IDE interface bad ...

[Arfa Daily]

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I had a non-mechanical problem with a hard drive that started acting screwy
and wouldn't format.

I also had an ASUS CD ROM drive fail because of PROM failure. The symptoms
were weird.

 

[GMAN]

In article <YR4ck.249531$1B6.90487@newsfe21.ams2>, "Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa


If it was locking up the bus it was most likely neither, it was most likely

the electronics on the drive that was going out.

 

[mark krawczuk]

hi, why have you got it in cable select ? i thought u are supposed to
have it as master and slave ?
have u tried it like that ?
mark k


"nobody >" <usenetharvested@aol.com> wrote in message
newsaednaf7KpUyDOLVnZ2dnUVZ_rbinZ2d@supernews.com...

Arfa Daily wrote:
Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This
drive is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago,
because its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun
dying with nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the
Seagate, are on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's
IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further
checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive
that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was
disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is
that ?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup
drive that I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

Hosed controller board, probably shorting a few data lines.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, Arfa Daily wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This
drive is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago,
because its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun
dying with nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the
Seagate, are on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's
IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further
checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive
that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected,
the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive
that I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Happened on a Western Digital a few months ago. It was a SATA drive that
continued to just slow down in data transfer rates. I had it not as a
system drive but as a storage drive. The file system was ext3 and after
the drive's performance decreased by about half I ran a check including
bad block test that turned up empty. I managed to get all my data off the
drive onto the system drive (a 320 gig Seagate SATA) but just barely. Data
transfer slowed down from about 40 MB/s to just 1 MB/sec then the drive
could not be read at all. No noise, no frantic seeking. After a reboot the
mainboard drive controller's SMART technology reported BAD and in the
trash went the drive. I replaced it with a 500 gigabyte Western Digital
SATA I paid around 60 quid for. It was an external MyBook drive that the
power controller inside the case failed so I just removed the drive. Funny
that at that time the external drive was actually cheaper than an internal.

 

[Eeyore]

Arfa Daily wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

God works in mysterious ways ! ;~)

Graham

 

[naza]

I did but in my case it was very clear what the problem was. The loud
noises coming from the hard drive game me a good indication of what
was causing the problem. In my case I even if it was the mobo or DVD
drive, both were under warranty and I had put the hard drive in my old
PC in there to transfer everything and just left it in there. I
suppose it was lucky that I had not decided to use it to store data.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
<arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

If a drive has bad blocks, then Windows will appear to hang while it
repeatedly retries the affected reads or writes. If a drive doesn't
spin up, then the BIOS may appear to hang while it is waiting for it
to do so. Eventually it should time out and move on.

I have two Fujitsu drives that have a faulty Cirrus Logic IC. This
model series featured in a law suit. The failure symptoms are
sometimes as you describe, while at other times I will get reams of
bad blocks which come good on the next try.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

 

[Baron]

Arfa Daily wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed
me that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my
machine, was failing to read. She was right. Further investigation
revealed that the machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data
drive either. This drive is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a
little over a year ago, because its predecessor, which had been in
there a long time, had begun dying with nasty noises and erratic
reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are on IDE channel 1, in
cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother
board's IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok.
Further checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the
Seagate drive that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it
was disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is
that ?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup
drive that I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

Very common ! If its still under warranty return it to Seagate. Since
the lead free thing I've seem a number of problems like this. A common
one is the the solder joints behind the connector seem to fail. I just
go over the bad ones with a soldering iron and fresh solder. You can
actually see the cracks with a 20X loupe.

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

[Baron]

Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother
board's IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok.
Further checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the
Seagate drive that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it
was disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

If a drive has bad blocks, then Windows will appear to hang while it
repeatedly retries the affected reads or writes. If a drive doesn't
spin up, then the BIOS may appear to hang while it is waiting for it
to do so. Eventually it should time out and move on.

I have two Fujitsu drives that have a faulty Cirrus Logic IC. This
model series featured in a law suit. The failure symptoms are
sometimes as you describe, while at other times I will get reams of
bad blocks which come good on the next try.

- Franc Zabkar

You try getting Fujitsu to replace them ! No way ! I will not under
any circumstances buy their drives... Not even if they gave them
away !

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:43:33 +0100, Baron wrote:

Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's
IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further
checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive
that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was
disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

If a drive has bad blocks, then Windows will appear to hang while it
repeatedly retries the affected reads or writes. If a drive doesn't spin
up, then the BIOS may appear to hang while it is waiting for it to do
so. Eventually it should time out and move on.

I have two Fujitsu drives that have a faulty Cirrus Logic IC. This model
series featured in a law suit. The failure symptoms are sometimes as you
describe, while at other times I will get reams of bad blocks which come
good on the next try.

- Franc Zabkar

You try getting Fujitsu to replace them ! No way ! I will not under any
circumstances buy their drives... Not even if they gave them away !

I had problems with a Dell Poweredge server and 1 of the 3 factory
installed Fujitsu drives 1 day after setting it up. They sent another
Fujitsu drive and that lasted a month. Dell sent yet another replacement
and a few weeks later one of the original drives failed. I talked the
owner into buying 3 Seagate drives and I reinstalled the operating system
and restored data from the backup. The server is still in use after 4
years.

 

[Baron]

Meat Plow wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:43:33 +0100, Baron wrote:

Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother
board's IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was
ok. Further checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the
Seagate drive that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as
it was disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually
being motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

If a drive has bad blocks, then Windows will appear to hang while it
repeatedly retries the affected reads or writes. If a drive doesn't
spin up, then the BIOS may appear to hang while it is waiting for it
to do so. Eventually it should time out and move on.

I have two Fujitsu drives that have a faulty Cirrus Logic IC. This
model series featured in a law suit. The failure symptoms are
sometimes as you describe, while at other times I will get reams of
bad blocks which come good on the next try.

- Franc Zabkar

You try getting Fujitsu to replace them ! No way ! I will not under
any circumstances buy their drives... Not even if they gave them
away !

I had problems with a Dell Poweredge server and 1 of the 3 factory
installed Fujitsu drives 1 day after setting it up. They sent another
Fujitsu drive and that lasted a month. Dell sent yet another
replacement and a few weeks later one of the original drives failed. I
talked the owner into buying 3 Seagate drives and I reinstalled the
operating system and restored data from the backup. The server is
still in use after 4 years.

I've never had problems with Dell's services. Fujitsu will tell you to
return the drive to the original vendor. Which is fine if the original
vendor still exists. An awful lot of Fujitsu drives were sold by
vendors that vanished within a few months. I know of one that traded
under three different names from the same address. But none of those
names were the one that he used to make purchases with, from the
manufacturers !

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:52:23 +0100, Baron wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:43:33 +0100, Baron wrote:

Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 15:43:03 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother
board's IDE driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok.
Further checks disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the
Seagate drive that was hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it
was disconnected, the CD ROM drive came back on line.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being
motor or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

If a drive has bad blocks, then Windows will appear to hang while it
repeatedly retries the affected reads or writes. If a drive doesn't
spin up, then the BIOS may appear to hang while it is waiting for it
to do so. Eventually it should time out and move on.

I have two Fujitsu drives that have a faulty Cirrus Logic IC. This
model series featured in a law suit. The failure symptoms are
sometimes as you describe, while at other times I will get reams of
bad blocks which come good on the next try.

- Franc Zabkar

You try getting Fujitsu to replace them ! No way ! I will not under
any circumstances buy their drives... Not even if they gave them away
!

I had problems with a Dell Poweredge server and 1 of the 3 factory
installed Fujitsu drives 1 day after setting it up. They sent another
Fujitsu drive and that lasted a month. Dell sent yet another replacement
and a few weeks later one of the original drives failed. I talked the
owner into buying 3 Seagate drives and I reinstalled the operating
system and restored data from the backup. The server is still in use
after 4 years.

I've never had problems with Dell's services.

I never had any problems with them either but I wasn't going to play
the hard drive swap game forever and make myself look like a fool in
the eyes of the person I recommended Dell to. And they wouldn't send
anything but Fujitsu so rather than risk down time and lose sales the
server owner realized replacing the drives on our own was the better
option. The business was a country club with an 18 hole golf course
and this was in the start of their busiest part of the season. The system
powered all their point of sale touch screen terminals and also
controlled the golfing part taking reservations, scheduling tee times,
printing tee sheets, even the starters had terminals to confirm stuff. The
next Dell Poweredge I installed a few months later came with WD drives.

Fujitsu will tell you to return the drive to the original vendor. Which
is fine if the original vendor still exists. An awful lot of Fujitsu
drives were sold by vendors that vanished within a few months. I know
of one that traded under three different names from the same address.
But none of those names were the one that he used to make purchases
with, from the manufacturers !

I have a box full of various interface/size used drives none of witch are
Fujitsu.

 

[John Hudak]

Arfa Daily wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

In one of the latest trade rags I get, there was an article citing the
shorter than usual life of the larger (e.g. > 320 GB) hard drives. One
mfg in particular (and I don't remember the name) was having more
trouble than the others, but, they all were having probs. Various
reasons were given, but the two things most discussed were heat and the
high density on the platters...So, at the very least, make sure the disk
is well ventilated...You can't do much about the other...
John

 

[nobody >]

Arfa Daily wrote:

Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa

Hosed controller board, probably shorting a few data lines.