T42 HDD upgrade time, suggestions?

[Matt]

Let a Windows Update run yesterday afternoon and for my sins was rewarded upon reboot with a disk read error, which I cannot seem to work around. Sooo, it looks like I'm in the market for a new HDD. Any suggestions? Amazon has a Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320GB unit for $90 shipped, it says it's an ATA100, any reason to believe it wouldn't be compatible?

[Harryc]

That drive will work fine in a T42. Have you run diagnostics on your current drive? Windows Updates are not supposed to destroy hard drives .

[Matt]

I ran SpinRite 6 on it overnight, it got only 0.2% through by morning. What other diagnostics do you suggest? I pulled it from the T42, put it into a USB enclosure and was able to pull off a few critical files onto another PC but that was an extremely slow process.

[Harryc]

What is the manufacturer and model of the drive?

[GACrabill]

... I pulled it from the T42, put it into a USB enclosure and was able to pull off a few critical files onto another PC but that was an extremely slow process.

While in the USB enclosure, did you run "Error-checking" with "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" turned on ?

I wouldn't want to buy a new drive if it was only an NTFS file structure error.

[Matt]

What is the manufacturer and model of the drive?

It's the stock Hitachi 80GB.

While in the USB enclosure, did you run "Error-checking" with "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" turned on ?

I didn't. CHKDSK from the WinXP recovery console choked due to I/O errors, so I figured that covered that base, and ScanRite was the follow-on effort to that.

[Harryc]

HItachi.....try to run the HDFT - (Hitachi Drive Fitness Test)

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[Matt]

The Hitachi HDFT reports:

Fail code 0x72: Defective Device
Technical Result Code: 72029E54 (this code turned up nothing on Google)

Which is defined in the HDFT documentation as:

Device S.M.A.R.T. Error.
The Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) has detected a drive problem. The drive may fail soon and should be replaced as soon as possible.

So, unless I miss my guess, we're not talking about a drive geometry or file system problem, and I'm back on the hunt for a new HDD.

[Harryc]

That drive is toast. Good luck in your search for a new one.

[Matt]

Any advice on data recovery? There are a couple directories I'd really like to copy.

[sktn77a]

Amazon has a Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320GB unit for $90 shipped, it says it's an ATA100, any reason to believe it wouldn't be compatible?

It'll work but its still a 5400 rpm drive, There was a 100GB 7200rpm drive on the marketplace this week. This will give you measurably faster performance in your T42.

[GACrabill]

Any advice on data recovery? There are a couple directories I'd really like to copy.

I haven't used it for this purpose, but I would try Recuva ... it's free.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_recuva/

After installing, double-click the desktop icon, then click the Cancel button to "have access to the advanced features", then click the Options button, then click the Actions tab, under Scanning select the "Scan for non-deleted files (for recovery from damaged or reformatted disks)", then click OK.

I don't know what happens then ... but it sounds worth trying to me.

[Matt]

The Hitachi HDFT reports:

Fail code 0x72: Defective Device
Technical Result Code: 72029E54 (this code turned up nothing on Google)

Anybody know how to find out exactly what those failure codes mean?

[SkiBunny]

Sooo, it looks like I'm in the market for a new HDD. Any suggestions? Amazon has a Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320GB unit for $90 shipped, it says it's an ATA100, any reason to believe it wouldn't be compatible?

The 250gb version is only $75 shipped from newegg.
Reports from sojourner, who owns both the 250 and 320, is that the 320 is much noisier.
Reading various reviews, these drives seem to be less reliable than some others. But you have no other choice for PATA in that size

[sjthinkpader]

Most reliable are Fujitsu drives. Installed quite a few WDs in the past year and so far nothing had failed yet.

The older, smaller 7200rpm drives are actually slower than the larger 5400rpm drives due to lower areal density. 160GB 5400rpm drives are more than 33% higher areal density and about 33% slower rotational speed that 100GB 7200rpm drives yielding at least the same media transfer speed.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 1&start=30
(see the post around April 21)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_storage_density
(see section Effects on Performance)

[sjthinkpader]

Let a Windows Update run yesterday afternoon and for my sins was rewarded upon reboot with a disk read error, which I cannot seem to work around. Sooo...

if it's punishment by god, you can't find answers here.

[SkiBunny]

Installed quite a few WDs in the past year and so far nothing had failed yet.

Good to hear. Have you by chance installed many WD2500BEVE or WD3200BEVE that the OP is considering? If so, do you notice more noise on the 320's like when their heads park?

[sjthinkpader]

Mostly 160GB, one 250GB and no 320GB.

[SkiBunny]

Oh I was referring to reliability concerns with the highest density ones only.

[systemBuilder]

I suggest you buy a PATA caddy, get the 250Gb or 320GB drive, and some clone software, and re-image the disk onto the new drive, in the UltraBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0057123875

I just bought the WD 320GB PATA drive ($90 on amazon) and a PATA caddy for ($25 on ebay). To migrate to a larger disk, try Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... grateeasy/

What do others think of this approach ??