On Monday June 23 2003 02:57 pm, FemmeFatale wrote:
> >Don't know if it has anything to do with your problems at all,
> > but Civileme used to say to avoid WD drives like the plague...
> > claimed they did not do CRC stuff right, especially at higher
> > DMA/UDMA levels.... :-(
> > /\
> > Dark><Lord
> > \/
> Someone on the OT list was saying that isn't the case anymore...
> SOmeone care to post a URL to dis/prove this? I have a WD here
> in my comp now... it was cheap, i'm poor... i'm using the maxtor
> for linux though. I may experiment after all...
>
> on a side note, one partition got toasted by windows jsut this
> last week... don't know why. Guess which drive it was on?
No idea, Winsux handles drives very sloppily (pci/ide/buffer,
etc.) Most of the time without complaint when it should, sometimes
utter disaster when there shouldn't be one. A lot of M$ users think
they got infected by a virus, when all that's happened is Billy
fsck'd their HDD (among other things ;) by corruption. Time to
re-install ;)
As to WD drives and CRC checking, Yes, from reading current lkml
this is still the case. YMMV, search 'wd drive' (and such) on lkml
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&r=1&w=2
for your own take. I believe civileme's advice is still very valid,
avoid win-drives that WD markets. He was more adamant on this than
me tho. Only WD's since August 1998 are very suspect IMO. WD CRC
checks continue to be invalid. They're win-drives (since 8/98).
BUT, while only WD is accused of non-standard CRC, all drives
made by anybody, are sort'a at risk. IMO, they've all gone down
hill dependability wise. Maxtor's are probly currently the most
attractive alternative. As an ol'time overclocker I never would a
thought I'd say that. Maxtor is known to be one of the worst for
handlin off spec PCI bus speeds. 'Course hardly anything will
anymore, SCSI never would ;)
As to the subject, SMART, I believe y'all would be better off
disabling this useless marketing gimick. When it does manage to
work, it's already too late most all the time, and it will
constantly impose an overhead on IDE transfers while it's enabled.
Periodic checks with Linux tools when you suspect HDD problems are
much better. You can use all of 'em with SMART disabled in bios.
One is hddtemp, hddtemp-0.3-0.beta4.2mdk (that's cooker, but I
believe it's available for older Mandrake versions). Reads HDD temp
from SMART capable drives, without SMART bios B$
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
