Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Well last week I replaced an older Maxtor 20 gig drive with a new 6Y120P0
model 120 gig drive.

This morning I was greeted by a BSOD: KERNAL_DATA_PAGE_ERROR.

I found out two things:

one of my Maxtor drives that make up a RAID 0 array has failed.

I dealt with that and rebooted, only to find out that I also have no C:
drive (the week old Maxtor). That drive isn't even being seen by the BIOS!
All I hear is a 'clank' sound when that drive is accessed by the boot
routine.

Well I guess that does it for Maxtors. They have an MTBF of about 168
hours...

Too bad I lost all my income tax return data. It was a complex business
return that I've been working on for weeks. I had backed it up across
multiple partitions, but of course, all partitions are gone...

--

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

> Well I guess that does it for Maxtors. They have an MTBF of about 168
> hours...


The Maxtors that I've owned have lasted anywhere from 2 weeks to 6
months. They're definately at the bottom of my list.


-WD

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 15:18:54 GMT, "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss"
<mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Well last week I replaced an older Maxtor 20 gig drive with a new 6Y120P0
>model 120 gig drive.
>
>This morning I was greeted by a BSOD: KERNAL_DATA_PAGE_ERROR.
>
>I found out two things:
>
>one of my Maxtor drives that make up a RAID 0 array has failed.
>
>I dealt with that and rebooted, only to find out that I also have no C:
>drive (the week old Maxtor). That drive isn't even being seen by the BIOS!
>All I hear is a 'clank' sound when that drive is accessed by the boot
>routine.
>
>Well I guess that does it for Maxtors. They have an MTBF of about 168
>hours...
>
>Too bad I lost all my income tax return data. It was a complex business
>return that I've been working on for weeks. I had backed it up across
>multiple partitions, but of course, all partitions are gone...

Recalling your previous post...
Maxtor drives do not fail that quickly without some serious problem
outside of the drive itself. If you'd had one drive fail that might just
make you unlucky, but with failure after failure you're either so unlucky
that you'd better start chanting, rolling the bones and drawing circles
around yourself, else you're causing these drive's failures.

If you can't get a drive working right for your needs, pay a professional
to do it. Perhaps you have poor power or your wife kicks your system out
of spite... I just don't know, but nobody is so unlucky to have this many
failures with different models, not with so many other people seeing
normal service, no significant difference in failure rate of Maxtors over
any other brand.

If you lost all your income tax return data, it's your own fault. I
emphasized making backups but you didn't seem to have enough sense to take
that to heart and just do it. Learn from your mistakes instead of whining
and blaming.

On the other hand, you seem to be a troll, against Maxtor, since you
previously reported problems yet bought another Maxtor. If you'd had
valid suspicions about Maxtor drives they would've been the last brand to
buy, since they aren't the only brand out there...

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hmmm. I guess I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who stores
semi-critical documents on a RAID 0 device without off-drive backups. With
RAID 0, you basically double your chances of losing the data on your drives.
You might put in the array for performance or space reasons, but it's not a
good fit for business related documents, in my mind. And assuming that your
multiple partitions were on the same drive, I'm not sure what you were
expecting to gain by doing that. Ideally, you'd have a backup off-site, a
backup off computer, and I guess another backup on your computer if you so
desire, preferrably on another HD. Putting it on another partition is no
more safe than another folder on the same HD, in terms of protection from
hardware failures.

BTW, RAID 1 is the one to use for systems you want to make safer, but you'll
lose half your storage space. RAID 5 is a compromise between the
performance benefits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1, but I don't know
if I've seen a motherboard based IDE version of this available.

Clint

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:yTzcc.11888$NL4.4909@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Well last week I replaced an older Maxtor 20 gig drive with a new 6Y120P0
> model 120 gig drive.
>
> This morning I was greeted by a BSOD: KERNAL_DATA_PAGE_ERROR.
>
> I found out two things:
>
> one of my Maxtor drives that make up a RAID 0 array has failed.
>
> I dealt with that and rebooted, only to find out that I also have no C:
> drive (the week old Maxtor). That drive isn't even being seen by the BIOS!
> All I hear is a 'clank' sound when that drive is accessed by the boot
> routine.
>
> Well I guess that does it for Maxtors. They have an MTBF of about 168
> hours...
>
> Too bad I lost all my income tax return data. It was a complex business
> return that I've been working on for weeks. I had backed it up across
> multiple partitions, but of course, all partitions are gone...
>
> --
>
> Take care,
>
> Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
>
> Business sites at:
> www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
> www.mwcomms.com
> www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
> -
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

> Recalling your previous post...
> Maxtor drives do not fail that quickly without some serious problem
> outside of the drive itself. If you'd had one drive fail that might just
> make you unlucky, but with failure after failure you're either so unlucky
> that you'd better start chanting, rolling the bones and drawing circles
> around yourself, else you're causing these drive's failures.

Yeah, I suppose I need to hire a voodoo expert, as I seem to be haunted with
many Maxtor failures.
I should point out that the failures were on various PCs, not all on one PC.

After letting this PC cool down for an hour, I was able to boot it. The C
drive was flakey however, appearing then disappearing and causing Win 2K to
BSOD during boot with a no valid boot device error. A subsequent reboot
allowed Windows to boot fully and I've managed to copy over critical
business data from the 1st physical drive to another drive. The problem is
that I've got over 100 gigs of data left on the RAID with nowhere large
enough to copy it to. It would take 27 hours to back it up to DVD-R discs.

I think the ultimate solution is to go back to SCSI drives. I've never had
one of those fail. The problem is price and low capacity and low speed
(compared to today's fast IDE drives).


> If you can't get a drive working right for your needs, pay a professional
> to do it. Perhaps you have poor power or your wife kicks your system out
> of spite... I just don't know, but nobody is so unlucky to have this many
> failures with different models, not with so many other people seeing
> normal service, no significant difference in failure rate of Maxtors over
> any other brand.

I've been building computers professionally since the 1980s, and I am a
certified Professional Engineer with BSEE and BSME degrees, so I certainly
know how to install and setup simple PC hard drives. I've taken into account
factors like conditioned power, thermodynamics and cable dress, to ensure
that I've eliminated as many causes for failure as possible. The room
temperature is 66 degrees F, dropping to 64F overnight (which is when the
drive failed).

I've got a TrippLite line conditioner on this circuit and the whole circuit
feeding the computer network is fed by a huge APC UPS with additional line
filtering. As a last line of defense, I have power strips with MOV surge
protectors, right where the PC is plugged in.

Thermally, I have six 80 and 120mm fans cooling the tower. The new drive
that failed, was the one by itself, closest to one of the fans, in the
bottom of the case. Clearly, if the drive cannot function at 75F (internal
temp measured at that location) then there is something clearly wrong with
it.

In contrast, my Seagate 4.5GB wide SCSI drive is in another system that has
only one fan in the PSU, runs hot as hell, and has been running since 1995
24/7 without a failure, and continues to run as I type this. I also have a
Seagate ST12550N in a Pentium 100 system, that also runs hot, but has been
running since 1991, 24/7 and is accessible right now.


> If you lost all your income tax return data, it's your own fault. I
> emphasized making backups but you didn't seem to have enough sense to take
> that to heart and just do it. Learn from your mistakes instead of whining
> and blaming.

I'll admit that was not so smart, but TaxCut needs a floppy to back up and
the new systems don't have floppy drives. I was planning to burn a CD the
other day, but didn't get around to it. Frankly, I didn't expect the new
drive to fail so soon.


> On the other hand, you seem to be a troll, against Maxtor, since you
> previously reported problems yet bought another Maxtor. If you'd had
> valid suspicions about Maxtor drives they would've been the last brand to
> buy, since they aren't the only brand out there...

Not at all. You seem to have an attitude problem. But then Usenet is full of
your high and mighty kind. I'm a power user of hardware and I am just
dismayed that IDE drives don't last to 1% of their MTBF rating. They should
last as long as SCSI drives, but alas, I think I am seeing a false economy
with IDE.. they are apparently built of cheap components to sell cheap, and
the consolation is liberal return policies. A waste-making business
philosophy.


--

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Clint" <noone@nowhere.invalid> wrote in message
news:mbBcc.38707$Ig.9830@pd7tw2no...
> Hmmm. I guess I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who
stores
> semi-critical documents on a RAID 0 device without off-drive backups.
With
> RAID 0, you basically double your chances of losing the data on your
drives.
> You might put in the array for performance or space reasons, but it's not
a
> good fit for business related documents, in my mind. And assuming that
your
> multiple partitions were on the same drive, I'm not sure what you were
> expecting to gain by doing that. Ideally, you'd have a backup off-site, a
> backup off computer, and I guess another backup on your computer if you so
> desire, preferrably on another HD. Putting it on another partition is no
> more safe than another folder on the same HD, in terms of protection from
> hardware failures.
>
> BTW, RAID 1 is the one to use for systems you want to make safer, but
you'll
> lose half your storage space. RAID 5 is a compromise between the
> performance benefits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1, but I don't
know
> if I've seen a motherboard based IDE version of this available.
>
> Clint


In case it wasn't clear, I had TWO physical drives fail over night.

The RAID is loaded with 100+ gigs of video projects in progress.

The non-RAID C drive is where the business data is.

After cooling the system down, I was able to access both again. But having
to run the drives at 66F seems a little extreme. My Seagate SCSI drives are
running at 128F and continue to run, going on 14 years of 24/7 operation
now, with zero problems. The SCSI have no extra cooling fans. The IDEs
however have SIX big cooling fans the move air through the tower rapidly.
This was done as this system was originally built with overclocking in mind,
but the system is being run and standard clock rates and enjoying
below-average temperatures as a result of the excessive number of cooling
fans.

The problem is something's wrong with these drives. I wonder if
CompuPlus.com, where I buy these drives, is selling me factory seconds?
Their prices are always 20-30% lower than the competition. The 6Y0P0 120GB
8MG cache drive was $86 through them, as much as $129 elswhere.



--

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Ahh, I understand more now.

BTW, the only HD I've had fail in the recent past (like last 7 years) was a
Maxtor 60GB 5400 rpm drive. I had actually ordered a CD burner to backup 10
months worth of pictures, had the burner sitting at my brother-in-law's
place awaiting their next trip to visit, and it died in the 1 week period
between him picking up the drive and delivering it. I had backups of most
of the pictures, except for the last month, which included my son's 3rd
birthday. Whoops. Try explaining that one to the wife! Of course, it's
easier to get permission for new hardware purchases now... Oh, and the
Maxtor replacement policy got me a 80GB drive in exchange for the 60, which
was nice. But my primary drive is now a Seagate rather than the 80GB
Maxtor. I just use the Maxtor as a backup for the primary drive.

Clint

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:y_Bcc.11943$NL4.5052@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> "Clint" <noone@nowhere.invalid> wrote in message
> news:mbBcc.38707$Ig.9830@pd7tw2no...
> > Hmmm. I guess I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who
> stores
> > semi-critical documents on a RAID 0 device without off-drive backups.
> With
> > RAID 0, you basically double your chances of losing the data on your
> drives.
> > You might put in the array for performance or space reasons, but it's
not
> a
> > good fit for business related documents, in my mind. And assuming that
> your
> > multiple partitions were on the same drive, I'm not sure what you were
> > expecting to gain by doing that. Ideally, you'd have a backup off-site,
a
> > backup off computer, and I guess another backup on your computer if you
so
> > desire, preferrably on another HD. Putting it on another partition is
no
> > more safe than another folder on the same HD, in terms of protection
from
> > hardware failures.
> >
> > BTW, RAID 1 is the one to use for systems you want to make safer, but
> you'll
> > lose half your storage space. RAID 5 is a compromise between the
> > performance benefits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1, but I don't
> know
> > if I've seen a motherboard based IDE version of this available.
> >
> > Clint
>
>
> In case it wasn't clear, I had TWO physical drives fail over night.
>
> The RAID is loaded with 100+ gigs of video projects in progress.
>
> The non-RAID C drive is where the business data is.
>
> After cooling the system down, I was able to access both again. But having
> to run the drives at 66F seems a little extreme. My Seagate SCSI drives
are
> running at 128F and continue to run, going on 14 years of 24/7 operation
> now, with zero problems. The SCSI have no extra cooling fans. The IDEs
> however have SIX big cooling fans the move air through the tower rapidly.
> This was done as this system was originally built with overclocking in
mind,
> but the system is being run and standard clock rates and enjoying
> below-average temperatures as a result of the excessive number of cooling
> fans.
>
> The problem is something's wrong with these drives. I wonder if
> CompuPlus.com, where I buy these drives, is selling me factory seconds?
> Their prices are always 20-30% lower than the competition. The 6Y0P0 120GB
> 8MG cache drive was $86 through them, as much as $129 elswhere.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Take care,
>
> Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
>
> Business sites at:
> www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
> www.mwcomms.com
> www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
> -
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Clint" <noone@nowhere.invalid> wrote in message
news:NaCcc.37767$oR5.8271@pd7tw3no...
> Ahh, I understand more now.
>
> BTW, the only HD I've had fail in the recent past (like last 7 years) was
a
> Maxtor 60GB 5400 rpm drive. I had actually ordered a CD burner to backup
10
> months worth of pictures, had the burner sitting at my brother-in-law's
> place awaiting their next trip to visit, and it died in the 1 week period
> between him picking up the drive and delivering it. I had backups of most
> of the pictures, except for the last month, which included my son's 3rd
> birthday. Whoops. Try explaining that one to the wife! Of course,
it's
> easier to get permission for new hardware purchases now... Oh, and the
> Maxtor replacement policy got me a 80GB drive in exchange for the 60,
which
> was nice. But my primary drive is now a Seagate rather than the 80GB
> Maxtor. I just use the Maxtor as a backup for the primary drive.
>
> Clint


This incident has had me reconsidering SCSI again. Although the cost of half
a terrabyte of SCSI storage would easily be more than that of all the
computer hardware on this network!

I try to make reasonable backups, and really important stuff, if it's not
too big, gets backed up often, like every save, but the hundreds of gigs of
video work in progress presents a problem. Tax records were also a problem.
I had put in about 20 hours of calculation, records reseach and finding out
how to enter this and that deduction. I had backed it up on March 17th. I
made multiple copies across partitions after that, in case I overwrote C:
again with a system image restore as is often the case. Not expecting a new
drive to fail, not one with FDB an SMART reporting a healthy drive last
night.

I've written a stern letter to CompuPlus regarding the drive failure and
questioning whether they are selling grey market, rejected or otherwise less
than full-quality drives.

It's interesting that I have a 9 year old Western Digital drive in an old
Pentium 200 PC that is still flawless.

But I won't be buying anymore Maxtors. I've had it with them. I will write
their CEO with my dissatisfaction.



--

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

> I'm going out to Circuit City to buy an overpriced Western Digital drive to
> replace this one.
> I already have a spare 6Y0L0 80 gig drive for the RAID (the replacement that
> Maxtor sent me last year for the first drive that failed).
> I suppose I'll have to get Maxtor to replace these drives, but I won't
> install the replacements. I'll sell them on Ebay to get my money back.


I originally bought a pair of Maxtors to make a RAID 0 array. One of
them failed pretty quickly. Each of the drives I have received as an
RMA has also failed, except for the very latest one. If it fails
within a period of 30 days, they should give you a new one. Otherwise,
you get a "refurbished" one.


-WD

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Will Dormann" <wdormann@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:ZxCcc.25988$bP5.3657@fe1.columbus.rr.com...
> Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
>
> > I'm going out to Circuit City to buy an overpriced Western Digital drive
to
> > replace this one.
> > I already have a spare 6Y0L0 80 gig drive for the RAID (the replacement
that
> > Maxtor sent me last year for the first drive that failed).
> > I suppose I'll have to get Maxtor to replace these drives, but I won't
> > install the replacements. I'll sell them on Ebay to get my money back.
>
>
> I originally bought a pair of Maxtors to make a RAID 0 array. One of
> them failed pretty quickly. Each of the drives I have received as an
> RMA has also failed, except for the very latest one. If it fails
> within a period of 30 days, they should give you a new one. Otherwise,
> you get a "refurbished" one.
>
>
> -WD


This new one was purchased a week ago. But the manufacture date is Sept
2003. CompuPlus must have had it sitting in the warehouse a while.
The Maxtor RMA procedure goes by the serial number and that's it. Their form
doesn't ask the purchase date.

I know they will replace the drive as in the past, but I will not use them
again. I'm going to put in Western Digital this time and see if things go
better.



--

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com < NOW ONLINE!
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com < NEW Streaming Archives!
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

> This new one was purchased a week ago. But the manufacture date is Sept
> 2003. CompuPlus must have had it sitting in the warehouse a while.
> The Maxtor RMA procedure goes by the serial number and that's it. Their form
> doesn't ask the purchase date.

The last RMA that I did was using their website. I think it was this link:
https://www.maxtor.com/en/support/s [...] er.cfm?dt=

I know that in one of the steps they asked if the drive failed before or
after 30 days of use. (This is what determines whether you get a new
or used drive as an RMA)

This is the way it was when I last did it. (around September).
The new drive that they sent me is still working fine in my MythTV
machine. (Knock on wood)

All other RMA drives they sent me were used, and also had failed before
too long. This doesn't surprise me, as the Maxtor Powermax software
has a "Factory Recertification" test that you can do. I've had drives
which would be making this repeated "ker-thunk" sound and the PC is
frozen during that time, but it still passed the factory recertification.


-WD

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 17:36:13 GMT, "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss"
<mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote:


>Yeah, I suppose I need to hire a voodoo expert, as I seem to be haunted with
>many Maxtor failures.
>I should point out that the failures were on various PCs, not all on one PC.

That's the puzzling part. I didn't mean to get too personal, but look at
it from our perspective, that the only commonality here is that you are
involved... There is no obvious problem in what you're doing, at least not
that you mention, yet your failure rates are atypical... If it were only
one or two drives, it could be considered a random failure, but it's not
so random after multiple failures.

>After letting this PC cool down for an hour, I was able to boot it. The C
>drive was flakey however, appearing then disappearing and causing Win 2K to
>BSOD during boot with a no valid boot device error. A subsequent reboot
>allowed Windows to boot fully and I've managed to copy over critical
>business data from the 1st physical drive to another drive. The problem is
>that I've got over 100 gigs of data left on the RAID with nowhere large
>enough to copy it to. It would take 27 hours to back it up to DVD-R discs.

Ya know, some RAID controllers are prone to lose configurations. Since
you have multiple systems at issue you might not be having this problem,
but it's another thing to consider.


>I think the ultimate solution is to go back to SCSI drives. I've never had
>one of those fail. The problem is price and low capacity and low speed
>(compared to today's fast IDE drives).

If that's what it takes, use SCSI. On the other hand, mirrored arrays of
IDE drives may not be more expensive, and would provide the redundancy
that's clearly needed, particularly for somone like yourself who keeps
having drive failures and can't take the time to make backups.


>> If you can't get a drive working right for your needs, pay a professional
>> to do it. Perhaps you have poor power or your wife kicks your system out
>> of spite... I just don't know, but nobody is so unlucky to have this many
>> failures with different models, not with so many other people seeing
>> normal service, no significant difference in failure rate of Maxtors over
>> any other brand.
>
>I've been building computers professionally since the 1980s, and I am a
>certified Professional Engineer with BSEE and BSME degrees, so I certainly
>know how to install and setup simple PC hard drives. I've taken into account
>factors like conditioned power, thermodynamics and cable dress, to ensure
>that I've eliminated as many causes for failure as possible. The room
>temperature is 66 degrees F, dropping to 64F overnight (which is when the
>drive failed).

yeah, yeah, yeah.... No doubt you're good at many aspects of PCs, but
NOBODY is an expert at everything. Actually it's usually the engineers or
wannabes that have the most problems because in addition to their
knowledge they have preconceived notions, assumptions that aren't
necessarily true. The preceeding isn't _necessarily_ directed at you,
but it could apply. Re/re/review everything again