Beige G3 Eats HD's
Two hard drives stopped working this month, after years of use. One was a IBM 28Gb, the other was a Maxtor 80Gb, both ATA/133 and 7200 RPM. Yes, I know, ATA/133 in a beige G3. But it's worked for a year, so that's not the problem. I was able to back up my data because I noticed the main drive acting up. I removed the old drive, but now, after almost a week of using it, the backup drive won't boot. Both drives sound like they have a mechanical problem, lots of loud clicking immediately after spin-up, and the Maxtor spins at lower RPM after the clicking. Has anyone heard of a problem that would cause this (Ventilation in a beige G3, software incompatibilities, etc.), or is it just coincidence? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> Two HD"s in 1 week!
PS: I do have NAVirus utilities and TTPro. Both could not find anything wrong when I scanned between drives.
PS: I do have NAVirus utilities and TTPro. Both could not find anything wrong when I scanned between drives.
Comments
Edit- Well now, actually I have a 80 pin for the main HD, but I just saw the 40 pin I used for the second drive.
[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: Ebby ]</p>
If you want to protect your HD you need a n electrical protection.
*APC can't program squat if their life depended on it, but their hardware is good.
We had a power spike (actually the transformer outside our house actually exploded one day) and after that point, our CD ROM drive started functioning poorly, and we thought it or the controller on the mobo was damaged, so we bought an SCSI drive and a cable and used that. It worked fine for a while.
Then we started seeing menus open at random and strange errors would come up on the computer. Sometimes it appeared that someone else was controlling it. It eventually reached a point where it was hard to turn on (we usually left it on though) and one day, we turned it off and it would not reboot.
It got into a 4-stage cycle.
Power on - Crash Sound
Reboot - Hd Clicks hard and whirrs like it is broken
Reboot - Crash sound
Reboot - Starts booting and then says there is a PCI Error.
We sent it to be repaired.
man on phone: "bad mobo $700 to fix"
Us: "are you sure?"
Man on phone: "I'll check again"
Call back:
Man on Phone: "Some ram was bad, remove it and it works fine."
It's been good ever since then, and even the old CD ROM drive we thought was toasted still works and has since been swapped back in because I think the new SCSI one was getting slow.
it could be sending all the clean power in the world to no avail if your power supply is crapping it out on the other end.
the RAM suggestion is interesting, not sure why they would cause the problem, but i've heard of bad RAM doing weirder stuff than that.
do you have an extra power supply around that you could swap out? or know of any way to test it?
that would be the first place i'd be looking if i were in your shoes.
-alcimedes
<strong>hmm, i was going to suggest you might have a problem with your power supply. if there was something wrong between the UPS and the computer, then there's nothing the UPS could do about it.
it could be sending all the clean power in the world to no avail if your power supply is crapping it out on the other end.
the RAM suggestion is interesting, not sure why they would cause the problem, but i've heard of bad RAM doing weirder stuff than that.
do you have an extra power supply around that you could swap out? or know of any way to test it?
that would be the first place i'd be looking if i were in your shoes.
-alcimedes</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, this never occurred to me. And so simple/obvious. <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> I do have a spare power supply that may work. I'll try it.
-alcimedes