) and 2 IDE 160 GB (different lots). Seagate replaced them all.

 

[J-Bob]

I guess I'm "glad" I'm not the only one seeing more dead HDs as my shop.

In the past two months I've seen at least 6 dead HDs (as opposed to seeing only 1 or 2 every month...ish).

Haven't seen a 'pattern' or 'connection' with them.
And, of course, only 1 of the owners had a backup of their data.

I tell all of my customers, "data backup is more important than anti-virus software, although you need to have that as well!"

 

[trapped]

I have also noticed a number of bad hard drives lately. The latest one I have is a 2.5" Hitachi 40GB travelstar. The funny thing about this one is that it is the first one that the freezer trick has actually worked on. After failing to access it any other way, I decided to put it in the freezer for a bit and see what happened. After about 24 hours I pulled it out and hooked it up to my USB adapter. Initially I could see it, but the drive parameters were not right. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and heard a *thwack* and I was able to see the drive using my data recovery software. I quickly started pulling off files that the customer was looking to retrieve fearing that the drive would stop working at any minute. It wasn't until a little later that I realized that Windows was actually recognizing the drive and I was able to access all the files normally. The amazing thing is that not only did it not stop working, but it is still working with no problems.

 

[ITMAN]

I cant order enough replacement drives quick enough, even with stock! somthing is killing them and Im and guessing with NYJimbo thats its heat, as there is no logical other reason (that the client have told me)