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Rash of dying drives
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=18948		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  mihanson [ Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Rash of dying drives
Just wanted to vent a little. I've had 3 out of 4 500GB Seagate ST3500630AS hard drives die die within the past month. I'm happy they're all under warranty until 2012, but man, this sucks.

I'm not looking for any advice or suggestions on using my drives, but for the record, I have great cooling with 2 x 120mm fans blowing in front of the drives and 2 x 120mm fans sucking that air off the drives in a LIAN LI PC-A71B full tower case. I'm starting to think my love of Seagate is not being reciprocated. :cry:
Author:  Liv2Cod [ Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
Well, I guess it's possible to have a run of bad luck, but I'm thinking there must be some underlying reason.

I would guess heat, as you surmised. I know you have enough fans to levitate your tower, but you might just do the old "open the case and stick your hand on it" test after using the drives for an extended period. Maybe the fans are fighting each other. I've seen that as well as other weird airflow problems.

If the airflow is OK, my next guess is power. It is possible your power is crummy and surges are getting to the drives? I've seen some pretty nasty spikes that only show up when you put a scope on the AC line. Or perhaps that power supply isn't doing its job correctly.

I used to see drives dying about once a year until I started putting a fan right behind the drives to pull air through the front of the PC across the drive cage to cool them. I maintain the airflow in the case from front to back, so the drive fan pulls air into the PC and the back fan exhausts it.

I even used to have failures in my Tivo until I hot-wired its internal fan to run all the time. Heat is a real killer for hard drives.
Author:  mihanson [ Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:09 am ]
Post subject: 
Liv2Cod wrote:
If the airflow is OK, my next guess is power. It is possible your power is crummy and surges are getting to the drives? I've seen some pretty nasty spikes that only show up when you put a scope on the AC line. Or perhaps that power supply isn't doing its job correctly.


My PS runs at about 50% load when busy according to my Kill-A-Watt and the box is attached to an APC UPS (model BX1300LCD). I dunno. :(
Author:  Liv2Cod [ Sun Sep 14, 2008 2:22 pm ]
Post subject: 
Well you've done everything right. Maybe its just a phase-of-the-moon thing.

-- Joe
Author:  BluesBrian [ Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Rash of dying drives
mihanson wrote:
I've had 3 out of 4 500GB Seagate ST3500630AS hard drives die within the past month.
bummer.. I've got a SATA and a few PATA versions of this drive! So far, still running fine.
mihanson wrote:
I'm happy they're all under warranty until 2012, but man, this sucks.
Yeah, it just doesn't cover any data or time loss. Are you using these in a RAID configuration?
mihanson wrote:
I have great cooling with 2 x 120mm fans blowing in front of the drives and 2 x 120mm fans sucking that air off the drives.
Yep. cooling important.. but there can be that noise issue! ("Fans sucking" brings that to mind!)
mihanson wrote:
I'm starting to think my love of Seagate is not being reciprocated. :cry:
I hope the luck improves!
Liv2Cod wrote:
Maybe its just a phase-of-the-moon thing.

My favorite classic excuse is "cosmic rays" (Crank up the way-back machine: "cosimc rays" blamed on for flaky Radio Shack TRS80 Model 1 failures) :D
but we have a new one.. mini-black holes created by CERN. :roll:
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