Hi Folks:

Please consider this an URGENT plea for some much needed technical advice. My hard disk is developing progressively more and more bad clusters (surface damage) and I fear the end is near.

My question is, can any of you hardware geeks out there recommend what you consider the best (i.e. longest life) brand name for replacement. As you might imagine, with all time & aggrevation involved in reinstalling everything, I surely don't want to go thru this nightmare again any time soon.

Many thanks for any and all suggestions offered.

-- Yan (no@no.no), July 10, 1999

Answers

This is mostly a personal preference answer. Here are my choices based on my experience installing hard drives over 10+ years Maxtor or fujitsu, Western Digital is ok but not my first choice, Quantum is up there with Western Digital

-- ExCop (yinadral@juno.com), July 10, 1999.

Obviously, you need to be more specific. What kind of machine do you have? PC or Mac? What kind of HD do have now, if you know? I assume the machine is out of warranty? Is there a tech shop near you? Can you replace an HD yourself? Have you backed up recently? Used Norton? Reformatted recently? Is this really the place to ask this question?

-- (.@techie.guy), July 10, 1999.

First, when the HD starts to go like that, it really snowballs. Don't put off backing up all you can and replacing it NOW.

Second, we've found that Western Digital drives often don't play well with other hard drives in the system unless they are also Western Digital. Quantum and IBM drives are good.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 10, 1999.

I like Seagate best, Western Digital #2. They have the biggest market-share in the consumer market, and do well. Western Digitals tend to be noiser than Seagate.

Been doin' this crap since early '80s...

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@Anonymous99.xxx), July 10, 1999.

Don't sweat the brand name. All of the drives produced today have around a 100 year MTBF. (yes 100 years)

-- (@ .), July 10, 1999.

If they make it the first 4 months, they last a long time. But I am running about 1% failures in that first 4 months on new drives.

Seagate is OK - but any of the name brands work fine as far as I can tell. I don't like the bigfoot drives though, they seem to get a bit funny over time.

Here is a tip a friend gave me on switching drives - connect the new drive to the system, fdisk and format as drive D: or E: or what have you, copy everything using xcopy /S, then make an emergency recovery disk from the microsoft emergency recovery program. Make the new drive the master (switch the jumper), boot from a floppy and use fdisk to make the drive the active partition. Then boot from the emergency recovery disk. It will fix up the drive so it looks to the OS like it is still on the original drive, it just magically got bigger.

I never have had occasion to do that, but the guy who told me that is one of the best hardware techs I know. He uses that trick to move programs and Windows around without buying special software like Ghost, and without reinstalling everything.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), July 10, 1999.

To emphasize something Paul Davis kind of assumed: Do all this copying from BARE DOS. Don't use Windows at all. And boot DOS from a floppy for the entire process.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 10, 1999.

Right Flint, I do kind of assume that all actual system adminstration on Windows anything has to be done from a Dos command line.

Want to know a real funny? If you have networking installed on Windows NT, go to the dos box and type in NET USE . You will get a list of what is connected on your network. Type in NET ? . As far as I can tell, ALL the networking in NT is done through NT running command line programs behind the active window.

MS got rid of DOS in NT. Yeah, right, tell another one before that one gets cold.

BTW - the NET commands also work in Win 95 and 98 - if you have Microsoft Windows Networking installed. And they seem to be copied from NT 3.5.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), July 11, 1999.

Kool!

I got a ring-side seat at the 1st "Flint vs Paul" tech war!! Ever so KOOL!!!

Yan,

I have a simple, fast solution. Go buy your new hard drive. Personally I don't like Seagate, I've found their quality suspect. Western Digital is fine, although what some others said here is true, they don't "play" well with other brands. And if you do get a WD drive, don't, I repeat DON'T, use the "easy drive" disk that comes with the drive. Do it yourself, save a world of headaches.

Purchase (or obtain) a copy of a Disk Cloning tool. If you have to purchase it it will probably run you about 30 bucks. I use "Ghost", but their are many others out there. Now you have your new drive right? 1) Install your new drive as secondary master, primary master or primary slave. 2) Reboot and go into CMOS 3) Assuming you have fairly recent BIOS, select the option to auto- detect hard drives, accept the changes and exit CMOS. 4) Boot from a floppy and use the FDISK command to partition your new drive into at least 2 partitions. NOTE: Be very careful not to repartition you old drive. 5) Restart from your floppy and use the format command to format your new drive. 6) Again boot from floppy and strart your Clone application. 7) Clone your C drive to any partition on your new drive 8) Physically remove your old  drive. Set the jumpers (if you have any) on the new drive to Master 9) Reboot and enter CMOS, accept your new hard drive as Primary Master (this may not be necessary). Remove your old hard drive. 10) Reboot again (I know, but you gotta do it) and run FDISK, set the new drive partition that you intend to have your OS on as ACTIVE. Reboot from the floppy with your Clone app on it. 11) Use your Clone app to dump your original hard drive OS and data on the new partition (your new C drive) 12) Reboot without floppy. 13) At this point you should format all other partitions. 14) DONE.

If you have any trouble drop me an email. Ill talk you thru it. Good luck and GBA!

-- imighthavemissedsomething (midwestmike_@hotmail.com), July 11, 1999.

'A simple and fast solution'? Helloooooo!!

-- You (must@be.hi), July 12, 1999.

Well, it is simple and fast when I do it. Takes maybe 30 minutes. I guess if your not used to doing it it could seem a bit complicated.

Still, if you need help just ask.

-- Mike (midwestmike_@hotmail.com), July 12, 1999.

Spring for the bucks to get the cloning software. Might also really spring and get an external Zip drive.

BTW, thank Bill Gates (Microsucks) for making an op system (Windows) enabling such "simple and fast" solutions.

Supposedly, Windows was supposed to make everything easier for the user. It hasn't done that (there were DOS GUIs), and it has made life for the techies a frequent nightmare.

I've been in the biz one way or another since 1978 and I'm still waiting for computers to improve MY life, overall (Other than the ~$50 an hour I get trying to make them behave.)

-- vbProg (vbProg@MicrosoftAndIntelSuck.com), July 12, 1999.