60 Gig Deskstar return...

[WanganDreams]

I was just wondering if any of you knew what to do with a 60 GB IBM Deskstar that is growing a lot of bad blocks ... REALLY FAST! I went to the hitachi website( they own IBM's storage group ), typed my serial and product number in and the result came out to be that the harddrive was sold through a reseller. And I have no clue where i bought the harddrive since i was stupid enough to loose the reciept when i was moving.

HELP HELP HELP!

thanks in advance!

-Spets

 

[GilesGuthrie]

The first thing you need to do is back up all the data.

Next you need to decide whether it's worth messing with the current drive to try to fix it, or whether it's worth buying a new one, since 60GB drives aren't that expensive these days - especially in context of the worth of the data.

I tend to feel that once a hard drive starts to degenerate, it should go in the bin.

However, if you disagree, then you should back the drive up and re-format it. This will at least allow the drive to recover some of the bad blocks and make allowances for the ones it cannot recover.

But do the backup. Now!

 

[TurboSmoke]

to start with i need to apologise for the incompleteness of this post...

but there is a utility that can partition your harddrive to combat this....what it does is seeks out the bad sectors, creates a small partition for them and maps the bad sectors into it...it then hides that partition (somehow)....

its like the dos version of partition magic....

one thing i do know is its free...the catch is, i dont know what its called or where to download it...

also you must format your drive before this boot disk is inserted but i think it works on FAT32 and NTFS....

ask around...maybe Giles has heard of it..

 

[WanganDreams]

Thank all of you for your replies!

you guys have been very helpful...

UPDATE: I went to best buy last night and got myself a 160GB Maxtor Ultra with a 8MB cache.

I have install Windows XP on a 120 gig partition and the other 40 gigs im installing linux (Mandrake 9.1, but i am seriously considering switching to Redhat sometime soon).

I have moved all my data from Deskstar to Maxtor...I am very, very happy that i didnt loose anything.

Again, thank you all for your replies!

-Spets

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by WanganDreams
UPDATE: I went to best buy last night and got myself a 160GB Maxtor Ultra with a 8MB cache.

That's the best course of action to take. Hard drive development is in a phase of increasing capacity and speed at the moment, and therefore there are a bunch of bargains to be had.

And data is worth more than the media that holds it. Which is something my client could do with learning, as they shirk on paying for backup devices, and then worry when they can't get deleted files restored.



Anyway, you're welcome for the help.

 

[Viper_Maniac]

I've used nothing but Western Digital hard drives and I've never had any problems with any of them. Maxtors are good to. Not sure about Seagate. I think my dad uses on of those.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by Viper_Maniac
I've used nothing but Western Digital hard drives and I've never had any problems with any of them. Maxtors are good to. Not sure about Seagate. I think my dad uses on of those.

when i first left Uni, i worked in quality for IBM mobiles manufacturing....they all fitted Seagate harddrives as standard to thier thinkpads...

kinda speaks for itself...