Hard Ddrives

[digistate]

Here's the deal...i'm going through IDE drives like there's no tomorrow. I'm quite disgusted with the whole concept of paying hundreds of dollars (my first big upgrade to 850MB back in 95' cost me like 380 bucks) and then 1-2 years later the damn thing died. I understand it's a mechanical device but if toyota and nissan can build cars that will run 300,000 miles don't you think we could get a hard drive that would last for at least longer than a few years? I went through a Maxtor phase where i thought "finallly...a good drive"....yeah right, i've been through three maxtors now and they've all just simply died. Then I thought WD was the way to go....but now i'm having them fail. So to get to my point "why should we have to buy SCSI drives to enjoy longevity in a hard drive?".......why even make an IDE drive if by the time you've bought a few IDE drives over the years that you could have just afforded a few good SCSI drives to begin with in the first place? Sorry, i'm done complaining but i'm in the middle of trying to re-allocate a drive for my daughter's computer at 1:30 a.m. in the morning (a Maxtor drive that just died) and I'm just frustrated.

thx,
steve

[Dax_Brandy]

Hi Steve. Welcome to Techimo!

Hard drives do get wear out sometimes, not to mention that in reality, bad batches of hard drives get delivered to distributors. SCSI drives are a bit expensive compared to IDE, and that is one reason why people prefer IDE over SCSI. imo.

[Uncle Bob]

Welcome to Tech IMO. Going through so many harddrives in a
short period of time leads me to belive the problem is some
where else in the machine. I have a maxtor with a manufacture
date 1995.

[jmichna]

I would have to agree with Uncle Bob on this one. I've used many brands of hard drives, and with rare exception (IBM's 75GXP "Death Star") I really haven't experienced an inordinate number of drive failures.

You may want to look for external causes:
Overheating of drives causes premature failure (case cooling adequate?)
External vibration (is the PC's case sitting on a floor (or even a desktop or rack) that is exposed to vibration... could be from music, machinery, etc. Even poorly mounted drive cages withing the PC case can permit extra vibration. Try mounting tiny O-rings (on the screw shaft) between the drive case and the mounting cage.

[digistate]

Thanks or the reply Dax_Brandy....yours is the most logical (to me). I'm not trying to say that the other guys may not have valid points but I think the part that I failed to mention (i was tired and it was late when i typed the original) is that I did a lot of research on IDE drives in general. Here is a link to a guy's site who is in data recovery http://www.driveservice.com/bestwrst.htm . I'm not some guy who is just slapping computers together with and having half the screws left over when I'm done.....i've been doing this awhile myself. My point is more directed at the hard drive industy itself because if you read that link you will see that a typical IDE drive is only tested to run 7-9 hours a day therefore by doing the math the expected lifespan of an IDE drive is MUCH lower than SCSI. Make sure to at least read the bottom part of the web page of the link I supplied....you will find an interesting story about an IBM engineer (of course I can't verify total validity of the story)....but I think it is worth reading and even researching more...especially if you run multiple computers at home (a mix of work and home pc's) and are puttting the hard drive manufacturer's children through college like I am by buying numerous drives over the years. Thank EVERYONE for there reply...Internet forums are truly the way for the world to communicate freely and most importantly....to gain knowledge from multiple people in any given field of expertise all over the world!! Thanks Guys,

steve