> > > disks are less than two weeks old, although I have heard
> of people
> > > having similar problems (disks failing in less than a
> month new from
> > > the factory) with this brand and model.... I would like
> to get the
>
> In my experience 95% of drive failures occur in the first couple of
> weeks. If they get out of this timeframe, then I find they
> usually last
> for a long time. I don't think this is a failing of this brand and/or
> model.
Well, from the drives that I've had, they either fail after a few weeks, or
after several years (like 5+). Almost never in between. We keep a spare
drive of each size around anyway. :-)
> > To check and see if the drive is actually in good
> condition, grab the
> > diagnostic utility from the support site of your drive manufacturer,
> > boot from a DOS floppy, and run diagnostics on the drive.
>
> I have to confess I've never heard of manufacturers offering
> diagnostic
> utilities for disks... Gregory, can you point me at any examples? Am I
> just being a complete dumbass here?
Yes, you are. :-) From Maxtor's site (since I just RM'd a drive last week)
(http://www.maxtor.com/) click on software download. Right on that page is
info about the MaxDiag utility. It does a little more than badblocks and
friends, at least for IDE drives. It will return drive specific error
codes, and if you've run all of those tests by the time you call support,
you can just give them the error numbers, and they issue an RMA. The other
nice feature is that it gives you the tech support number to call as soon as
it shows the error. :-)
> > In order for them to replace my drives, I've had to do "write"
> > testing, which destroys all data on the drive, so you may
> want to disconnect
> > power from one of the drives before you play around with that.
>
> If you don't trust yourself to get the right disk for a write
> test then
> you need to do this. However, if you check *EXACTLY* what you
> are doing
> before running a write-test, then I don't see any reason to
> go so far as
> to unplug the disks. YMMV.
Well, that's true, but if you don't trust yourself to get the right drive,
then you should unplug the one that still has the data intact. Depending on
the value of the data, it may be worth unplugging it just for safety's sake,
although if it's that important, it should be backed up. Later,
Greg
