E7K60/7K60 and the TP600

[Rob Mayercik]

Wouldn't you know it - I finally get 98SE suspending and resuming right on my TP600 (2645-45U), and now the hard drive looks as if it's dying.

Wouldn't boot the other night after downloading some windows updates, so I decided to run HDD Regenerator (decided to buy a copy - probably come in handy in the future too) on it. I have only managed to get halfway through the 12GB, but it's already picked up almost 2900 bad sectors, most (but not all) of which it has recovered.

I've only owned this drive for about 7-8 months (bought it secondhand at a show over the summer), but I'm beginning to lose faith in it. I had to use HDD Regen to get it working in the first place (demo version), and found/fixed a dozen or two sectors. Now it's losing sectors again, and more of them. This strikes me as a precursor to total failure, and I'm thinking that I'd like to get my data off of this thing before it goes totally kaput.

Here's what I'm thinking: pick up a new drive, and finish running HDD Regen on the old one. Once it's as regenned as it can get, image-copy everything over to the new drive, and hopefully I'm just a repair-installation away from being back on the air with minimal downtime.

Now, my question: The E7K60/7K60 - how have folks been doing with this drive in older machines such as mine? I found a post from this past month showing that Hitachi themselves think this will work, and I saw the post from TheMaxx where he has a 60GB drive in his 2645-410. Any issues after getting the drive into service, or are they still working fine?

Thanks,

Rob

[JHEM]

I've had the 7K60 in several 600Xs and a 600E almost since the drive was introduced. No problems other than the fact that the machines are so greatly improved by this transplant that I hesitate to sell them!

My infamous PIII 850MHz 600X (Thinkzilla!) is still going strong with it's 7K60 and has been bullet-proof for almost two years now.

Regards,

James

[Rob Mayercik]

That's good to hear, James. Considering that the 12GB drive that is apparently trying to die is also a Hitachi, I feel more confident in blaming its problems on being a used drive of questionable quality.

Rob