Seagate sucks

[seti]

HAha...I know they don't but:

I bought a little 6.4g medalist nearly a year ago. About 4 months ago it got plasterd with bad clusters. I brought it back to the shop...they went out of buisness. Fortununtly I was able to get the drive back from seagate. So, all is well, except now I got tons of bad clusters again. Is it the drive, or could there be something I'm doing?

[kwai]

surely they cant suck worse than western digital? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

check some other post about powersupplies. if yours is fading, it might cause errors like that. likewise overclocking can do the same.

[Dominus]

Maybe the drive is sensitive to the more exotic PCI bus speeds, like 37 (75 & 112) and 41 (83)mhz.

If you're not overclocking, like kwai said, it could well be the power supply.

[MaxVal]

Most socket 7 cooler fans have connectors that loop from the system's power supply. Try to avoid using the loop on any device - especialy a hard drive. I had a system that would lose data from time to time, and it turned out to be a poor connection in the loop. NEVER AGAIN!

[seti]

Hey, the WD's (experts) are concidered the fastest ata drives out there right now. For Win9x anyhow.

Um, I've had my fsb at 75 and 83 for very, VERY short periods of time. And I'd say about 15% of the drive is chewed up...it's mostly all together too.

[ANTONIO E GUERRA]

I have to agree with one of the previous posters, If your power supply is overheating, it will cause bad sectors in your hard drive. In addition, after a recovery from a power failure, the hard drive will show errors because the power supply had trashed it. There are some good utilities that will help you:
Spinnrite (the best overall hard drive utility)
Pc Hard Drive Mechanic Deluxe (it will help you after a hard disk crash)
Norton's Diskdoctor. Good luck

[Ed_S]

Have to agree RE seagate, have never had one of their drives make it out of warranty, yet. This could be a good thing, since they warrant with no problems & the replacement drive comes with new date code, therefore new warranty. haven't had bad clusters as warning sign, though. They get noisy, start to be hard for bios to recognize, then die. Usually about a week from first problem to death. Have gotten rid of all but one 3.2 gig.
Unlike most people report, I've had good luck & low failure rate with WD. Never a failure yet w. Maxtor.

Ther was a long thread here recently about HD's, I think it was in general forum. Lots of opinions about all brands.

Yeah, it was in general under this title

JTS Corporation, Conner Peripherals, Rodime, Samsung & Others, What Do You
Think??!!

[This message has been edited by Ed_S (edited 05-20-99).]

[BBA]

Most of what causes bad clusters is faulty data signals or viruses, it is rarely an actual physical defect or machanical damage.

I would be much more willing to suspect a poorly functioning DIMM or bad IDE cable, especially after it happens twice in the same computer.

The way to tell if the clusters are actually bad or are falsely showing as bad is to format the drive with a test for bad clusters and recover switch. It's easy, just type "FORMAT /C C:" when you format. Ive seen a lot of drive clusters marked bad that werent. Sometimes if it's from a virus, it takes a Hot-swap type of low level format to repair the drive.

BBA

[seti]

BBA
thanks, I'll try that.

I guess I didn't mention that my other drive, my primary drive, is totally fine. I don't know if that could mean anything.

[This message has been edited by seti (edited 05-21-99).]

[Dragoon]

I have had several seagates, and while they used to be some of the fastest drives on the market, they were also the most unstable. I am into WD's now and of the four one has died in the first four months. If only Maxtor could offer more cutting edge tech. Then again, maybe it's the instability of cutting edge tech causing the problems in the first place.

[kwai]

maxtors usually lead on areal density, performance (check www.storagereview.com (http://www.storagereview.com) ) and price, so that's cutting edge enough for me. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif