And another HDD died!!!

[Stephen Coates]

Am I just lucky? Because I have never had a HD fail except the one in my Dell OptiPlex, which had only Windows 2000 and a IRC server and nothing else.

[J T]

I've had one die, in our old Pentium 133 machine. It was a bit of a pain but that's life. It hadn't even been used all that much

[TiredOfLife]

I bought a reconditioned Maxtor cheap, which failed after a short period.
I think it was guaranteed for a short period, but I didn't install it untill after that date had passed.

[Submeg]

Nope, havent had any, touch wood (I am referring to a table, door, breadboard etc...)

[Harrison]

I see you are adding a nice covering disclaimer to cover yourself against JT remarks there Submeg!

Worst HD failure I had was on my A1200 and I've mentioned it before on the old forums. I switched the A1200 on one morning and the HD just made a horrible clunking noise that sounded like the read/write head was tapping against the disk surface.

It was my main system at the time and was running a 1.2GB 3.5" HD inside the A1200. I was using the system for all of my University coursework and was one week away from the completion date for a big animation project we were doing. I was using Take2 for the animation on the Amiga and had captured in all the hand drawn frames, cleaned them up, inked them and started to colour them all, when the HD failed

The HD was still under warranty so I rang the company up and they said that I could either post the drive to them, and they would test it and then let me know, or I could take the HD to their shop in Croydon (London) and they would be able to look at it the same day. So as I really needed the HD to be able to complete my work I spent the day driving up to Croydon, parting in a horrible multi-story car park, and then walking round for a long time trying to find this store.

The manager in the store tested the drive and this showed it was dead, then he first said the drive would need to be posted back to the manufacturer for testing/repair and I would need to wait for it to be posted back. The engineer in store told me to wait a minute, and when the manager was out of the shop he gave me a new 1.3GB HD instead. Then about a month later another new 1.3GB HD arrives in the post direct from the manufacturer. So it all ended up very nicely with one HD for my A1200 and another for the A4000 I had just acquired.

I do have one other major HD data lose, but this wasn't an HD failure. It was on an Archon external A600/A1200 HD that plugs into the PCMCIA slot. The software to run the drive was actually stored on the PCMCIA card that was connected between the drive and the system and you could access the contents of the card as it contained a few utilities you could use for partitioning and other HD things. There was this program ICON that was not mentioned in the manual and I was unsure what it was there to do, so I decided to double click it and see. TO my horror this icon was an instant factory reset program. As soon as I launched the program a box came up saying "your drive is now setup and ready to use". I had been using the drive for a month or so and had a lot of stuff on there and a nice setup. All was gone and the drive was freshly formatted with nothing on it at all! That was a big shock. Quite mad that the program didn't even show a warning, it just ran and wiped the drive.

[Stephen Coates]

Did you manage to retrieve the data from any of those HDs harrison?

Am I right in thinking that if you just do a quick format of a drive then it doesn't actually remove any data, and just writes over it when you save new data onto it? It's just that someone mentioned something like that on another forum, when someone who repairs other peoples computers was trying to install Vista on one and it had several of his customer's HDs in and the Vista installer apparently formatted all the disks before he had time to stop it (without asking). It was only a quick format though.

I think that must be the third or forth time you have told us the story about the A1200 HD, but it is certainly good if you end up getting an extra one for free .

[Harrison]

Yeah I know I've told that story a few times but it still amazes me to have gotten two HDs from it.

And no, I didn't manage to get any of the data back from the dead A1200 HD. The drive head had collided with the surface of the disk so had damaged it. They just binned the drive and gave me a new one.

I did manage to restore much of the data on the Archon drive though once I realised what had happened. I just used an HD recovery utility. It recovered around 85% of the data I think. I then backed up the important stuff and then did a format and clean install of Workbench and everything else.

And yes, that is very true. When you do a quick HD format it just wipes the table of contents (TOC) from the HD so the OS thinks that drive is empty. So you can recover data as long as new files haven't been written over the same areas of the disk after this. Also when you delete files from a HD they are not actually physically deleted from the HD and are just removed from the TOC and are still actually on the drive until new files a written to the same area on the disk then they are replaced permanently.

It is also possible even when an HD has had a complete full format to recover data from the drive with specialist tools, which is why companies with sensitive data pay companies to professionally wipe the drives prior to selling them on, or destroy them.

[Submeg]

Nasty! Yes I must add disclaimers I feel, otherwise Im going to be burned some more :P question! I am considering buying a 500 GB external (or 750 GB) and I want to know, how stable are they? I have heard stories from people that they have just nudged them and they have corrupted etc....I would be keeping it on my desk while in use, never on an uneven surface.

[Harrison]

I've been using external harddrives for a long time, in fact even on the Amiga, and never had a problem with them being less stable than an internal harddrive.

For my PC external drives I do have them on a shelf just above the main desk so they don't get jogged and knocked, but that is just to keep them tidy and easy to get at.

For an external drive I would recommend you take a look at going for an external enclosure that you can place an internal harddrive into, rather than going for a premade external drive. You can save a lot going this route, plus you have direct access to the drive and enclosure so if either fail you can open it up and replace either the enclosure or harddrive at a later date.

[Demon Cleaner]

For an external drive I would recommend you take a look at going for an external enclosure that you can place an internal harddrive into, rather than going for a premade external drive.

I will give this a look I think. Just noticed that all my fruit machine stuff was also on that disk. I will send my HD back to Maxtor this week.