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Replace Hard Drive After 3.5 Years?

E

Elle

Jan 1, 1970
0
I walked away from my computer for a couple of hours, tops, yesterday. I
came back to it and the display and mouse were frozen.

It's a 3.5 year old personal computer (Gateway, with a 20 Gigabyte, 5M Ultra
ATA hard drive). I ended up powering down, when starting up received error
messages and then a failure to reach the Windows display. I ultimately
struggled through a Scanddisk from a Dos prompt and was able to recover
most, but not all, my personal files, copying them to floppy diskettes (3.5
inch type). I shoulda been backing up at least once a month, but wasn't.
Anyone else procrastinating: Man, don't do it. Stop now. Back up your files.

A tech support person at Gateway said hard drives don't usually last beyond
five years. Some die at three years. I've found support on Usenet for this.

My computer's running again, but to thwart another massive crash, is it
worth putting in a new hard drive? I've got $80 to spend, and I figure a
nice one will run about that.

I installed a new power supply (that is, transformer) last summer. It's
power and so heat output aren't that different from the old one. It seems to
be working out fine. Otherwise, all else is original equipment.

My last computer was a Hewlett Packard. It "died" irrecoverably after only
thee years. The shop couldn't fix it, though maybe I took it to a lousy
shop. So this is very discouraging. Throwing away $800 every three years
ain't gonna cut it anymore. So I've had it with these big brand names. I'm
ready to build my own, and think at this point I have enough expertise to do
so. I'm certainly not going to throw money away on a shop trying to fix my
computer again. It seems to me much of the expertise involved in a
successful computer repair involves simply patience and persistence.

How about the CPU? Should I investigate replacing it, too?

All suggestions about whether a new hard drive is worth the investment and
the CPU are welcome.

TIA
 
M

Matt J. McCullar

Jan 1, 1970
0
I had a similar experience recently. My hard drive gronched and I hadn't
backed up much on it, either. Dumb ol' me. It was about four years old,
too, and in fact when I checked the warranty date on the drive itself, I
found that the warranty had expired about six months previously.

I don't think it's related, but the power supply in my computer failed at
about the same time. I ended up buying a new hard drive and a new computer
at the same time.

I should probably look into upgrading the motherboard and processor soon,
too, but I'm not asking for the system to do very much in the way of
graphics, so that's on the back burner.

Like yourself, I'm slowly teaching myself more about computer hardware and
software. Some local friends have been very helpful, and so have more
distant ones on the Usenet groups. There's a lot to learn...
 
I

Isaac Wingfield

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle said:
I walked away from my computer for a couple of hours, tops, yesterday. I
came back to it and the display and mouse were frozen.

It's a 3.5 year old personal computer (Gateway, with a 20 Gigabyte, 5M Ultra
ATA hard drive). I ended up powering down, when starting up received error
messages and then a failure to reach the Windows display. I ultimately
struggled through a Scanddisk from a Dos prompt and was able to recover
most, but not all, my personal files, copying them to floppy diskettes (3.5
inch type). I shoulda been backing up at least once a month, but wasn't.
Anyone else procrastinating: Man, don't do it. Stop now. Back up your files.

A tech support person at Gateway said hard drives don't usually last beyond
five years. Some die at three years. I've found support on Usenet for this.

My computer's running again, but to thwart another massive crash, is it
worth putting in a new hard drive? I've got $80 to spend, and I figure a
nice one will run about that.

I installed a new power supply (that is, transformer) last summer. It's
power and so heat output aren't that different from the old one. It seems to
be working out fine. Otherwise, all else is original equipment.

My last computer was a Hewlett Packard. It "died" irrecoverably after only
thee years. The shop couldn't fix it, though maybe I took it to a lousy
shop. So this is very discouraging. Throwing away $800 every three years
ain't gonna cut it anymore. So I've had it with these big brand names. I'm
ready to build my own, and think at this point I have enough expertise to do
so. I'm certainly not going to throw money away on a shop trying to fix my
computer again. It seems to me much of the expertise involved in a
successful computer repair involves simply patience and persistence.

How about the CPU? Should I investigate replacing it, too?

All suggestions about whether a new hard drive is worth the investment and
the CPU are welcome.

TIA

I have several computers around the house, and have had for well over
fifteen years (not the same ones, of course). In all that time, I have
had exactly *one* verified hard drive failure -- on a Linux system, BTW;
the drive actually just stopped spinning.

Could it be that you are having *software* problems?

Seriously, I think that Windows does things to disks that makes them
*appear* to be bad -- clogged up with old files or something. Several of
the disks I have used successfully came for free, removed from Windows
systems because they were "dying". I reformatted them, installed them,
and used them for years without problems.

I should mention that my "non-failing" disks are all installed on Macs,
some of which are still working just fine nearly ten years after they
were manufactured.

Isaac
 
G

Gary J Tait

Jan 1, 1970
0
I walked away from my computer for a couple of hours, tops, yesterday. I
came back to it and the display and mouse were frozen.

It's a 3.5 year old personal computer (Gateway, with a 20 Gigabyte, 5M Ultra
ATA hard drive). I ended up powering down, when starting up received error
messages and then a failure to reach the Windows display. I ultimately
struggled through a Scanddisk from a Dos prompt and was able to recover
most, but not all, my personal files, copying them to floppy diskettes (3.5
inch type). I shoulda been backing up at least once a month, but wasn't.
Anyone else procrastinating: Man, don't do it. Stop now. Back up your files.

A tech support person at Gateway said hard drives don't usually last beyond
five years. Some die at three years. I've found support on Usenet for this.

My computer's running again, but to thwart another massive crash, is it
worth putting in a new hard drive? I've got $80 to spend, and I figure a
nice one will run about that.

I installed a new power supply (that is, transformer) last summer. It's
power and so heat output aren't that different from the old one. It seems to
be working out fine. Otherwise, all else is original equipment.

My last computer was a Hewlett Packard. It "died" irrecoverably after only
thee years. The shop couldn't fix it, though maybe I took it to a lousy
shop. So this is very discouraging. Throwing away $800 every three years
ain't gonna cut it anymore. So I've had it with these big brand names. I'm
ready to build my own, and think at this point I have enough expertise to do
so. I'm certainly not going to throw money away on a shop trying to fix my
computer again. It seems to me much of the expertise involved in a
successful computer repair involves simply patience and persistence.

How about the CPU? Should I investigate replacing it, too?

All suggestions about whether a new hard drive is worth the investment and
the CPU are welcome.

TIA

If that computer suits your needs, by all means replace the HDD.
My current computer is a year newer (new HDD last year though,
previously running on my then 1998 bought drive, which is working fine
in my other older computer)
 
E

Elle

Jan 1, 1970
0
Thanks Matt, Isaac, and Gary for posting your thoughts on this so quickly. I
have an update (already) below. Dunno if I'll be able to keep posting much
longer, since I can't say how serious this problem is, or whether it's
getting worse. Regardless, I feel like I have a better grasp on the problem,
due to your posts, some googling, and a guzillion hours working on this now.

Isaac Wingfield said:
I have several computers around the house, and have had for well over
fifteen years (not the same ones, of course). In all that time, I have
had exactly *one* verified hard drive failure -- on a Linux system, BTW;
the drive actually just stopped spinning.

Could it be that you are having *software* problems?

Yes. I just experienced another, identical looking crash a few minutes ago.
This time, I found a quick temporary fix. Namely, I "messed up" last night
and most of today by not just putting in the 2nd (of 3) "Gateway System
Restoration Kit" CDs. There are no darn directions that say to put the 2nd
one in first, for criminy's sake.

Re the hard drive:
The Scandisk command yesterday from Dos alleged it was doing all sort of
repairs. It took hours. Gateway's tech support person said the Scandisk
feature would ultimately indicate whether the hard drive was fried or not.
Dunno whether that's so, but it said yesterday it had fixed everything on
the drive. Still, I had this second crash a little while ago.


Better An hour ago I simply did a search for some keywords and found
the last of the personal files I was missing. They seem to be all there. I'm
feeling a lot better. Some of these were very important documents, and I'd
been kicking myself since last night about being so casual about them.

Of course, due to my first incompetent recovery attempt, many of the
personal files are in Outlook Express's .dbx format. Which means I so far
can't just slip them back into the Outlook Express directory I re-installed
earlier today and have them come up as usual. I am experimenting now with
recovering them in a "clean" way. I googled and see one can purchase
software to do so, or it seems there may be some freeware about to do the
trick.

There's some file that, on some startups, is said to be missing on the quick
display that flies past. I'll try to get that file name and post it here.
Seriously, I think that Windows does things to disks that makes them
*appear* to be bad -- clogged up with old files or something. Several of
the disks I have used successfully came for free, removed from Windows
systems because they were "dying". I reformatted them, installed them,
and used them for years without problems.

I should mention that my "non-failing" disks are all installed on Macs,
some of which are still working just fine nearly ten years after they
were manufactured.

Huh.

I don't think this is a virus, as I have always used a modem. I do scan
weekly for viruses, too.

I reckon I'll backup like mad in the next few days or so and then come up
with a plan. Sure seems like a lot of folks on Usenet over the years report
that failure at 3-5 years is pretty usual. Are many of us being fooled?
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle said:
I walked away from my computer for a couple of hours, tops, yesterday. I
came back to it and the display and mouse were frozen.

It's a 3.5 year old personal computer (Gateway, with a 20 Gigabyte, 5M Ultra
ATA hard drive). I ended up powering down, when starting up received error
messages and then a failure to reach the Windows display. I ultimately
struggled through a Scanddisk from a Dos prompt and was able to recover
most, but not all, my personal files, copying them to floppy diskettes (3.5
inch type). I shoulda been backing up at least once a month, but wasn't.
Anyone else procrastinating: Man, don't do it. Stop now. Back up your files.

A tech support person at Gateway said hard drives don't usually last beyond
five years. Some die at three years. I've found support on Usenet for this.

My computer's running again, but to thwart another massive crash, is it
worth putting in a new hard drive? I've got $80 to spend, and I figure a
nice one will run about that.

I installed a new power supply (that is, transformer) last summer. It's
power and so heat output aren't that different from the old one. It seems to
be working out fine. Otherwise, all else is original equipment.

My last computer was a Hewlett Packard. It "died" irrecoverably after only
thee years. The shop couldn't fix it, though maybe I took it to a lousy
shop. So this is very discouraging. Throwing away $800 every three years
ain't gonna cut it anymore. So I've had it with these big brand names. I'm
ready to build my own, and think at this point I have enough expertise to do
so. I'm certainly not going to throw money away on a shop trying to fix my
computer again. It seems to me much of the expertise involved in a
successful computer repair involves simply patience and persistence.

How about the CPU? Should I investigate replacing it, too?

All suggestions about whether a new hard drive is worth the investment and
the CPU are welcome.

TIA


Hard drives are second only to optical drives in how often they tend to
fail. The disk drives being fragile mechanical components are virtually
always the first thing to go, 3-5 years is typical for one that's been
heavily used.
 
R

Rheilly Phoull

Jan 1, 1970
0
James Sweet said:
seems to


Hard drives are second only to optical drives in how often they tend to
fail. The disk drives being fragile mechanical components are virtually
always the first thing to go, 3-5 years is typical for one that's been
heavily used.
Regardless of the equipment, if ya doing something that ya don't want to do
again, or its data thats not replaceable ya have to back it up a couple of
times. Keep a copy of site too !
Just dont be lazy then we wont have to hear yet another "Oh dear I havent
backed up and now I want to get my data back" messages :)
 
K

Ken

Jan 1, 1970
0
James said:
Hard drives are second only to optical drives in how often they tend to
fail. The disk drives being fragile mechanical components are virtually
always the first thing to go, 3-5 years is typical for one that's been
heavily used.

I agree. If you have any time at all invested, let alone irreplaceable
data on a hard drive (and who doesn't?), cloning the HD to spare HD disk
is the most effective means of restoring from a crash. HDs today can be
purchased for very few dollars and it is cheap insurance. Getting back
to where you were can take days if you only have the critical files
saved to a CD or such. Even an image of the HD takes some time to restore.

There are even free programs that will copy even an XP hard drive. One
such program is Discwizard by Seagate.
 
J

JazzMan

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle said:
I reckon I'll backup like mad in the next few days or so and then come up
with a plan. Sure seems like a lot of folks on Usenet over the years report
that failure at 3-5 years is pretty usual. Are many of us being fooled?

Not really, it's an illusion so to speak. You have to look
at the number of drive failures in the context of how many
are in operation. You only see the people who say they have
drive failures since they're the ones motivated to post that
they had a failure. The ones that didn't have a failure don't
post because there's no reason to do so. As a result it seems
like there's a lot of drive failures when in reality drives
are very reliable.

The only drive failure I've ever had was in an old piece of
junk notebook I had once. I got angry and slammed the lid
down after the battery started acting up yet again, and
the drive spun down that instant and never worked again.

I've never had a drive fail otherwise.

JazzMan
--
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R

Roby

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle wrote:

(snip)
Re the hard drive:
The Scandisk command yesterday from Dos alleged it was doing all sort of
repairs. It took hours. Gateway's tech support person said the Scandisk
feature would ultimately indicate whether the hard drive was fried or not.
Dunno whether that's so, but it said yesterday it had fixed everything on
the drive. Still, I had this second crash a little while ago.

Scandisk tries hard to read fading sectors and if successful, relocates the
saved data to more reliable real estate. It then marks the bad spots as
such and the operating system ignores them from then on. Actually, the
hard drive controller is doing this continually, swapping in sectors from a
reserve the manufacturer set aside for this purpose. Even a brand-new HD
has bad sectors.

Seems like your HD is failing faster than the controller can keep up. This
happens when a bit of dirt gets loose inside ... maybe a head briefly hit
the disk surface and launched a chunk of coating. In any case, the crud
sails around and gets under a head now and then to do more damage. The
process escalates until the drive is totally shot. That may be hours or
days or weeks away.

Buy a new hard drive. Back up your valuable data (or everything) regularly.
Keeping a backup off-site is great protection against a real disaster. At
least keep a recent backup *away* from the computer. A backup written to
an internal drive is fast and very convenient, but not very safe.

Roby
 
A

Andy Cuffe

Jan 1, 1970
0
Seems like your HD is failing faster than the controller can keep up. This
happens when a bit of dirt gets loose inside ... maybe a head briefly hit
the disk surface and launched a chunk of coating. In any case, the crud
sails around and gets under a head now and then to do more damage. The
process escalates until the drive is totally shot. That may be hours or
days or weeks away.


The best way to evaluate a hard drive is to download the diagnostic
utility from the hard drive manufacturer. This will test the
electronics and complete disk surface including things like the spare
sectors that DOS/Windows can't access. Sometimes it can even repair
problems such as sectors that were incorrectly marked bad, or bad
sectors that weren't detected by the drive yet. If the drive doesn't
pass the most thorough test, replace it.
Andy Cuffe

[email protected] <-- Use this address until 12/31/2005

[email protected] <-- Use this address after 12/31/2005
 
V

Vlad

Jan 1, 1970
0
When your computer is running well make an image of the complete hard
drive on an external hard drive (USB) and when things go wrong you
have the pleasant surprise to be able restore your computer to the
conditions that existed when you did the cloning. Into the same hard
drive or a new one.
A hard drive that isn't running will last a lot longer than 5 years.
Also install extra fans to keep your drives cooler. Heat is the main
enemy of electronic equipment failures.
Cooling your failing drive in the fridge may give you sufficient
operating time to create a clone or copy the most important files


Vlad
 
E

Elle

Jan 1, 1970
0
Thanks to all of you who have continued to post in response to my query.

I think I'm going to just buy a new hard drive at this point. I want it to
fit into my computer casing. Do I have to take special care that it will?

Is there anything special I should look for when I get to the computer shop?
I'm not going to someplace like CompUSA but instead one of the many
independent shops in my area.

I figure I just specify how many gigabytes I want and maybe access speed (I
think) and otherwise get what I pay for.

Any brand names to favor? Ones to avoid?
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle said:
Thanks to all of you who have continued to post in response to my query.

I think I'm going to just buy a new hard drive at this point. I want it to
fit into my computer casing. Do I have to take special care that it will?

Is there anything special I should look for when I get to the computer shop?
I'm not going to someplace like CompUSA but instead one of the many
independent shops in my area.

I figure I just specify how many gigabytes I want and maybe access speed (I
think) and otherwise get what I pay for.

Any brand names to favor? Ones to avoid?

Have a look here
http://www.xpbargains.com/best_deal.php/hard_drive_deals.htm to see what the
latest bargains are if you wanna buy it locally. Looks like if you hurry you
can get a WD 160GB drive for only $40 from Staples after the silly rebate
things. I have the same drive in my PC and got it for a similar deal but had
to wait a few months for the rebates. Sizes are pretty standard, desktop
PC's almost exclusively use normal 3.5" drives so finding one that fits
shouldn't be an issue.

Brands I've personally had good luck with are Seagate and Western Digital
and I've heard a lot of praise for them from others. Brands I've had lousy
luck with include Maxtor (avoid them like the plague) and to a lesser
extent, Quantum, Fujitsu, and the larger IBM drives.

As far as size, there's usually a "sweet spot" where the price per GB is the
lowest, don't even worry about access speed, the number can be misleading
and *any* drive you can buy now should be plenty fast in that respect. Cache
helps noticeably and drives with 8MB or more will usually be quicker.

One big gotcha, depending on the age of your computer, the BIOS may not
properly recognize drives larger than 147GB, you'd have to look up the
specific computer (in the case of an OEM box like Dell) or motherboard in a
noname/custom box to see if they have a BIOS update. Another option is to
simply get a new interface card which plugs into a PCI slot which opens up
the possibility of using a SATA drive giving you nice tidy wires instead of
the big wide ribbon cables used by normal IDE drives.
 
H

hemyd

Jan 1, 1970
0
Huh.
I don't think this is a virus, as I have always used a modem. I do scan
weekly for viruses, too.

I reckon I'll backup like mad in the next few days or so and then come up
with a plan. Sure seems like a lot of folks on Usenet over the years report
that failure at 3-5 years is pretty usual. Are many of us being fooled?
Elle,

From a lot of experience as a PC technician I can assure you that although
undoubtedly there is such a thing as "average life" for hard disks, a hard
disk can last anything from 5 minutes to 5 years or more. The basic thing to
realise is that if there is the slightest indication that your hard disk is
defective (such as reported bad sectors, bad clusters, i/o errors,
'operating system not found' errors) you cannot trust it with your data and
you need to think very seriously about replacing the hard disk.

Unlike a CPU or system board, the hard disk is very easy to replace - simply
plug in the new one just as the original one was. If the original was the
only hard disk you had, then you don't even have to worry about master/slave
jumpers. If the original hard disk is still working, you or a PC savvy
friend could try to use a program such as Ghost to clone the hard disk onto
the new one. This way you won't have to reinstall everything.

I would be hesitant about upgrading the CPU. It is rare to be able to buy
another CPU and just put it inot the system board slot. You need to do a lot
of researchning about compatability first. You might find yourself in a
chain of upgrading the CPU, than having to upgrade the system board, then
the RAM, etc. Eventually it may cost you more than a complete new system.
And then you'll have to reinstall the Operating System and find the correct
drivers for everything.

My 5 cents worth.

Henry.
 
K

Keith Jewell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Since you mention that the machine is 3 years old, be aware that it may
be subject to one of the size lines being crossed. There was one at
32gb, and one at 128gb. Drives larger than that may cause the machine
to not boot, in the easiest case, or lose data when you cross that
line, in the worst case. Anyway, drives of near that size often have a
'32gb clip' jumper or something like that. Other than that, the hard
disk should be a Lego - they're all a standard size, they all have the
same connectors, there's nothing special.

Hard disks will often outlive their useful life. In other words, they
are too small before they break. But they die. All brands. At any time.
If your data is important, back it up. There's no reason not to put a
new drive in a 3yo machine for most use. Add some memory at the same
time and you'll really think the machine boogies.
 
E

Elle

Jan 1, 1970
0
Is there an authoritative site on the web that discusses which computers
have this hard drive memory threshhold problem?

Some specs:
Make: Gateway Essential 900C
CPU: Intel 900 Mhz Celeron
Original hard drive: 20 Gigabyte 5M Ultra ATA

I have never gone over 10 Gigabytes of memory. I suppose because I don't do
any serious graphics work or play video games. I use the computer mostly for
word processing, spreadsheets, the internet, and faxing.

This morning after making some calls and checking the internet a bit, I
settled on a Seagate 80 Gigabyte Ultra ATA/100, 8 Mb cache, 7200 RPM drive,
for $90 at Best Buy.

Coulda had a similar Western Digital for about $70, but Seagate seems to get
better reviews. Also, this Seagate hard drive has a 5-year warranty (whose
details I have not read yet).

I can return it easily, should problems like the one you mentioned become
insurmountable.

I won't get to installing it until tomorrow, at the earliest.
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Elle said:
Is there an authoritative site on the web that discusses which computers
have this hard drive memory threshhold problem?

Some specs:
Make: Gateway Essential 900C
CPU: Intel 900 Mhz Celeron
Original hard drive: 20 Gigabyte 5M Ultra ATA

I have never gone over 10 Gigabytes of memory. I suppose because I don't do
any serious graphics work or play video games. I use the computer mostly for
word processing, spreadsheets, the internet, and faxing.

This morning after making some calls and checking the internet a bit, I
settled on a Seagate 80 Gigabyte Ultra ATA/100, 8 Mb cache, 7200 RPM drive,
for $90 at Best Buy.

Coulda had a similar Western Digital for about $70, but Seagate seems to get
better reviews. Also, this Seagate hard drive has a 5-year warranty (whose
details I have not read yet).

I can return it easily, should problems like the one you mentioned become
insurmountable.

I won't get to installing it until tomorrow, at the earliest.


There's no official database on it, but you have an OEM box so a call/email
to Gateway or look on their site for a BIOS update. Personally if in doubt I
would just check to see if there's a PCI slot free then pick up a new
interface card as they're not expensive. Get the largest drive you can for
the $, you can always transfer it to a newer faster machine later.

Also if you keep an eye out for killer deals it's not a bad idea to get two
drives and use one to backup the other.
 
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