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Thread #: 1104

Another Gateway hard drive failure

HitScan

Wed Oct 24 15:39:31 2001

As I sat here today I tore apart one of the 3 hard drives that failed in one of my Gateway boxes at work. I've torn a couple apart and know pretty well what's going on inside, but today was different. This drive was a little odd looking. For the trivia buffs, it's a Western Digital Caviar 13200, a 3GB drive.

For 1, only about 3/5 of the platter was being used. The hard stop bracket would allow the head to travel within 1/8 of an inch of the edge, but it has never been there before today. This makes me wonder about just why in the hell this thing was sold as a 3GB drive. The platters could almost certainly hold 4-6. This displeases me. The 40’s I’ve got at home had best be using their full capacity for the price I paid. :mad:

The second bit of oddness, and the most important as to my theory as to why the damned thing died, is the dust ring. No typo there, this thing has a ring on the outer ~ 2/5 of the platter made entirely of fine dust particles. Hard drives are supposed to be hermetically sealed in a dust-free environment and only allow air in through very high quality filters. The in-drive filter for re-circulating air was also just filthy. It had so much dust on it that one side was pretty dark. What the fuck?

Is it really too much to ask for a damned drive to be built right? To function maybe? This thing makes a hell of a grinding noise too, it's nasty. (I suspect it's because they use a Neodynium magnet to "park" the heads as it spins down, and the voice coil is having problems getting enough juice to move them.)

Anyhow, I know this damn well isn't the place to find out about hard drive fauilures, but I needed to vent.

Consider yourselves informed.

Magus

Wed Oct 24 15:42:32 2001

OK, I'm informed. A dust ring? Suckage. For my own edification, any idea how it managed to fubar like that?
HitScan

Wed Oct 24 15:54:40 2001

Probly a failure in the seal somehow. I wasn't impressed with the air intake filter either. The old Maxtor I tore apart a while back had a much better design. It's also possible that not enough air got in, sending the heads careening into the platters, but they looked spotless, save for the landing zone, which was quite rough.
Upon closer inspection the heads have a weird wear pattern on them too, like they weren't the proper shape, or got tilted somehow. Either of which would have FUBAR'd it reallly good.


It juse occured to me, if I had a brain in my head I'd have tried to turn it on with no cover to see what happened. A little late for that now though, heh. (I wanted the magnets out of it, so I kind of jumped the gun on tearing shit up :biggrin: )

HitScan

Wed Oct 24 16:19:16 2001

I almost forgot, it wasn't sealed the same way most drives are. There was a good 1/16" gap all the way around it, and they just used some matallic tape to cover it. Not the best solution.
Riso

Wed Oct 24 16:52:23 2001

That's why you're not supposed to use WD drives in the first place ;)
HitScan

Wed Oct 24 17:06:41 2001

I've never had a problem on my own. :(
It's only the ones in these Gateways that seem to cause me difficulty :mad:

3 of them died recently. 2 of which were less than 1 year old. Fauk that.

But the ones I've got at home appear to rawk. Nary a peep, and they're pretty quiet. (of course, they're a different model and built better, so who knows.)

HitScan

Wed Oct 24 17:09:44 2001

Aw hell! almost forgot. There is some good news at home. I got the latest ATI xp Release drivers, and it appears that they kick copious amounts of ass. I dig it. No Mo' Crashseses. W00t.
Riso

Wed Oct 24 17:35:38 2001

/me wants his Radeon x500
DuffMan

Wed Oct 24 17:57:38 2001

I have a WD drive from arround that era (6 gig) and it has failed twice. I think WD had a lot of quality issues arround that period of time, but their newer stuff tends to be better.
HitScan

Wed Oct 24 18:05:45 2001

That's what I'm hoping. Especially since I've got nearly 1/4TB worth of there disks in my new box, I'd appreciate it if they would continue functioning, heh.
Magus

Wed Oct 24 21:13:59 2001

Never had a problem with WD, myself. Of course, I never have had any from then, either...
Harbinger

Thu Oct 25 14:32:59 2001

The only WD drives I've had crap out have been in the 1.2-2GB range, so obviously they are quite old.

I had a Maxtor die at work last year, but it was promptly replaced.

Seagates seem to be rare on-the-shelf items these days, at least at stores and vendors I frequent.  What's happened to the "#1 HD Manufacturer" these days?