Harddisk blues and questions about solutions...

[Andrew Hunter]

Perhaps I misunderstand the problem, but is it possible that there is a
controller problem, not a drive problem?  Do you have a testbed system
you can try the drive on?  Maybe just mount it as secondary under a
preexisting OS and try a big data transfer off the drive in question?
It seems that if there is a controller problem, you could be getting an
intermittent read signal to the drive, amounting to a persistent
read-fail-try again cycle.  Just a thought...  

Failing that, I noticed that some of the cameras at CompUSA have been
reaimed away from the desktop computer section.  A couple of us can
provide a distraction-- Look! A rabbit!-- while you stealthily stuff a
system up your shirt and run.  Remember to look casual as you do it.



-----Original Message-----
From: pluglist-admin at plug.org [mailto:pluglist-admin at plug.org] On Behalf
Of Michael Robinson
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 11:25 AM
To: pluglist at plug.org
Subject: Re: Harddisk blues and questions about solutions...

On Sunday 30 March 2003 04:26 pm, you wrote:
> If I understand the problem properly, it seems like there ought not be
> any problem just using a new drive on the old controller.  For
example,
> I am dual booting XP and RH8.0 on a 120 GB Hitachi (IBM) 8MB cache
> Deskstar (ie, pretty modern) which supports ATA133.  My computer has
> ATA66 controllers.  No problems at all.  The only loss is the burst
> speed, but since I don't use much that would create a sufficiently
> sustained read/write op, I don't ever see that anyway.  You might just
> try a new drive in your system and see what happens.  Since your old
> drive was 10GB (point is, over 8.4) and you have no complaints about
it
> besides its imminent death (which is, I admit, a substantial downside)
> I'm guessing you should have no troubles with a new drive.
>
> As for repairing the old one, the only things I have heard were
entirely
> anecdotal, but they said that the repair was substantially more
> expensive than the replacement of the drive.  Typically, most recovery
> centers would remove the platters, extract the data and place it on
> stable media, rather than try to fix the old drive.
>
> Andrew
>
>

Oh, I tried plugging a new drive in that I could pick up locally.
Normally that works, at least on an ATA-66 board.  It locked
my VA503+ motherboard up though.  I don't know if there is
another bios upgrade.  I've had trouble with newer drives
not working on low density 40 wire cables on newer boards.
Thanks anyways :-)
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