phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (05/26/90)
I have a Miniscribe 44Mb 28ms hard disk. It is 2 years old. Lately I have lost some sectors that became bad. That happens during my autoexec.bat at booting. The weird thing is that it seems to keep happening. The first time, I went into Norton, with DT I did find bad clusters, moved the file to OK clusters and marked the bad clusters as bad. Now it seems to keep happening from time to time. During autoexec.bat I get (NOT ALWAYS) an "error sector not found". Most of the time, if I hit retry it then executes properly. Sometimes I have to do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to make it try to reboot. When I do a disk test with Norton, it finds nothing wrong with either files or clusters. Has anybody had experience with such intermittent problems? I used to think that a sector IS or IS NOT bad, not that it sometimes is and sometimes is not! Is this a sign of upcoming major problems such as a final head crash? PS. Also, in the last two months, the hard disk has exhibited some vibrations (at times). A muffled noise similar to a circular saw in the next room! Anybody has any ideas? Thanks Eric
jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) (05/27/90)
phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >I have a Miniscribe 44Mb 28ms hard disk. It is 2 years old. >Lately I have lost some sectors that became bad. That happens during my >autoexec.bat at booting. The weird thing is that it seems to keep happening. >The first time, I went into Norton, with DT I did find bad clusters, moved the >file to OK clusters and marked >the bad clusters as bad. Now it seems to keep happening from time >to time. During autoexec.bat I get (NOT ALWAYS) an "error sector not found". >Most of the time, if I hit retry it then executes properly. >Sometimes I have to do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to make it try to reboot. When I do a >disk test with Norton, it finds nothing wrong with either files or clusters. > >Has anybody had experience with such intermittent problems? I used to think >that a sector IS or IS NOT bad, not that it sometimes is and sometimes is not! >Is this a sign of upcoming major problems such as a final head crash? Yes, I've found that such problems usually mean the drive is about to fail to the point where it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair or replacement. It does not mean this in all cases though. >PS. Also, in the last two months, the hard disk has exhibited some vibrations >(at times). A muffled noise similar to a circular saw in the next room! No idea at all. I do know that if a drive by Conner or Imprimis makes some sort of noise, I send it back since they're exceptionally quiet drives. I personally don't use nor like Miniscribe drives. Only drives at the present that I will buy for myself will be ones by Conner, Imprimis, and Maxtor. Unfortunately, I can't pass my quality control constraints to my customers. What I'd suggest doing is backing up your hard drive completely. Next do a low level format. Now take your favorite hard drive utility and do a continuous verify and/or surface analysis of the media overnight. Basically want you want to do is see if you can make the drive fail once and for all in a 24 hour period. The more comprehensive the utility, the better. Note that the utilities that are for DOS only aren't as comprehensive as one would think. I've had some DOS utilities report no bad sectors but then I go to install Xenix on it and its method of testing the disk finds something in the very first pass. Same goes with Novell's Compsurf. So beware, if you have ANY doubts about the disk and your data isn't worth a head crash or media failure, then replace the drive. Depending on how valuable your data is, you may want to get another hard drive anyway and use the Miniscribe as your second physical hard drive. // JCA /* **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* ** Flames : /dev/null | Small memory model only for ** ARPANET : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil | Unix? Get the (*bleep*) out ** INTERNET: jca@pnet01.cts.com | of here! ** UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* */