The hard drive failure thread

[dood]

I know we've had other threads on failed hard drives, but I wanted to start a thread to post the details of any hard drives you may have had fail. Please post as much detail as possible...

Manufacturer
Model
Date manufactured (if available)
POH (if possible)
Method of failure (bad sec, seized motor, etc)

Try to keep the hard drive debate to a minimum... This should just be a sampling of what drives have failed, and maybe we'll even get to see some trending data across the board.

[dood]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Since it's my thread, I'll start... Just had this guy fail in a makeshift NAS box that's been cobbled together over the years. I use the machine to stage Exchange backup data, which is then offloaded to tape. It gets used a few hours a night, and is idle all day. The system runs 24x7, in a controlled rackmount environment. The drives run at a constant 72*F.

Samsung Spinpoint
HD103SJ
2010.03
POH Unknown
Failed with Bad sectors.

Believed to have been failing for some time, but the crappy SATA RAID controller didn't pick it up as a failing drive. Exchange backups started failing with higher frequency until I did some troubleshooting and found write errors on the NAS.

Still sold at Newegg - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152185

For the price and what I use it for (not mission critical), I'll be buying 2 more of these. One to have on hand, and the other to replace the bad drive. I don't really want to swap out all 4 drives for enterprise-grade.

Edit - Just had a chat with my boss... made the case for the WD RE4 drives after seeing the 5 yr warranty vs 1yr on the Samsungs - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136798 Looks like I'm buying 4 new drives. We'll re-use the samsung's in the department as 2ndary storage for the techs.

[Per Hansson]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Yea 1 or 2 year warranty on hard drives is bull, avoid at all costs, it just shows you the manufacturer knows they will not last!

Samsung Spinpoint
HD103UJ
2008.02
POH 12616 (525 Days)
Start / Stop Count 2071
Retired with Bad sectors. (Over 30MB)
Firmware was upgraded from 1AA01109 to 1AA01117 long before issues started, to fix a hang issue.

------------------------

Western Digital
WD15EARS
02-OCT-2010
POH Unknown (Probably low)
Failed with clicking sound (Readarm can't find start track I guess)
This one was installed in a WD external drive thingy made entirely of plastic, drive was very warm in this stupid box!

[Uranium-235]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

I don't have specifics but I've had two WD320AAKS fail, me one a customer of mine. They've already been RMA'd

[lti]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Toshiba
MK5075GSX
Unknown manufacture date, but the computer was purchased in November 2011
Unknown
Clicking sound, completely inaccessible

[dood]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Western Digital
WD1600BEKT
18 Aug 2009 (under warranty until 2014, hooray)
1420 POH (yes, 1,420)
SMART reads "Pending sectors", system gets stuck in a reboot loop. Error scan shows this-



I was able to copy off the data, except for a few small files.

[smason]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Well, haven't seen a disk failure in a while, last 2 were Seagate laptop drives.

Got a call from my mom about a computer problem. "Something about the hard drive" coming from my mom, that's a ton of info. Usually it's "some error message pops up, I just click ok"

So I go over, power it on, and the BIOS says a hard drive failure is imminent.
It boots fine, I look in the event log, sure enough errors that a hard drive is soon to fail.

I look at the drives, Seagates. I can't believe I gave her a computer with Seagates... oh well. Frankly, I'm surprised that the SMART functionality actually worked.

She has full backups, and I did an extra image of C: immediately.
Will replace it on Monday.

[kc8adu]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

2 640gb toshiba laptop drives.
both less than a year old.1 in a customers laptop with a ton of bad sectors and more in current pending.was very slow.
other in a neighbors laptop.
dropped dead.
no spin.
seagate 7200.11 1tb with bsy bug.was backed up so my neighbor will just rma.
had reallocated sectors and a few current pending before it died.i told him to back it up now.at least he listened!

[tom66]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Seagate portable 1TB drive, stuck clicking.

Approx 2 years old. (Mostly on top of media PC, rarely moved.)

Not covered by warranty.

Not buying a Seagate product again.

[dood]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

This is one I've had on my shelf for a while.

Western Digital
WD3200AAJS
24 Feb 2009
26,167 POH
Failed with a single well-placed group of bad sectors. Was able to retrieve all the data without issues.

[ncovert]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Western Digital
WD1000
December 2002
Unknown POH
Overheated and got the click of death. No data was lost.

I got the drive for free, and it failed before I put any data onto it

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

I did work on some computers from 2006 - 2011.

Most of what had failed in this list were Seagate drives. Three Momentus drives had definitely failed:
one 100GB in 2007 (uncorrectable sectors, didn't even last six months!)
one 160GB in 2008 (uncorrectable sectors, lasted nine months)
one 200GB in 2012 - still recognized! Had over 12K UNC

Momentus Exceptions:
two Seagates still surprisingly work to this day but are not too reliable for critical use:
one 250GB [ST9250827AS] in 2010, date code 08441 - only one bad sector (tripped up a Windows Vista install, lol) - read and write error rate keep going up!
one 320GB [ST9320421ASG] in 2011, date code 09015 - ~430 bad sectors and test Windows 8 install, stable so far, wtf

A Seagate Barracuda 250GB drive in someone's old Dell Dimension desktop was a causality. Failure was uncorrectable sectors. This was in 2006.

A Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT 320GB hard drive ends up here. Wasn't pretty at all. Near beginning of the drive had too many UNC sectors. This was in 2011.

I had a used 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drive die within 5 months of obtaining it. POH never even reached 1500, IIRC. Didn't cost much, oh well.

An IBM Travelstar 60GB laptop drive, IC25T060ATCS05-0. Kept hanging OS. Drive kept dropping out as well. Finally died in March 16, 2008 due to too many UNC sectors. Date was Nov-01. This was my former web server drive. Got everything off, fortunately!

An IBM Travelstar 20GB laptop drive suddenly died when Dad had it. Interestingly wasn't concerned about the data on the drive, either. Plugging it in resulted in click of death. This was in 2006. The laptop was obtained in 2004, and the drive's date was 2004.

A Western Digital Caviar WD1200BB 120GB desktop drive made in 2001 failed in 2010. Showed IDNF on entire drive. I have since backed up the data on the drive before that fact and have obtained its platters.

---

Old school drives are interesting to me. Had the following fail:

Seagate U4 4.3GB drive, ST34311A. Lasted quite a while before it failed in 2005 due to Click of Death. Mfg date was 1999.

Western Digital Caviar 1GB drive, WDAC21000-00H. Had a Mfg. date of 1996-02-29. Finally failed in 2004 due to Click of Death. I called it the Leap Year drive.

[mockingbird]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Western Digital
WD1600BEKT
18 Aug 2009 (under warranty until 2014, hooray)
1420 POH (yes, 1,420)
SMART reads "Pending sectors", system gets stuck in a reboot loop. Error scan shows this-

I've had two Western Digital Scorpio Blue (Yours is a Scorpio Black) go in one month. Also one a few years ago that I remember. Never seen a Desktop Caviar Blue come back yet. One I just sent for RMA and the other was in a near brand-new Acer, but no RMA because they keep track of non-retail drives in their database.

[smason]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Well, haven't seen a disk failure in a while,

Me and my big mouth. User just brought me a dell 6520, won't boot.
Put the drive in my dock, clunk clunk clunk, bluescreen.

Hitachi HTS723225A7A 7200 rpm super thin Sata 3 Notebook drive.



Manuf Jan 2012 in Thailand.

Dell will ship a replacement overnight, so hassle free RMA on this one.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Western Digital Caviar 1GB drive, WDAC21000-00H. Had a Mfg. date of 1996-02-29.

That gen of Caviar, pre-1998 seem to be the worst for me. Had 2 of them with bad sectors and one failed with a click-of-death with any attempt to access past 238 MB. They seem to be more inconsistent in QC then 1998s and later.

In fact, the worst one was a 1996! Failed out of the blue with a dead broad region. That was the "238 MB" 1 GB.

[Agent24]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

I have a box full of failed drives.

Fujitsu, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Conner Peripherals, Toshiba, IBM ... and probably more.

Either loads of bad sectors or click of death.

What more is there to say? Some drives fail. I don't know the knowledge to diagnose exactly why.

[Pentium4]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Most common failing drive in the world = Seagate Barracuda ES2. They're SAS drives that idle in the mid forties, under load they'll burn your hand!!! I love Seagate but those drives are ticking time bombs.

[mockingbird]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Western Digital tries to pull a fast one on me:

The RMA'd drive:


And the replacement:

[Agent24]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Isn't it standard practice that all replacement drives (refurbished of course) only have 90 days warranty or such?

[c_hegge]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Nope. The replacement drive should be covered until the original warranty is up. WD