IBM Deathstar Hell

[Paul Taylor]

Bad sectors happen to magnetic drives and is no indication the drive is
faulty unless they fail often or a lot. IDE, SCSI, or SATA is not
relevant. The material most companies use for magnetic platters decay.
External environmental factors can increase the chances of decay or
outright destroy the magnetic properties hence all the advice on
how-to-kill the drive.

You could have a drive right off the factory line that has a few sectors
"go bad". That same drive could function correctly the next 10 years. It's
a crap shoot on how often, when, and how much.

Paul

> In fact, the fact that you get a bad sector on a modern
> drive is an indication that the drive is faulty. IDE
> drives are supposed to be self-correcting and you should
> never see a bad sector on an IDE drive. If you do the drive
> is bad. period. If it were me, I be on the phone with them
> they wouldn't get me off the phone until I got an RMA.
> But then I can be one stubborn A** SOB. ;)
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Scott Smith [mailto:scott at roadtoad.net]
>> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 4:20 PM
>> To: Kris Bodenheimer
>> Cc: KCLug
>> Subject: Re: IBM Deathstar Hell
>>
>>
>> Weird, I've RMAed my personal share of IBM drives (5 or so over the
>> years, many were acquired dead from old jobs, heh...) and all
>> I've ever
>> had to do was call them up and ask for an RMA. Didn't have to prove
>> anything.
>>
>> Scott
>>
>> Kris Bodenheimer wrote:
>>
>> > I have a deathstar that develops "bad sectors" every 2 days, using
>> > IBM's Drive fitness utility I am on my 4th "erase and repair disk"
>> > which appears to be a low level formatting.   The drive is under
>> > warranty for 3 more months, but I can't get the Drive
>> fitness utility
>> > to give me an error that earns me an RMA.  Anyone know how
>> to "help"
>> > this drive along its slow death?  BTW this will be the 10th IBM
>> > Deathstar to go to hell in the past 2 months.  Kris
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> majordomo at kclug.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> majordomo at kclug.org
>>
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