Hard disk failure (?) on T30

[Derek B. Cornish]

My wife's T30 (a 2366-115 model: 1.8Ghz, 40GB, 256M, XP) is one year old, bought from new at IBM on eBay, and has had hardly any use. Last night it hung on a web page and nothing would work except holding the start button down for 7-8 secs to turn the machine off. Since then the machine has refused to start up XP.

When we turned it on again, we got a list of menu options for starting (safe mode, etc), but whatever menu choice we made, startup would get as far as the XP logo then sit there while the hd clicked repetitively. If we left it long enough, it would eventually cycle back to the opening menu choices.

PC-DoctorDos indicated that the hd was spinning up ok, and it passed most of the hd diagnostics in the first column, but was clearly not able to "read:verify" properly. I also made up a set of recovery floppies, but could not access the recovery console to do a chkdsk. Later, I found the C: drive to be inaccessible from the command prompt.

To cut a long night's story short, suspecting hd failure - and being in warranty - we called up IBM and are getting a replacement hd sent by return (great service, I have to say...).

Out of this mishap, arise some questions I'd really like some advice on:

1. Do the above symptoms sound to others like a hd failure? Or could there be some other explanation?

2. Is there anything else I can try to get it going?

2. Is hd failure something the 40Ghz T30 is particularly prone to?

Derek

[JHEM]

Yes, it sounds like a HD failure. No, there's nothing I would try to get it going again if PC Dr. reports that it can't read or write.

As to whether some 40GB HD is prone to failure, we'd have to know WHICH 40GB HD you've got.

Regards,

James

[Derek B. Cornish]

James,

Sorry - should have mentioned. It is a Toshiba MK4019GAX HDD2171 M ZE01 T. It's FRU P/N 08K9758.

As I mentioned, it performed all the Diagnostic tests (in the first menu of PC-Doctor), apart from the Read:Verify. I had to abort that one because it was clearly going to take a week (I kid you not) to get through it.

The reason I ask about reliability is that it has made me think about whether I should be planning to upgrade the main hd at this point and use the replacement drive as a backup spare. I imagine I could get a cradle of some sorts to use it in the Ultrabay. Any advice on this idea?

I've always had Thinkpads since my first - a little pre-TP N33SX in 1990 or so. Before that, it was Zenith portables. This is my first hd failure, so it's been a little traumatic...

The second reason (and maybe I should be posting this in another section) is that I can see that we may need to develop a more comprehensive backup policy for the T30. With these multigig drives, it's hard to decide whether to go for just selective backups of vital data to CD-R or small external hd (which is what I do at present), and then plan to reinstall everything if the main drive fails. Or get a much bigger external drive and begin to take regular images of the whole notebook drive.

I was wondering what others are doing these days?

Derek

[BillMorrow]

derek..

most just clone their drives and use a similar capacity drive to do it..
thus if the main drive dies, just swap in the backup drive and continue without interruption..

saves a lot of time..

i suggest an external USB HDD encloseure..
this makes it fast and more universal..

otherwise a 2nd HDD adapter in place of the USB HDD encloseure..

at this point, i also suggest acronis true image as the clone utility..

[ashleys]

Derek,
Here is my current backup strategy which you may useful, I too have a T30 (running Windows 2000 SP4)

T30 Hard drive partitioned as follows,

C: System partition
D: Personal data partition including all critical non-system data, E-Mail files, spreadsheets, word documents etc.
R: Recovery partition

I always try to ensure that all volatile data, whether personal or otherwise is on the D: drive. The C: partition is only for system files.

I have two batch files, one called BACKUP and the other ARCHIVE. BACKUP uses XCOPY to make incremental backups of selected folders from my D: drive. ARCHIVE uses XCOPY to make incremental backups of *ALL* folders on D: to my USB disk enclosure which contains a 120GB Hitachi deskstar device.
Using these simple batch files makes keeping both my backup and archived data up-to-date very easy.
For backing up the system I use Rescue & Recovery. I take a full system backup each time and write it to both my R: partition *AND* the USB enclosure. I have also created the Recovery desktop area on the USB device.

Using this method, I can recover personal data from either the T30 hard drive or in the event of HD failure, the USB enclosure. A system recovery would be made by either using the Rescue & Recovery backup from the USB enclosure or at worst my recovery CD's.

Ashley.

[Derek B. Cornish]

Bill -

(The slight delay in anwsering was due to the day or so's work getting the replacement HDD installed and loaded .)

Thanks very much for the advice. The time I spent setting things up again has convinced me that I'll have to invest in some HDD's for backup purposes. I've got an A31, so I'll probably put the spare in the lhs Ultrabay. Using an external for the T30 sounds a good idea. I'll take a look at the Acronis software, too.

By the way, is the Toshiba 40gig FRU P/N 08K9758 prone to premature failure? Not an idle question as the drive IBM sent us (and very quickly, too, I may say) is labeled as a "serviceable used part" - another good reason for having a backup one...

Derek.

[Derek B. Cornish]

Ashley -

Thanks very much for your advice. I can see I am going to have to put a lot more thought into this. Nothing like a hard disk going belly up to give one a helpful nudge. The USB external does seem a good idea for the T30 - no swapping in and out of bays.

I haven't come across IBM's Rescue and Recovery before (I see that it postdates our notebooks, so we probably don't have it lurking around on either of them). It seems to be a free download, and as it apparently works on both the T30 and A31, it has to be a contender. Which version are you using? The latest appears to be V2, but it looks as if the previous version, with Rapid Restore, is still available.

I must admit I've paid too little attention to the rescue software we do have on the TPs. I used to read the manuals, but recently they've been less about how to use Thinkpads, and more about their risks to health.

The only tool I've used in the past (after the good old Norton Backup days, that is) is Norton Ghost. I found that a little finicky, though, and unforgiving of user error.

I'll try to remember to report back on this thread about what we finally do. Nothing worse than not knowing the end of a saga.

Derek

[JHEM]

Derek,

If you're considering getting an extra HD for backup purposes, you should give serious consideration to getting either a 2nd HD adapter for the Ultrabay or a USB2.0 PC card.

USB1.1 is painfully slow for performing backups.

Regards,

James

[Derek B. Cornish]

James -

Yes, the slow USBs on both the T30 and A31 would be a nuisance, and a USB 2.0 pcmcia card would be much faster. But we have two constraints: the A31 has a bulky cardbus phonelink card installed, so the options there are USB 1.1 or Ultrabay.

The T30 could take a card but I'm not sure if IBM Rescue and Recovery v2.0 supports pcmcia. This isn't crucial, of course, but I had been looking at R&R.

By the way, what are your thoughts on the reliability of the Toshiba 40gig (FRU P/N 08K9758) This is also something I need to factor into our decisions. For example, I might want to avoid buying a couple of those 40gig IBM portable USB hard drives with Rescue and Recovery (I rather liked the look of those) - not only because of our slower USBs, but also if the Toshiba 40gig is less reliable than others and if that is that is what they have inside...

I am trying not to get too obsessional about this...

Derek

Derek

[ashleys]

Derek,
I'm using the latest version of Rescue & Recovery. In fact, I've used each version since IBM started shipping it and have found no problems. It still appears to be using Rapid Restore under the covers but requires no hidden recovery partition etc. You just specify where the backup is to be made and it's stored in a folder called RRBackups.
You can also create "rescue media" which is the recovery desktop. This is the bootable recovery system which can be used to recover your data (the bootable recovery system appears to be a cut down NT system). This bootable version can be created on your HD, CD or USB device. A word of caution when creating the recovery desktop on a USB device. It will format the USB drive before placing the bootable version there.
The R&R documentation which can be found on the download page is worth reading.

I now have a USB 2.0 card in the pcmcia slot, works a treat. The R&R backup image of my system partition is about 3GB. On the original T30 USB port this took about 60 minutes to copy to the USB enclosure. Using the USB 2.0 card to attach the enclosure this copy takes 5 minutes

Ashley.

[Leon]

http://reviews.cnet.com/Acronis_True_Im ... =cnetfd.sd

[MobileGuru]

No known quality or technical problems with that drive, but I would always recommend that you download and run the firmware updater from the IBM support site to ensure you are at the latest revision possible. The T3 by nature was not a hard drive eater, and it even incorporated the nipple bumper on the bottom to reduce drive impact.

[mattfromomaha]

I've had a T30 for two years and no hard drive problems in my 40 gig drive, but I'm not sure if it's the Toshiba - I think it may be a Hitachi.

For backing up I have an old desktop PC that put an 80 gig hard drive in. I shared a folder on there and, since they both plug into my router for the internet access, I can easily run Windows backup (or Rescue and Recovery, or simply Copy and Paste) with the destination being the shared folder on the desktop computer.

[Derek B. Cornish]

Leon -

Thanks for pointing me to this. It was very helpful. As Bill said, it looks impressive - and certainly easier than the old version of Ghost I have been occasionally using. I didn't realise it was now possible to do this in Windows - always thought one had to drop down to DOs in order to backup the locked files, etc.

Derek

[JHEM]

Yes, the slow USBs on both the T30 and A31 would be a nuisance, and a USB 2.0 pcmcia card would be much faster. But we have two constraints: the A31 has a bulky cardbus phonelink card installed, so the options there are USB 1.1 or Ultrabay.

The Ultrabay solution (IDE) is certainly the fastest, but why not simply remove the phonelink card while using a USB2.0 device connected to a PC card solution?

Regards,

James

[Derek B. Cornish]

MobileGuru

Thanks for the info on the HDD. It was also very useful to know about the firmware checks. The T30 was up-to-date, but the A31 (a Hitachi) needed an update.

Derek

[Derek B. Cornish]

James -

Yes - I guess I was just being lazy. Or does my recent acquisition of broadband (via the phonelink network at home) mean I've turned into a web junkie, unable to be without my connection for even a few minutes?

I also rather like Bill's idea (for the A31) of being able to swap out a faulty HDD and replace it with the Ultrabay backup one.

There are a lot of choice here, and it's very useful to know how other people are dealing with the backup issue.

Derek

[Derek B. Cornish]

Matt -

Yes, I'd also been thinking about a possible network solution, but I don't have any other computer with large capacity hdd on my phonelink - just a TP 770 that I have permanently tuned into BBC radio in the kitchen . My wife's T30 is on an ethernet link to the same cable modem/router/access point that I use via the phonelink.

But I can see the potential for future use.

Derek

[JHEM]

Derek,

Yes - I guess I was just being lazy. Or does my recent acquisition of broadband (via the phonelink network at home) mean I've turned into a web junkie, unable to be without my connection for even a few minutes?

You do know that both your A31 and your wife's T30 have the WiFi antennae already installed in the display and both are readily upgradable to WiFi by using a mini-PCI card, right?

Reception would be much better than with the Phonelink card!

Regards,

James

[Derek B. Cornish]

Ashley -

I found a User's Guide to v2.0 of Rescue and Recovery, so I am going to take a look at that. I also brushed the dust off my old copy of Norton Ghost (probably too old to use on XP), just to refresh my memory of the terminology.

The speed difference between USB1 and 2 is extraordinary - although at a pinch I could make do with the former for a while, I think. I have an old Backpack hdd somewhere I could try things out on. I bought it for the 770.

Who manufactured your USB2 card, if you don't mind my asking?

One last question: does Rescue and Recovery co-exist with the system restore facility we have on the thinkpads already?

I think that is the only recovery tool we have on them. Apparently IBM offered a backup program by XPoint Technologies at the time, but that was an extra download (which is no longer available), and I didn't follow it up.

Derek

[Derek B. Cornish]

You do know that both your A31 and your wife's T30 have the WiFi antennae already installed in the display and both are readily upgradable to WiFi by using a mini-PCI card, right?

Reception would be much better than with the Phonelink card!

Yes, I do use WiFi sometimes with the A31, but reception is not very good in our house - it's one of those '60s sprawling brick-built ranches with bits built on, making for more exterior walls between AP and client. And, in any case,the AP (part of a Motorola SBG1000) only allows WEP security - which is a problem in my line of work. I could have upgraded and re-sited the AP, but hpna was a much quicker solution.

In the end hpna has proven very reliable even though the technology never really took off. It's fine for internet surfing so I don't notice any deficiencies in performance. On the plus side, there are phone jacks everywhere, including on the patio, so we can take our thinkpads anywhere without worrying about having to recharge the batteries (especially on the A31).

Derek

[ashleys]

Derek,
I'm using the Belkin USB 2.0 notebook card. Works fine on Windows 2000 SP4 with either the Microsoft generic drivers or the Belkin supplied one.

Rescue & Recovery is really a total replacement for the original recovery partition mechanism. When I first got my T30 I deleted the recovery partition and re-partitioned and re-installed to my own liking. I had the partition arrangement described previously. Back then, to recover my C: drive, I would have had to use the recovery disks. All my user data was on D: and backed up to R: and so would not be disturbed.
When Rescue & Recovery came out I started using that for my system backups. User data is still backed up using my batch files.

Ashley.

[MadeInJapan]

I have the same size HD packed away in a 2nd HDD adapter for my T30 that I clone the internal drive to once a week with Ghost. It works very well and only takes 20 minutes a week. It there's a disaster, I pop out the internal drive, take the other drive out of the 2nd HDD adapter and pop it into the internal bay of the Thinkpad and I'm back to normal. The whole replace and reboot process takes less than 5 minutes.

[Derek B. Cornish]

I'm using the Belkin USB 2.0 notebook card. Works fine on Windows 2000 SP4 with either the Microsoft generic drivers or the Belkin supplied one. Ashley.

Thanks for letting me know about the USB card and R&R. I may do something similar for the T30. I have an old pcmcia 30gig HD that I'll experiment with first. I'll also check exactly what partitions are on the T30. On the A31 there is just the C: partition and a small hidden one - for IBM thinkpad-related stuff, I presume.

I must admit, though, after last week's scare, I am also looking seriously at a belt-and-braces strategy involving regularly cloned second internal HDs on both .

Derek

[Derek B. Cornish]

I have the same size HD packed away in a 2nd HDD adapter for my T30 that I clone the internal drive to once a week with Ghost. It works very well and only takes 20 minutes a week.

It's expensive, but it does seem a prudent strategy. I was wondering if I could combine it with buying larger HDDs and installing them as secondary drive in both thinkpads. Presumably the cloning process would work ok - just making any partitions on the larger drive pro rata bigger. (I am assuming that cloning from larger to smaller HDDs would probably not work, even if the larger drives were kept to the capacity of the smaller ones.)

Then - providing the secondary drives didn't break down first - I could swap the primary drives out when the time came, and replace them with the larger secondary ones.

...or is there something faulty in that logic?

Derek

[MadeInJapan]

For my son's 600E, I took his HDD out of the Thinkpad (it was 40Gb and I wanted to use it for my back-up of my T30) and put it into my external bay of my T30...then used a 20Gb HDD in my 2nd HDD adapter and cloned the larger to the smaller....it worked fine back in his 600E! Trick is to have less data than the capacity of the smaller drive you are cloning to and for the source drive to be defragmented so the data is not spread out beyond the smaller drive's storage limit. Another note...you have to make sure and shut down the drive you are cloning from properly before cloning or it fails. Somehow, if a drive is not shut down properly, data indicating so is written to the boot sector of the HDD, telling it to boot-up to correct problems...this is, even in W2K and WXP. So, it is possible to clone to a smaller capacity drive. I use GHOST (cloning from outside of Windows with a boot disk or USB key) but don't have any service partition on any of my drives.

Someone mentioned that doing things this way is expensive. Not really. You can readily find a 2nd HDD adapter for less than $40 on ebay....a cheap solution compared to a HDD crash with no way to recover. My process includes the price of the 2nd HDD adapter and the HDD. You don't even need the floppy/cable kit if you boot with a USB key. I would think that this process, money wise, is comperable to using an external USB or PCMCIA HDD enclosure. Either way, you would have to pay for GHOST or a similar program, unless you happen to get your hands on a copy somewhere.

[Derek B. Cornish]

So, it is possible to clone to a smaller capacity drive.

Thank you for confirming this. I am now trying to pull together all the helpful information everybody has given me

Derek

[Derek B. Cornish]

Thank you, everyone, for all the advice. It was very helpful to get to know about people's different perspectives and methods.

What it taught me is that I have to think in terms of three distinct tasks:

1. whole-disk cloning of second local drive to provide immediate recovery from hd crash;

2. whole-disk/partition imaging: more flexible, but less immediate crash recovery;

3. frequent and selective backing up of individual working files and folders.

Available software tends to fall into two categories: those combining tasks #1 & #2 (Norton Ghost, Acronis, Paragon Drive Backup, Drive Image), or just #2 (IBM Rescue and Recovery); and those concentrating on #3 (too many to mention).

As I wanted the option to clone a second hard drive on the A31, I decided to go for Acronis True Image rather than IBM Rescue and Recovery. On the T30, which doesn't get such intensive use, we'll do without the 2nd hd for the moment, and get a large external hd with a cardbus USB2 port. If required, this can store disk images for both notebooks. Rather than lash out for another Acronis licence, we'll probably use R&R for the T30.

At a pinch all the disk imaging software packages provide a means to view and selectively restore individual files and folders, but it probably makes sense to complement them with more traditional backing up software for more frequent (e.g. daily use) backing up of data files. I'm not going for anything fancy, but thought of trying out Centered System's "Second Copy". I've also downloaded a free program called Freebyte. Anything too complicated and I'm likely to stop using it...

On IBM's Rescue and Recovery: I really liked the look of this, apart from the lack (as far as I could see) of disk cloning. The only things that gave me pause were the suggestion that I might have to use Norton Anti-Virus with it, a vague warning about using Partition Magic (I have used it on the A31 for partitioning), and the need for a 1.5gig or so R&R Workspace on the local hd. (Acronis also has a "Secure Zone" but installation appears to be optional: recovery can be done via a bootable CD). Wthout installing R&R, I couldn't tell how these considerations would pan out.

I am not sure whether I'm straight on everything yet, but I think I'm moving in the right direction.

Derek