Computer HD Problems........Can anyone help?
Here's the deal......
In the last 6 months I've had 3 hard drives go bad on me. One was a Maxtor (60GB Internal), one was a Western Digital (200GB External) and now a Seagate (160GB Internal-3 months old with a 5 year warranty). I can get the Seagate replaced for free but what is causing this?
What's the chance of 3 drives going bad on their own? I'm starting to think its the computer somehow. The machine is hooked up to 2 surge protectors and a rack mount power conditioner. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary with shutting it off suddenly or abusing it in any way.
I've managed to at least mount the 160GB drive with disk software but it only says it's a 31GB drive and rcovering anything isn't possible (it sees the folders but nothing inside). I only lost a few files that I worked on the day before.
I use the machine for both graphics and digital audio (ProTools) and since I never experience problem while using either of those (very processor/drive intensive) I might have been just unlucky.... who knows at this point?
Do you think it's just 3 bad drives or could it be something else? This is driving me nuts.
Machine:
Mac Dual 1GhZ G4 (Quicksilver)
1 GB Ram
OSX 10.3.9 (everything else updated too)
In the last 6 months I've had 3 hard drives go bad on me. One was a Maxtor (60GB Internal), one was a Western Digital (200GB External) and now a Seagate (160GB Internal-3 months old with a 5 year warranty). I can get the Seagate replaced for free but what is causing this?
What's the chance of 3 drives going bad on their own? I'm starting to think its the computer somehow. The machine is hooked up to 2 surge protectors and a rack mount power conditioner. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary with shutting it off suddenly or abusing it in any way.
I've managed to at least mount the 160GB drive with disk software but it only says it's a 31GB drive and rcovering anything isn't possible (it sees the folders but nothing inside). I only lost a few files that I worked on the day before.
I use the machine for both graphics and digital audio (ProTools) and since I never experience problem while using either of those (very processor/drive intensive) I might have been just unlucky.... who knows at this point?
Do you think it's just 3 bad drives or could it be something else? This is driving me nuts.
Machine:
Mac Dual 1GhZ G4 (Quicksilver)
1 GB Ram
OSX 10.3.9 (everything else updated too)
Comments
What does disk utility say the S.M.A.R.T. status is? Did you try to re-format the drive?
Having three drives fail is a bit fishy. Is the machine stuffed full of things? Could it be a heat flow problem?
I didn't notice what the SMART status was when it was in and I didn't try to reformat. It's still under warranty so I'm sending it back.
Nope, the drive wasn't stuffed. It was a 160GB and I'd say close to 40gig was free.
They've all died when the machine was idle (when I come back the next day after it puts itself to sleep). I'd think that some kind of problem would show itself when I'm doing intensive work (recording digital audio, huge Photoshop files etc).
I know I turned off "put dives to sleep whenever possible" in the energy saver prefs.....should these be on even if the machine goes to sleep overnight?
Originally posted by Release
Nope, the drive wasn't stuffed. It was a 160GB and I'd say close to 40gig was free.
Sorry, I meant is the computer physically stuffed with things like PCI expansion cards etc...
Originally posted by Release
I know I turned off "put dives to sleep whenever possible" in the energy saver prefs.....should these be on even if the machine goes to sleep overnight?
No, you don't need to do that.
What I'm thinking is that the drives might not actually be physically failing, but rather the partition tables and drivers written onto the disc might be getting borked due to problems elsewhere in the computer.
Originally posted by Mr. H
[B]Sorry, I meant is the computer physically stuffed with things like PCI expansion cards etc...
Oops! Nope, just a stock machine for the most part other than added RAM and another internal HD.