15 Jan
2003
15 Jan
'03
6:29 p.m.
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a couple months back, and
now I know why.
The 60GB ATA/133 DiamondStar in my Power Mac 7300 (connected through a Sonnet
Tempo Trio) this evening made several hiccup-like noises and the computer
froze up. On the next power cycle, it didn't spin up and just sat there and
clicked. I suspected stiction (well, I prayed it was stiction) and tried
reorienting it and a few gentle taps. On the next power cycle, it didn't even
click anymore and made occasional soft grinding noises, and now it doesn't
even do that.
So, I'm typing this on my Power Book 1400, which I guess will be my desktop
system for the time being.
Any suggestions for ways to get it to spin up, one last time? Anyone know
what happened? I thought it had been a power problem because it made some
sounds like this a few weeks ago and replacing the power cable did seem to
cure it, but I'm mystified as to why it would die so fast. The drive was not
especially hot and it has plenty of ventilation.
I guarantee you my next drive will not be a Maxtor.
Sorry for the OT -- just looking for any desperation suggestions before I
make a new hard drive platter wall clock.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Son, God's going to use you. Until He does, take this pill. -- Mark Lowry --
15 Jan
15 Jan
7:36 p.m.
New subject: Maxtor drive goes under
All drive manufacturers have particular models that have had problems. For
instance, you'd have to pay me a damn lot of money to stick anything that
says "Western Digital" in my systems. I've been running Maxtors for years,
and I recently had a 60GB D740X toast itself. First time ever. OTOH, I've
had WDs belly-up left and right. I used to be a big fan of IBM drives,
until the DeathStar 60GXP and 75GXP debacle.
www.storagereview.com is a good place to get comparisons of HDs. And you
can contribute your experiences to the database. The database covers a lot
of drives, but was initially started because of the 60GXP and 75GXPs. IBM
was claiming there was no problem, the rest of the world proved them
horribly wrong.
Personally, I'll stick with Maxtors. I've got 10 Maxtors HDs currently
spinning here (ranging from 27GB 5400 RPM to 80GB 7200 RPM drives), and this
D740X is the first bad one. And Maxtor has (or had) a damn good warranty.
There's been some talk about Maxtor and WD going from 3 year warranties to 1
year. Something about getting too expensive, since HDs rarely stay in
service 3 years (in the real world. Don't start talking here about how
we're all still running drives from the '70's yada yada yada. We're not
a
real cross section of the market).
--John
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org]On
Behalf Of Cameron Kaiser
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 00:34
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: OT: Maxtor drive goes under
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a couple
months back, and
now I know why.
The 60GB ATA/133 DiamondStar in my Power Mac 7300 (connected
through a Sonnet
Tempo Trio) this evening made several hiccup-like noises and
the computer
froze up. On the next power cycle, it didn't spin up and just
sat there and
clicked. I suspected stiction (well, I prayed it was
stiction) and tried
reorienting it and a few gentle taps. On the next power
cycle, it didn't even
click anymore and made occasional soft grinding noises, and
now it doesn't
even do that.
So, I'm typing this on my Power Book 1400, which I guess will
be my desktop
system for the time being.
Any suggestions for ways to get it to spin up, one last time?
Anyone know
what happened? I thought it had been a power problem because
it made some
sounds like this a few weeks ago and replacing the power
cable did seem to
cure it, but I'm mystified as to why it would die so fast.
The drive was not
especially hot and it has plenty of ventilation.
I guarantee you my next drive will not be a Maxtor.
Sorry for the OT -- just looking for any desperation
suggestions before I
make a new hard drive platter wall clock.
--
----------------------------- personal page:
http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University *
ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Son, God's going to use you. Until He does, take this
pill. -- Mark Lowry --
9:19 p.m.
New subject: Maxtor drive goes under
On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, J.C.Wren wrote:
www.storagereview.com is a good place to get
comparisons of HDs. And you
can contribute your experiences to the database. The database covers a lot
of drives, but was initially started because of the 60GXP and 75GXPs. IBM
was claiming there was no problem, the rest of the world proved them
horribly wrong.
Crapola. I hate having to deal with this shit. Is IBM offering a swap?
I bought this drive last Spring after I was hit by a virus. I still have
my receipt. I don't want to wait until this thing dies to have to go out
and spend another $80 (not to mention the countless hours of installing
and copying over files).
Personally, I'll stick with Maxtors. I've
got 10 Maxtors HDs currently
spinning here (ranging from 27GB 5400 RPM to 80GB 7200 RPM drives), and this
D740X is the first bad one. And Maxtor has (or had) a damn good warranty.
There's been some talk about Maxtor and WD going from 3 year warranties to 1
year. Something about getting too expensive, since HDs rarely stay in
service 3 years (in the real world. Don't start talking here about how
we're all still running drives from the '70's yada yada yada. We're not
a
real cross section of the market).
The Seagate ST-225 in my Apple Sider ][ hard drive is still going strong
after about 17 years of service.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
7:45 p.m.
There are several things I try in such situation. I will rarely tap a
drive except as a last resort.
The first thing I do is remove it from the equipment :), and give it a
*fast* twist. The idea is to use the momentum of the disk to hold it
still while the case rotates around it. If that doesn't work, I will try
putting it in a freezer bag (to try and reduce condensation) and put it
in the refridgerator for a while, and then try it. If the data is
*really* important, at that point I would send it to a data recovery
service. If you have given up at that point, I would remove the cover
(in a preferrably a smoke/dust mostly free environment), check it out,
and assuming it hasn't crashed, give it a manual turn with power on. If
it hasn't crashed, one of the problems might be in the flex circuit
connecting the head flexures to the HD body, and you might take a
careful look at that (although I think it is unlikely you would be able
to spot the fracture/break in the circuit.) Each time I powered up the
unit, I would have *everything* set up to try and copy whatever data you
feel is important as fast as possible. YMMV and Good luck!
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a couple months back, and
now I know why.
The 60GB ATA/133 DiamondStar in my Power Mac 7300 (connected through a Sonnet
Tempo Trio) this evening made several hiccup-like noises and the computer
froze up. On the next power cycle, it didn't spin up and just sat there and
clicked. I suspected stiction (well, I prayed it was stiction) and tried
reorienting it and a few gentle taps. On the next power cycle, it didn't even
click anymore and made occasional soft grinding noises, and now it doesn't
even do that.
So, I'm typing this on my Power Book 1400, which I guess will be my desktop
system for the time being.
Any suggestions for ways to get it to spin up, one last time? Anyone know
what happened? I thought it had been a power problem because it made some
sounds like this a few weeks ago and replacing the power cable did seem to
cure it, but I'm mystified as to why it would die so fast. The drive was not
especially hot and it has plenty of ventilation.
I guarantee you my next drive will not be a Maxtor.
Sorry for the OT -- just looking for any desperation suggestions before I
make a new hard drive platter wall clock.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Son, God's going to use you. Until He does, take this pill. -- Mark Lowry --
9:14 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a
couple months back, and
now I know why.
The 60GB ATA/133 DiamondStar in my Power Mac 7300 (connected through a
Sonnet Tempo Trio) this evening made several hiccup-like noises and the
computer froze up. On the next power cycle, it didn't spin up and just
sat there and clicked. I suspected stiction (well, I prayed it was
stiction) and tried reorienting it and a few gentle taps. On the next
power cycle, it didn't even click anymore and made occasional soft
grinding noises, and now it doesn't even do that.
EEEEEEEK! I'd better finish backing up my files. I keep telling myself I
need to get this done, but I'm such the procrastinator. I hear the hiccup
almost every night I am on my computer. It seems to happen at a set time
almost. Odd.
Any suggestions for ways to get it to spin up, one
last time? Anyone
know what happened? I thought it had been a power problem because it
made some sounds like this a few weeks ago and replacing the power cable
did seem to cure it, but I'm mystified as to why it would die so fast.
The drive was not especially hot and it has plenty of ventilation.
I believe you are hosed, my friend. If you had important data (and no
backup) your option will be to send it to a data recovery house and hope
for the best. If it's recoverable, you're looking at $700-$1200. If not,
you'll in the very least pay an examination fee of around $70.
Let me know if you need suggestions for a data recovery place. There is
one local that I have used several times, and they have a better than 50%
track record with being able to recover my data.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
16 Jan
16 Jan
7:20 a.m.
On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Eric Smith wrote:
Sellam wrote:
I think I'm finally getting around to learning after about the 5th ;)
Ok, 4 were company related and one was personal.
Two were hard drives running servers at work that just crashed
spontaneously. We had backups, and did backups fairly regularly (we had
to, lots of telephone billing data) but some work I had done since the
previous backup (about a week prior) did not get backed up. Plus it
would have been a whole lot easier to just get the drive recovered. It
was unsuccessful. I eventually re-wrote the program I lost (not a huge
project).
One was a laptop hard drive. I was in the process of installing Windows
98 or something and the installation completely hosed my machine. My ire
for Bill Gates got the best of me and I smacked my laptop a few times,
hoping Gates would feel it. Hard drive crash. Oh well. I had backups
of all the important stuff (source code). But at any rate I needed it
recovered. It was successful.
One was my hard drive on my machine at home. I had not been good at
keeping backups, but most important data was backed up (Quicken info). It
was not successfull recovered.
My last fiasco was a virus that ate my filesystem. I recovered most
important files but lost all my saved/sent e-mail in one of my personal
accounts from December 2000 through the crash date (Spring of last year)
plus a bunch of digital photos. Not a huge bummer but it sucks none the
less. And the time it wasted...
After Cameron's message last night I finally got my backups done. Three
CDs full of crap. I plan to do a backup every week, and at some point I
will revisit my automated backup software that I've been writing. Unless
someone has a suggestion for something that's very easy to use and either
dumps backup data to a server or a ZIP disk or something removeable.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Let me know if you need suggestions for a data
recovery place. There is
one local that I have used several times, and they have a better than
50% track record with being able to recover my data.
You had to use them more than once?! Didn't you learn the first time? 
8:01 a.m.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
I plan to do a backup every week, and at
some point I will revisit my automated backup software that I've been
writing. Unless someone has a suggestion for something that's very
easy to use and either dumps backup data to a server or a ZIP disk or
something removeable.
I've been working on an offline storage system using my
webrouter (an old
Linux box with a 400MHz K6-II CPU). It's currently pre-pre-alpha and has
been assigned the codename "Phoenix-II". The name is mythology - the phoenix
was a bird that rose from the ashes of its predecessor. Simple, no? Catch
is, the bloody thing keeps falling over and I need to write a server daemon
for Linux...
Later.
--
Phil.
philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/
8:39 a.m.
On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Philip Pemberton wrote:
I've been working on an offline storage system
using my webrouter (an old
Linux box with a 400MHz K6-II CPU). It's currently pre-pre-alpha and has
been assigned the codename "Phoenix-II". The name is mythology - the phoenix
was a bird that rose from the ashes of its predecessor. Simple, no? Catch
is, the bloody thing keeps falling over and I need to write a server daemon
for Linux...
Do you up its number everytime it fails? Phoenix-III? Phoenix-IV?
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
9:22 a.m.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
Do you up its number everytime it fails? Phoenix-III?
Phoenix-IV?
Phoenix-I was the original "proof of concept" demo. It worked
about as well
as a gallium teaspoon. So, the answer to your question is, er, yes....
Later.
--
Phil.
philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/
8:23 a.m.
On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:20:34AM -0800, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Unless someone has a suggestion for something
that's very easy to
use and either dumps backup data to a server or a ZIP disk or
something removeable.
I've been thinking about backups of late.
In my recent story the disk that died didn't bring any data with it
because of being mirrored in a raid 1 array. Cool, but I don't want
to get smug.
Backups are, in part, for protecting against hardware failure, and
raid 1 protects well against a disk dying, but not against the whole
box being lost in flood, fire, theft, lightening, etc. That is not
complete hardware protection but it is significant.
But that's not *all* backups are for: backups are also for "time
travel", for example, to help one recover from an errant "rm -rf ~".
Raid 1 clearly doesn't solve this problem, but does make a formerly
insane approach possible: How about backing up the raid array with
itself?
Use a (normally not mounted) partition to store historical information
about files. I haven't worked out the details of how to do this, but
if done it would result in a system that would be safe from the most
common sorts of hardware failures (a single disk dying) and software
failures (specific files deleted, corrupted, edited inadvisably). The
physical loss or destruction of the whole box or a low-level
scribbling of the disk (i.g., wildly applied Linux dd command) would
still be a risk, but those risks are far less than the risks of a
single unprotected disk.
For more robustness, if two physically separated computers can talk to
each other at decent speeds, maybe they could be mutual backups. That
would remove even more risks.
Note that using a disk to back a disk (be it the same disk or a
diffferent disk) is only sensible as disks get so big that they become
very difficult to back up via removabe media and are even difficult to
figure out how to fill up! (A 120 GB disk for ~$120? 120 GB is a LOT
of space. My ~measly~ 60 GB disks are damn big.)
Any know of a good online backup system for Linux that would work as I
describe? A simple rsync isn't good enough, I want to be able to go
back in time and browse for old files.
-kb
1:24 p.m.
(Sorry to be x86 centric here - But)
A word of warning to those who see the integrated promise controllers
built into the a fairly current motherboard, and think "Hey, quick/cheap
way to do RAID"
I know a fellow who was using his on-board Promise controller, and was
with out his computer, and without access to his data, for over a week,
when his MB went south, fortunately it was under warranty, but it (IMHO)
far too long for the company to replace it.
With software mirroring, it may cost you performance, but at least you
can plug your drives into "any old" MB, and start recovery.
As for backup systems, I'd be more interested in reasonable cost
removable storage hardware. Somewhere along the line, my system grew to
280GB, I'm trying to figure two things:
1) Why the <expletive> my drives are so full?
2) How the <expletive> am I going to back this up? :-)
IMHO/YMMV/Std Disclaimers/Void where prohibited by law.
David
On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 14:26, Kent Borg wrote:
On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:20:34AM -0800, Sellam
Ismail wrote:
Unless someone has a suggestion for something
that's very easy to
use and either dumps backup data to a server or a ZIP disk or
something removeable.
I've been thinking about backups of late.
In my recent story the disk that died didn't bring any data with it
because of being mirrored in a raid 1 array. Cool, but I don't want
to get smug.
Backups are, in part, for protecting against hardware failure, and
raid 1 protects well against a disk dying, but not against the whole
box being lost in flood, fire, theft, lightening, etc. That is not
complete hardware protection but it is significant.
But that's not *all* backups are for: backups are also for "time
travel", for example, to help one recover from an errant "rm -rf ~".
Raid 1 clearly doesn't solve this problem, but does make a formerly
insane approach possible: How about backing up the raid array with
itself?
Use a (normally not mounted) partition to store historical information
about files. I haven't worked out the details of how to do this, but
if done it would result in a system that would be safe from the most
common sorts of hardware failures (a single disk dying) and software
failures (specific files deleted, corrupted, edited inadvisably). The
physical loss or destruction of the whole box or a low-level
scribbling of the disk (i.g., wildly applied Linux dd command) would
still be a risk, but those risks are far less than the risks of a
single unprotected disk.
For more robustness, if two physically separated computers can talk to
each other at decent speeds, maybe they could be mutual backups. That
would remove even more risks.
Note that using a disk to back a disk (be it the same disk or a
diffferent disk) is only sensible as disks get so big that they become
very difficult to back up via removabe media and are even difficult to
figure out how to fill up! (A 120 GB disk for ~$120? 120 GB is a LOT
of space. My ~measly~ 60 GB disks are damn big.)
Any know of a good online backup system for Linux that would work as I
describe? A simple rsync isn't good enough, I want to be able to go
back in time and browse for old files.
-kb 
11:22 p.m.
New subject: Full Drives (was Re: OT: Maxtor drive goes under)
Before backing it all up, consider going in and cleaning out all your old
temp, log, old, new, bak, dmp, dma and similar files. Its easy and can
clear out much more space than you might believe. After a year of doing
that routinely at home, I wrote a routine for work that does this
automatically for several of my company's computers. It took another year
to get that approved, but now I use it routinely for our remote systems as
well. It will return you several megs, at least, and will marginally
speed-up access on your drives.
Cheers!
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Holland" <dholland(a)woh.rr.com>
To: "Classic Computer Talk" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 06:31 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Maxtor drive goes under
(Sorry to be x86 centric here - But)
A word of warning to those who see the integrated promise controllers
built into the a fairly current motherboard, and think "Hey, quick/cheap
way to do RAID"
I know a fellow who was using his on-board Promise controller, and was
with out his computer, and without access to his data, for over a week,
when his MB went south, fortunately it was under warranty, but it (IMHO)
far too long for the company to replace it.
With software mirroring, it may cost you performance, but at least you
can plug your drives into "any old" MB, and start recovery.
As for backup systems, I'd be more interested in reasonable cost
removable storage hardware. Somewhere along the line, my system grew to
280GB, I'm trying to figure two things:
1) Why the <expletive> my drives are so full?
2) How the <expletive> am I going to back this up? :-)
IMHO/YMMV/Std Disclaimers/Void where prohibited by law.
David
On Thu, 2003-01-16 at 14:26, Kent Borg wrote:
On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:20:34AM -0800, Sellam
Ismail wrote:
Unless someone has a suggestion for something
that's very easy to
use and either dumps backup data to a server or a ZIP disk or
something removeable.
I've been thinking about backups of late.
In my recent story the disk that died didn't bring any data with it
because of being mirrored in a raid 1 array. Cool, but I don't want
to get smug.
Backups are, in part, for protecting against hardware failure, and
raid 1 protects well against a disk dying, but not against the whole
box being lost in flood, fire, theft, lightening, etc. That is not
complete hardware protection but it is significant.
But that's not *all* backups are for: backups are also for "time
travel", for example, to help one recover from an errant "rm -rf ~".
Raid 1 clearly doesn't solve this problem, but does make a formerly
insane approach possible: How about backing up the raid array with
itself?
Use a (normally not mounted) partition to store historical information
about files. I haven't worked out the details of how to do this, but
if done it would result in a system that would be safe from the most
common sorts of hardware failures (a single disk dying) and software
failures (specific files deleted, corrupted, edited inadvisably). The
physical loss or destruction of the whole box or a low-level
scribbling of the disk (i.g., wildly applied Linux dd command) would
still be a risk, but those risks are far less than the risks of a
single unprotected disk.
For more robustness, if two physically separated computers can talk to
each other at decent speeds, maybe they could be mutual backups. That
would remove even more risks.
Note that using a disk to back a disk (be it the same disk or a
diffferent disk) is only sensible as disks get so big that they become
very difficult to back up via removabe media and are even difficult to
figure out how to fill up! (A 120 GB disk for ~$120? 120 GB is a LOT
of space. My ~measly~ 60 GB disks are damn big.)
Any know of a good online backup system for Linux that would work as I
describe? A simple rsync isn't good enough, I want to be able to go
back in time and browse for old files.
-kb 
8:52 a.m.
New subject: Microdrives getting phased out?
Anybody here have a good hunch on where to find an IBM
microdrive, not the $300 one, but one of the smallers.
They're getting phased out in the places where I've looked.
John A.
1:01 a.m.
At 09:33 PM 15/01/2003 -0800, you wrote:
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a couple
months back, and
now I know why.
Sorry for the OT -- just looking for any desperation suggestions before I
make a new hard drive platter wall clock.
--
----------------------------- personal page:
http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University *
ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Son, God's going to use you. Until He does, take this pill. -- Mark
Lowry --
I would suggest you do a search for Tech Republic, "200 Ways to
Start a Hard Drive".
Good luck.
Charles E. Fox Video Production
793 Argyle Rd.
Windsor Ontario Canada N8Y 3J8
519-254-4991 foxvideo(a)wincom.net
Check out the "Camcorder Kindergarten"
at http://chasfoxvideo.com
4:53 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 09:33:34PM -0800, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a
couple months back,
and now I know why.
I had a fairy new Maxtor 3.5" 60GB drive die recently. I am running
Linux and so couldn't easily run Maxtor's MS Windows-only diagnostic
software, but their web system gave me an RMA number anyway, and
shortly after sending the old one in I got a replacement back. It
seems to work.
As for recovering data, I lost nothing. (And I hadn't done a backup.)
This is because I was running software raid 1. There was a DMA
timeout message in a log file, but the computer kept on running. In
fact, had I not set up a script to check whether a drive died and send
me an e-mail, I might not have noticed to this day that the drive had
died.
As for why it died, I am wondering whether I had something to do with
it. It died *while* I was burning a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM drive was on
the same IDE controller as the hard drive that died. The only thing I
did different from previous times I have burned CDs was I told the CD
to go faster. (I don't do that any more.) I am wondering whether the
CD hiccoughed some too-high voltage back out the ribbon cable. The
drive died in a "kinda work for a while"-mode.
-kb, the Kent who is both impressed and a bit spooked that the drive
failed while he was sitting at the computer and he never noticed a
thing.
7858
days inactive
7860
days old
15 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
allain＠panix.com -
dholland＠woh.rr.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
ETILLMAN＠satx.rr.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
foxvideo＠wincom.net -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
kentborg＠borg.org -
marvin＠rain.org -
philpem＠dsl.pipex.com -
spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu