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PC wouldn't start...

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testicle187:

--- Quote from: EwJ on October 11, 2008, 08:47:20 pm ---Sucks it's dead, but at least you've isolated the problem as the hard drive itself and confirmed it.
I've had that error come up before for various reasons, pci ide card a little loose, cables, etc, and
have had that and the bios freeze with a power supply going wonky too.

HD Tune is a decent little utility that shows hard drive health, temp, smart info, etc.
Spinrite can sometimes help with certain problems.

If all else fails and you want a last try or two to get data off a wonky hard drive, the freezer
trick sometimes works (stick it in your freezer for a few hours, then give it a go).

Are these hard drives with short lives all from the same manufacturer?
I've had good luck with IBM (now Hitachi); bad luck with Western Digital.
I know it's just luck of the draw and percentages per sample size and such,
but after having multiple failures from one manufacturer, from differing models
and years, it just feels better to avoid them.

Anyway, hope the new lasts longer.


--- End quote ---

I always have the worst luck with Maxtor drives.  At my work, I have yet to a Western Digital go down, but have a box of around 100 dead Maxtors. 

Also Hypernova, did you do a full format or a quick format?  Also, you could give Partition Magic a try at formatting and redoing the boot sector.  It sometimes does a good job on drives that people think are screwed.

EwJ:
Heh, so you probably wouldn't buy a maxtor.  Aren't they run by Seagate? (or is it the other way around). Heard mostly good things about Seagate drives over the years (have a couple too - no probs so far).  Really though, how many drives out of, say, a thousand are bad from any of the major manufacturers?

Re: MBR, there's a couple of quick, easy ways to wipe 'em here.
Did the Dos debug thing on one drive that appeared to be toast with a win98 boot floppy - worked great, Fdisk'd for partitions -that was over two years ago- still running. When you get to that point, you've got nothing to lose. Of course ymmv.

hypernova:
Last few were Maxtor.  Had a used Seagate Cheetah about a decade ago that died prematurely.  Not fun when that's the only SCSI drive you've got.  I went I think another 1/2 year without a PC back then.

Just bought a new Seagate Barracuda online from newegg, as I've not owned a Seagate since the Cheetah, and it was used.  Crossing my fingers.

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