Hard drive recommendations?

[SweetErika]

Last Summer we bought a brand new Western Digital hard drive, and it died after a few months, taking a lot of data with it. After sending it back and a long battle with the idiots at WD, the sent us a replacement. Of course it was refurbished, not actually new.

We've since replaced everything except for the old HD and refurbished WD HD, and have been running XP. This morning, the everything froze and it started scandisk and assorted other "fixes". We ran a full XP scan disk, and it found a bunch of bad clusters on the WD HD. We've been able to run a few programs, but not really back anything up, and everything is painfully slow.

So...if anyone knows what might be going on and how to fix it, suggestions are welcome. The only thing is that with the current instability, we don't want to try anything that could reduce the chances of recovering data. Could XP be messing with the HDs? Hubby's convinced we need to buy yet another HD, but we don't really want to gamble on WD again in case it's a brand problem. He also wants to install a fresh copy of XP on the new one, but then we could only transfer over some of the data. If we do need to buy a new one, are there any brands you've had particularly good luck with?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Weird Harold]

Hubby's convinced we need to buy yet another HD, but we don't really want to gamble on WD again in case it's a brand problem. He also wants to install a fresh copy of XP on the new one, but then we could only transfer over some of the data. If we do need to buy a new one, are there any brands you've had particularly good luck with?

I've had generaly good luck with drives of any brand, but the drives I've got laying around because their only problem is they're too small are mostly Quantum brand. I've also had very good luck with Maxtors and Connor.

I think you're hubby is right -- you do need to replace the WD drive; especially if it keeps showing new bad clusters with a weekly surface test.

Since the new drive is likely to be significantly bigger than the old drive unless you deliberately pass up the opportunity to increase your drive space in the process, I'd slave the old drive to the new one after installing a fresh copy of XP and copy the entire contents to a folder on the new drive named "Old Drive" so you have everything you might need -- driver files, programs, registry entries, address books, financial info, etc.

 

[SweetErika]

I've had generaly good luck with drives of any brand, but the drives I've got laying around because their only problem is they're too small are mostly Quantum brand. I've also had very good luck with Maxtors and Connor.

I think you're hubby is right -- you do need to replace the WD drive; especially if it keeps showing new bad clusters with a weekly surface test.

Since the new drive is likely to be significantly bigger than the old drive unless you deliberately pass up the opportunity to increase your drive space in the process, I'd slave the old drive to the new one after installing a fresh copy of XP and copy the entire contents to a folder on the new drive named "Old Drive" so you have everything you might need -- driver files, programs, registry entries, address books, financial info, etc.

Thanks, Harold! We may go with a 200GB Seagate, but they offer a 5 year warranty so it feels like less of a risk than Western Digital. Hubby agrees and will go with your plan for installation and slaving the drives. It's just frustrating to go through this twice in a year, but hopefully a better brand and fresh copy of XP will do the trick.

 

[Weird Harold]

Thanks, Harold! We may go with a 200GB Seagate, but they offer a 5 year warranty so it feels like less of a risk than Western Digital.

I would have mentioned Seagate, but I thought they had been bought out and merged out of existance a long time ago.

One other suggestion: Partition that 200GB drive and put the copy of the old drive on the second partition. If you store everything you can on a drive other than C: it makes reformatting C: and reinstalling Windows much less traumatic when you need to do it.

 

[SweetErika]

I would have mentioned Seagate, but I thought they had been bought out and merged out of existance a long time ago.

One other suggestion: Partition that 200GB drive and put the copy of the old drive on the second partition. If you store everything you can on a drive other than C: it makes reformatting C: and reinstalling Windows much less traumatic when you need to do it.

Good idea. We're going to attempt to fix everything tonight, and I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[MagicFingers]

Copy the old disk?

You could "Ghost" the old drive onto the new one while it is still working.
I last used a program called pci_clone, which works very well on any brand of disk. Of course, if you copied a smaller onto a larger one, there would be space left over that is unformatted. With XP, at least my Pro version, you can go into the administrative tools and click on the unused portion of the disk and make it part of the C: drive, or another partition.

Yes, it IS a very good idea to put the old drive's contents in a separate partition on the new drive. Or even a copy of the NEW drive's windows, or the Install CD contents. This can speed up a repair or reinstall.

Lately, WD has had a good reputation. Yours isn't a notebook, is it?
I personally like Maxtor and have never had a problem with them.
Yes, I think someone bought out/merged Quantum or Seagate. I never liked either, especially Quantum.
I have had really bad luck with Fujitsu.
One IBM brand I got worked well, but they required special "tools" to format and optimise them.

 

[SweetErika]

You could "Ghost" the old drive onto the new one while it is still working.
I last used a program called pci_clone, which works very well on any brand of disk. Of course, if you copied a smaller onto a larger one, there would be space left over that is unformatted. With XP, at least my Pro version, you can go into the administrative tools and click on the unused portion of the disk and make it part of the C: drive, or another partition.

Yes, it IS a very good idea to put the old drive's contents in a separate partition on the new drive. Or even a copy of the NEW drive's windows, or the Install CD contents. This can speed up a repair or reinstall.

Lately, WD has had a good reputation. Yours isn't a notebook, is it?
I personally like Maxtor and have never had a problem with them.
Yes, I think someone bought out/merged Quantum or Seagate. I never liked either, especially Quantum.
I have had really bad luck with Fujitsu.
One IBM brand I got worked well, but they required special "tools" to format and optimise them.

Thanks, Magic. We did put in the Seagate and installed a fresh copy of XP because we were concerrned that something got screwed up when we did the repair install last time, and didn't want that to carry over. We've had to reinstall programs and fix settings, but all went well. Tomorrow we'll try to recover a few things like bookmarks.

My main issue with WD is that they put me through hell on the return of the first one (which their own diagnostics branded as faulty). Apparently they had a different set of rules than they gave customers for packing the damaged HD, so they just returned the package unopened, and then I got the run-around from their customer service people for months. It took contacting the VP of Customer Relations through the BBB for them to replace it, and even then, they sent this refurbished one which has also gone bad. We just don't want to deal with that again, and hopefully we won't have to find out what Seagate's customer service is like.

 

[Brainboyz]

If you're worried about HD failure taking out your data, look into RAID level 1. Takes 2 or more hard drives and a $60+ dollar card (or a RAID program, but hardware is faster), but stores the same data on both drives so if one dies it will tell you and merrily go along on the good drive until you can replace the bad one. Works quite well; I've been running RAID1 for a year on my personal computer now and after 1 drive failure with no lost data I am a satisfied customer! While some say it's overkill on a home computer, not losing my personal files was definitely worth the cost of the second drive and card.

Lately, WD has had a good reputation. Yours isn't a notebook, is it?
I personally like Maxtor and have never had a problem with them.
Yes, I think someone bought out/merged Quantum or Seagate. I never liked either, especially Quantum.
I have had really bad luck with Fujitsu.
One IBM brand I got worked well, but they required special "tools" to format and optimise them.

WD's quality has been getting better, but they still aren't good enough to overcome the stigma they built for themselves in the '90's. Maxtor and Seagate have always been better than average drives in my experience. I even have a 30MB (not GB, only stores 20 or so floppies) Seagate that still runs just fine despite being the size of a small brick. Quantum and Fujitsu I've had bad experiences with also. IBM used to be easy to use when they stayed with the standard, but those tools they use these days make life hell. I've never dealt with customer service for any of the drives because they've either gone bad within a month, lasted 5-10 years, or been replaced with a bigger drive.

Good luck with your new drive SweetErika, may the computer gods treat you well.

 

[SweetErika]

If you're worried about HD failure taking out your data, look into RAID level 1. Takes 2 or more hard drives and a $60+ dollar card (or a RAID program, but hardware is faster), but stores the same data on both drives so if one dies it will tell you and merrily go along on the good drive until you can replace the bad one. Works quite well; I've been running RAID1 for a year on my personal computer now and after 1 drive failure with no lost data I am a satisfied customer! While some say it's overkill on a home computer, not losing my personal files was definitely worth the cost of the second drive and card.



WD's quality has been getting better, but they still aren't good enough to overcome the stigma they built for themselves in the '90's. Maxtor and Seagate have always been better than average drives in my experience. I even have a 30MB (not GB, only stores 20 or so floppies) Seagate that still runs just fine despite being the size of a small brick. Quantum and Fujitsu I've had bad experiences with also. IBM used to be easy to use when they stayed with the standard, but those tools they use these days make life hell. I've never dealt with customer service for any of the drives because they've either gone bad within a month, lasted 5-10 years, or been replaced with a bigger drive.

Good luck with your new drive SweetErika, may the computer gods treat you well.

Great info to keep in mind for the future. Thanks, Brainboyz!

 

[Hexxed]

WD's quality has been getting better, but they still aren't good enough to overcome the stigma they built for themselves in the '90's. Maxtor and Seagate have always been better than average drives in my experience. I even have a 30MB (not GB, only stores 20 or so floppies) Seagate that still runs just fine despite being the size of a small brick. Quantum and Fujitsu I've had bad experiences with also. IBM used to be easy to use when they stayed with the standard, but those tools they use these days make life hell. I've never dealt with customer service for any of the drives because they've either gone bad within a month, lasted 5-10 years, or been replaced with a bigger drive.

Good luck with your new drive SweetErika, may the computer gods treat you well.

I'll say good luck as well. Hope it works and you were able to copy over data to the new drive. I had the same problem with a maxtor drive 2 months ago and now the refurb they sent me is acting up from time to time. Personally I've had no trouble with WD stuff, had a few die but usually it was long after their warranties had gone out.

 

[Brinnie]

Lacie External HD Is the best.

 

[numezze]

i have been running the same Maxtor hard drive on one of my systems for 3 years and never had a problem with it.another has a Maxtor in it for 1 and a half years with no trouble.
i have also had good luck with seagate hard drives, and have sold a few to customers i have done builds for. no complaints yet.
numezze