Hard drive crashed in the car?

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lilmanmgf · #1 Post by **lilmanmgf** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:28 pm

Okay, so I recently replaced the hd in my T61p with a seagate momentus 250gb 7200rpm hd. It has the built in accelerometer for "g-force" protection. I have used my T61p in the car prior to the swap without issue. Well 5 minutes into the trip windows freezes. I try restarting and get a blue screen. Somehow system files were corrupted. I just got home, three day weekend, and I am currently trying to fix it. Any ideas why it couldn't handle this? Thinkpad active protection was installed and running. I'm [censored] because I couldn't get any work done.

aaa · #2 Post by **aaa** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:58 pm

The protection isn't foolproof, it reduces the likelihood but does not eliminate the chance of damage.

Assuming that is confirmed to be the problem. Could be a coincidental ram failure or something.

lilmanmgf · #3 Post by **lilmanmgf** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:01 pm

Well now I'm getting paranoid. I have have thus far been able to boot into windows. I tried startup recovery with no effect. I guess I'll try connecting it to my main computer to retrieve the files. Is the hard drive shot, or was this just a one time thing. I find it absolutely ridiculous that a brand new hard drive would crash so quickly. I guess I can try to get another. I was using it in the car for literally 5 minutes when this happened.

Marin85 · #4 Post by **Marin85** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:31 pm

I find it absolutely ridiculous that a brand new hard drive would crash so quickly.

Well, it sometimes happens that a HD is faulty from the factory. You may have been a victim of bad luck. As aaa pointed out, it won´t be a bad idea to check the RAM too. Post back when you find out something.

Cheers

Marin

#5 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:36 pm

I guess there may be two or three possibilities:

1. Your particular shock overran the protection system (which was what aaa suggested).
2. There is an actual hardware problem.
3. Your drive possibly has an incomptability with the T61 system. This latter idea would not be pretty in that I am suggesting a possiblity of a repeat of the APS disaster of a few years back (Hitachi 7200-rpm drive incompatible with the then-version of APS). This destroyed a drive of mine completely (no data recovery), but I had very good backups.

I have seen no posts indicating that #3 is a problem. #2 seems a bit of a stretch but more likely than #3. If you did not drop the machine, #1 should not happen. I have not dropped my T61, but I DID drop my T41 onto a floor overseas. I picked it up and kept going.
... JDH

lilmanmgf · #6 Post by **lilmanmgf** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:53 pm

Well I put in the old drive, and it booted up fine. I have been using this hard drive for the past two weeks without issue. Tomorrow I'll try hooking it up to my desktop to recover the files I need. It could be a faulty drive. I'll call compsource tomorrow.

hellosailor · #7 Post by **hellosailor** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:02 am

Was your computer on the seat? or on the floor?

All you need to do is run over one set of RR tracks with a computer on the floor, and you can damage the hard drive. In theory the protection systems as fast enough to stop a lot of problems--but these are still really designed to be used AFTER they've been moved, not WHILE they're moving. They don't have the gel shock mounts that the older "ruggedized" portables have, there's just some rubber strips holding the drive pretty firmly in place.

Could also be the TAPS system and the Seagate system don't work together. Neither Seagate nor Lenono will comment on that, neither has tested them together.

dmk · #8 Post by **dmk** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:14 am

Hi,

I have the same problem from yesterday with Seagate 7200.3 250GB. My HDD cause Vista freeze, and after reboot the system freeze on login. I checked disk surface by chkdsk and it’s found bad sectors. I also have G-shock version. And the most important: I also used it in car for about two minutes!

I think that this could be related to G-shock and TAPS, because two weeks ago I have 320GB (also 7200.3 from Seagate with G-shock) and the same problem – after around the week of using it system starts to freezing and.. bad sectors.

Now I get 7200.3 250GB WITHOUT G-shock and I will try using this one – I hope, that this is real solution.

Best regards,
Dawid Morzyński

PS Hello to this forum – I was reading it a lot of times, but this is my first post

PS2 My T61p was also affected by loose-hinges problem, but solved by service..

dmk · #9 Post by **dmk** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:57 am

Update! I do fast format on new 7200.3 250GB WITHOUT G-shock sensor and chkdsk with full surface scan. No bad sectors, everything looks good. I do full format (with wrintg empty data on disk) and chkdsk... result? Bad sectors! Wow! It looks like they have problem with this models (bad series?)... I will write more later.

PS This thread (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=67766) looks similar.

hellosailor · #10 Post by **hellosailor** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:41 am

dmk, I think you're only seeing the difference between a "fast format" and a real format--which is different.

"If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged."

(From one of MS's support pages.)

How and if you find or see bad sectors--depends on what you're doing. On a 250GB drive you have either 3 or 4 heads and platters, one shock crash can cause damage on every platter at once.

dmk · #11 Post by **dmk** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:15 pm

hellosailor wrote:dmk, I think you're only seeing the difference between a "fast format" and a real format--which is different.

I mean that doing surface scan on (in theory) brand new disk without doing full format give me a result, that disk is free (or not) from bad sectors. But this was only test (experiment) to check is bad sectors "avaible" from factory, or from first read/write of bad part of platters. I always do full format on any brand new disk

So again: I think, that there is only sense to check disk after full formating (by writing on it "zero" data and creating filesystem or sth like that).

hellosailor wrote:How and if you find or see bad sectors--depends on what you're doing. On a 250GB drive you have either 3 or 4 heads and platters, one shock crash can cause damage on every platter at once.

But.. but... at first in theory (again) I have two accelerometers which should park heads. At second my last disk is AS (without G) and I was testing it on my desk (no shocks). So this is impossible to destroy all three disks in less then one mounth. At last I want to say, that I never had hardrive with bad sectors, but I was sometimes going with powered on computer (without accelerometer - like HP notebook). Also my Hitachi from Lenovo is free of bad sectors (and this is why I ordered today Hitachi 250GB 7k320 and waiting for it).

hellosailor · #12 Post by **hellosailor** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:30 pm

dmk, I am losing something in translation, but I am sure that if I used the Babelfish to try replying in machine-translated Polish the problem would be much much worse.<G>

If you have never had bad sectors on a hard drive, congratulations! They still occur, and hard drives are still sold to OEM sources with a price that is still based on "How many bad sectors will you accept?" A prime drive may have none, or "less than five", while a cheaper drive of the exact same model numeber may have "less than 50". Sometimes the prime quality drives are selected for zero bad sectors, while the same drive in a retail box has several bad sectors.

It is possible that the TAPS would command a drive "park your heads!" when it senses a shock. I do not know the exact commands, I do not think Lenovo documents them to the public. Now suppose that the TAPs system said "Park your heads!" to a Seagate hard drive, where there is an internal g-shock system that says "RAISE the heads!" at the same time. Or, the two commands are issued at very slightly different times.

Which command would take priority? Or could the conflict cause the system to fail, i.e. aborting a head parking maneuver?

There are different schemes to protect drives from shock, what I am suggesting is that when two different schemes are both operating at the same time--that is like have two people trying to drive one car at the same time. Good for old comedy movies, not so good on the real highway.

We just don't what is happening in the drive, and the people who are best able to find out and tell us, are not interested in doing so. (Lenono, Seagate, and other vendors.)

dmk · #13 Post by **dmk** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:13 pm

About this bad sectors in OEM or BOX brand new drives - wow! Till today I was thinking, that brand new drives are free of any errors (this from seagate cause PCDoctor to show SMART errors also!). I hope, that new Hitachi drive will come without bad secotrs etc.

I have never used hdd with bad sectors on my private notebook - I always monitor smart status, and if something is going wrong I replace HDD (like two years ago my toshiba - first freeze, checked disk condition and replaced it - some bearings problem). My rule: never store data on unsafe disk.

With this two "shock sensors" - you are right. This is crazy to drive car (disk) by two different people (shock sensors). I don't know what's going on there - this level of hardware/software is out of normal user control. But as you can see, I always get one wihout this sensor

PS But I think, that market of mobile hard drives (especially high performance) is so small to do disk to notebooks which will not work in many notebooks (like Lenovo/IBM, Dell, HP, Apple and more).
PS2 Sorry for my poor english. If you can't understand sth I will try write it in different way.

lilmanmgf · #14 Post by **lilmanmgf** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:45 pm

So should I reinstall the os, and not install lenovo active protection? There weren't any real big bumps either, it was on my lap. I too was using the 7200.3 series. I guess I'll try and get a replacement.

#15 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:35 pm

lilmanmgf wrote:So should I reinstall the os, and not install lenovo active protection? There weren't any real big bumps either, it was on my lap. I too was using the 7200.3 series. I guess I'll try and get a replacement.

I can't answer your question about which protection system to use, but in a car on your lap is about as gentle as it gets. The IBM HD protection system works on a rough, bouncing city bus with no problems, so I tend to like it. ... JDH

dmk · #16 Post by **dmk** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:04 am

lilmanmgf wrote:So should I reinstall the os, and not install lenovo active protection? There weren't any real big bumps either, it was on my lap. I too was using the 7200.3 series. I guess I'll try and get a replacement.

I think (but this is my opinion!) that if you have bad sectors you should have your drive replaced. Also in my opinion this two "shock protection" systems are not causing this problem - the source of this problem is comming from factory. But what exactly is going if two "shock protection" systems try to "drive" your drive... we don't know.

I decided to move to Hitachi (which is prefered by Lenovo).

Marin85 · #17 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:24 am

Having read various reports over last few months it seems to me that more and more users have problems with the new Seagate drives. I certainly don´t know if this is because of the shock protection "overkill" with Lenovo ThinkPads or rather a general decrease in their quality control

hellosailor · #18 Post by **hellosailor** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:07 am

Where have you seen complaints about the Seagates posted? Toms Hardware pages seemed to think they were outstanding.

Marin85 · #19 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:01 pm

Where have you seen complaints about the Seagates posted? Toms Hardware pages seemed to think they were outstanding.

If you browse our forum back, you will find some. Regarding Tom´s Hardware reviews, well, these are mostly benchmark reviews, right? I wasn´t referring to the HD performance, which is for the new models undoubtedly outstanding, but rather to their quality control, i.e. tolerated bad sectors and similar. It´s a matter of course that one would mostly read about complaints and issues in forums like this one, still I haven´t read so many (or any) complaints about the new Hitachi drives... Just a speculation of mine.

Cheers

Marin

dmk · #20 Post by **dmk** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:36 pm

Ok, has somebody bad experience with new 7k320 Hitachi drives? I mean sth like bad sectors on new one?

lilmanmgf · #21 Post by **lilmanmgf** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:58 pm

Well I was able to recover all the files by connecting it to my desktop rig. The old hard drive is working fine, so it's not the ram. Should I RMA it and get another, or should I go with a Hitache?

hellosailor · #22 Post by **hellosailor** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:08 pm

If the old drive is fine--then it is fine.

Do some overnight diagnostics on it to be sure. If you really want to put it to the task, get Steve Gibson's SpinRite, probably the most exhaustive drive diagnostic tool on the market. Otherwise, use what you have (PC-Doctor?) and just set it up to run overnight or do a dozen repeated intense scans on the drive.

Also remember that Seagate has toll-free tech support if you are in the US, they can tell you exactly what the errors mean and when to be worried--or not--by them.

dmk · #23 Post by **dmk** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:46 am

I replaced Seagate by Hitachi and (I hope) I'm happy user now.

bradhs · #24 Post by **bradhs** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:47 pm

My Seagate 320gb 7200.3 is doing fine as long as I dont have the Intel SATA drivers loaded. I have to use the original Microsoft drivers as the SATA drivers from Intel cause the computer to lock up. Actually, Vista stops reading/writing to the drive and then everything eventually freezes up. I have found a fix for this yet.

dmk · #25 Post by **dmk** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:52 pm

bradhs wrote:My Seagate 320gb 7200.3 is doing fine as long as I dont have the Intel SATA drivers loaded. I have to use the original Microsoft drivers as the SATA drivers from Intel cause the computer to lock up. Actually, Vista stops reading/writing to the drive and then everything eventually freezes up. I have found a fix for this yet.

This could be a problem with Intel Turbo Memory (old drivers or sth like that). With Hitachi I have no more freezes - everything is working fine (with full Intel Turbo Memory support).

Try to check disk surface by PCDoctor to find bad sectors.

bradhs · #26 Post by **bradhs** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:30 pm

The reason I dont think there is a problem with the hard drive is that the computer is 100% reliable without the Intel SATA controller drivers loaded. I've ran a few of the PC-Doctor tests and haven't found any issues.

It must be something with the drivers conflicting with my system.

What's also interesting is that my wife's X200 (brand new) froze up in the same way mine does when I have those drivers and she has the latest Intel SATA controller drivers loaded. Ss a matter of fact I havent touched that laptop except for install a bunch of normal applications found on most peoples computers.

Hard drive crashed in the car?

Hard drive crashed in the car?

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