dead hard drive? confirmation & rma info please...

[pepsi_max2k]

Hey, i think my hard drive just failed but would be pleased if someone who's experienced it before could just the problem and confirm it for me, just incase it's something else...

Right, first, it's a Maxtor 120 GB IDE drive, just under three years old.

Last year, something was making weird buzzing noises and i thought it was the drive. See this thread for more info on that, but to cut a long story short - something was buzzing. hard drive was disconnected and buzzing stopped. hard drive reconnected and never buzzd again. Also, 6 months ago had a similar buzzing noise, and that was the northbridge fan, so probably not connected...

Anyway, few minutes ago i was in windows (running on a wd sata drive). A backup program was copying stuff from sata to the maxtor ide. Oppened firefox (with profile/settings saved on the maxtor) and it tells me something like "drive not accessible". Try it a minute later and it's fine, minute later windows BSOD's with an error starting "KERNEL_something_something_something". On reboot post gave me an error "Primary Harddisk Master Fail" (was booting from the maxtor with a bootloader). I then booted from the sata and loaded windows fine, but non of the maxtor partitions are visible in my computer. That's as far as I went, powered down in the hope that my regular fix for most pc problems will work - waiting.

So there you go. I'm gonna try another ide slot / cable, but does anyone think it's anything other than a dead drive?

Only other info i can give is it's been giving a quiet, high pitched squeak alot, mainly during high graphical detailed scenes in comp games (i'm guessing it's the page file access - *was* stored on the maxtor). And it just seemed to be squeaking more than normal yesterday. but anway...

On the plus side, just checked warrenty info at maxtor and, lucky me, ends in 9 days. So a quick answer would be nice. And any idea what maxtor's rma process in the uk is like? Think they'll honour the warrenty with a new / refurbished drive if i send this one back quickly?

[rjs735]

Go to the maxtor site and downlaod their diag. Run the diag and get the error code from the diag failure. Then call MaxTS with the diag code model of HD and Serial number.

With that info they should be able to give you and RMA number.

If you want the drive faster (on an RMA they want your drive first then they will send you a replacement.) you can ask for a cross ship which is they take your Credit card number and send you the drive and if you don't send back the defective they will charge your CC for a new drive. The results is you get a drive in about 3-5 days vs 7-10 days.

I can't remember MAxtor may not crossship. I know WDC does. I had to RMA a Maxtor once since then I have only used WDC.

Hope this helps.

[pepsi_max2k]

thanks. they actually have an rma form on their site (enter serial, answer various questions eg. main fault, drive age...) so i was gonna use that. my only problem time wise is the warrenty running out on the 25th, so if they only honour warrenties from the time their people have confirmed it's broke then it may be too late.

i'll try that diagnostic thingy, though the fact that bios didn''t appear to recognise the drive prolly isn't gonna help too much...

[rjs735]

The diag run directly against the device. They bypass the system bios.

Try filling out the form without the diags. But remember it'll take about a day before they get back with you.

If time is of the essence then call MAxtor with what you got and see what happens. Once you have an RMA number it won't matter that you drive gets to them when it's out of warraty. The RMA essential stops the clock. ( at least I think it does). You might ask them about that.

If they give you an RMA that already confrims that the drive is defective . They only wait for your drive in order to have RMA'd drive to ship against. So receiving it is only a formality.

[pepsi_max2k]

i'm amazed how many problems such a simple thing as time can solve.

seriously, i'm nicknaming the drive "jesus", it's died and resurrected itself so many times...


left it off overnight, switched hard drive/disk drive ide cables, ide slots, power cables and disconnected a couple other drives. worked fine. switched back + reconnected everything, works fine. ran powermax diagnostic utility, passed everything (well, i never ran the formats or really long advanced test).

i swear it wasn't working yesterday. now i'm stuck with a drive that has no sign of a problem, and yet may well decide to die again whenever it feels like, cept then it'll be out of warrenty. ah well, at least i got my firefox & thunderbird profiles back.

thanks for the help. maybe i never will have to rma something...

[rjs735]

It may have been a loose cable except for the high pitched screeming. This is usually a bearing or worse a HDI ( head disk Interference collision).

You might want to loop the diags over night while your asleep. The problem may showup under heavy use. Or maybe associated with a particular portion of the disc in case of HDI.

Good luck.

[pepsi_max2k]

Well the cables are/were in so tight it takes a lot of force to get them out, and the squeaking has been going on for well over a year, if not for as long as i've had it, and nothing's happened before. i'll loop the diag tonight but i ran it for a while a year ago with the same squeaking and nothing showed up, and i'm trying to use it as little as possible at the moment just to let it rest or whatever, like i said that kinda thing generally fixes my stuff for some reason...

[rjs735]

It still may pay for you to call TS and inquire just for some peace of mind while your still in warranty.