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
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