hard drive failure

[dyne]

I have experienced three hard drives which failed during the year 2006. All were 80 gig
IDE hard drives in my main computer. The main IBM hard drive developed noisy bearings and
was replaced before it failed. It was more than 3 years old and was not covered under a
warrenty. The slave or second Western Digital hard drive on this same computer would no
longer bootup and CLICKED when it attempted to bootup. It was less than 3 years old and
was replaced under warrenty. Two months later this replacement hard drive failed and was
again replaced under warrenty. The computer was thoroughly checked and found to be in
perfect condition. This computer was left running 24 hours a day during the tax season.
Mythbreakers television program concluded that it is NOT best to leave lights burning
24 hours a day. Maybe the same thing applies to computers.
I have owned about eight other computers over the years ALL of which had dual hard drives
and none of them experienced hard drive failure. The moral: Backup, Backup, Backup!
.

[DaveO]

Sorry about your bad luck

Have you checked the internal temp of your computer? Installing another fan could help or making sure you have plenty of space around the machine for air to circulate. Three drives in a year seems excessive to me.

[BOB W]

Excessive for sure....

... is the RED light on all the time? If it is, that means the computer hard drive is doing something, like a virus or tracker program is working or someone (hacker) is working your harddrive.

I agree with DaveO about the cooling fan, but most computers have an auto shutdown when it overheats. I too have replaced cooling fans, they collect a lot of dust. Every so often the inside needs to be blown or vaccumed out.

I leave my computers on 24/7 year after year and usually replace every 3 years, usually because they get too slow after a while. There has always been a debate on turning off or leaving on computers. That debate involves the cooling down of the computer after a long period of use as it causes parts to shrink and expand which will limit the life of certain parts. Even though I leave mine on all the time, I always reboot several times a week.

I used to have problems with my computers until I got away from Compaq (especially), HP, IBM and the other top brands. For 6 years now I've been buying Systemax computers and have had NO problems. Read some of the reviews on this product.

Here is an example: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...SYXS-DB-988868

I would go with the $100 upgrade.......................

[taxmandan]

On or Off?

Always a big debate over leaving it on 24/7 or not. I turn off my computers when leaving the office. Never had a hard drive failure yet, KOW. I usually replace every 3-4 years when upgrading systems. Reason for turning it off: I remove the hard drive with the client information and take it offsite when the office is closed. Put it in a padded pistol case and leave in the car trunk usually. Still keeps on going. ID thieves know that tax offices are good sources for information, they stole 17 computers from a nearby HRB two years ago and I'm paranoid about client data. Back ups are very important, and do it frequently.

[dyne]

more on hard drive failure

I sure hope my 3 hard drive failures in one year will never occur again. I had 18 years without
a single hard drive failure. Thanks for the comments. I saw an ad for flash drives today which said they have a life of ten years or more, and that three hard drives would normally be needed to last 10 years. My computers were custom built by a local computer store. The temperature in my computer is fine. I had the floppy drive and ZIP drive removed, so the computer should run even cooler. The red light seldom lights. My first computer was a Compaq, which worked fine. At the time of the problem I had just removed Norton Systemworks 2006 and had GoBack in operation. I removed both of these. These may have contributed to the problem. My hard drives all failed during start-up, so leaving the
computer running all of the time would seem to lessen the chance of hard drive failure
as there would be NO startups except the first. I installed a RAID 1 system in this computer which makes a copy of the main hard drive on the second hard drive. So far, I like it.

[BOB W]

Clones

I did the "clone" route also back in the early '90s. They worked fine. Then my clone builder moved and I went with the Brand names, very sorry I did.

Could your "mirrored" drive not be set up correctly?

[LawrenceGR]

Your Hard Drives may Alright

I had the same problem once with Norton, on boot my C drive was not recognized. If you try going in to your CMOS or BIOS you may be able to restore your machine. If you got a message saying "No local drive" or something like that you may be alright. After that happen to me I uninstalled Norton 2006 and got Windows One Care, I haven't had a problem yet. I have a new machine coming soon, there offering me Norton Free for 15 months I will uninstall it right away. Good Luck to you

[dyne]

hard drive failure

My computer is fine now. I have two brand new Western Digital 80 gig IDE hard drives and
a RAID 1 system installed which copies all data to both hard drives. In case one hard drive
fails, the system reverts to the other hard drive. I like it very much. The only downside is
that for the money I spent having this computer fixed, I could have almost purchased a new
computer. It also takes about ten seconds longer for the computer to start up. Thanks for comments.

[LawrenceGR]

Try putting

the old hard drive in once, my guess is that it will most likely work. If you installed new drives and reinstalled windows it reset your BIOS so your computer sees a C drive. It could save you a lot of work. The problem with Norton is it uses so much RAM that together with windows there are problems. If you only have 512K of RAM this could happen again.

[OldJack]

Probably not these hard drive failures, but a bad CMOS battery will lose track of hard drives and cause the computer not to boot. If you computer is several years old the battery could be due for a change. The first indication of a bad battery is usually the clock will not keep accurate time.