Hard Disk Repairation

[avieth]

For the past few months my hard-drive light has been turning solid red a <b>lot</b> and the disk seems to be slowing down my system. I have heard that the hard disk wears down after a while, my drive is about 2 years old, maxtoe 40 gb 7200 rpm, and I was wodnering if anyone here knew how I could reverse the wear.

This isnt really gentoo, but it's slowing down gentoo.

[kicker]

Finally I can answer on something here!

I have a pretty good experience with hard drives... I've had at the most 12 of them at the same time, totalling 1.6 tb And yes it's true, the drive wears over time.. it's a mechanical part, so it's a normal behavior. And no, you can't do nothing to reverse the process.. But... one thing i did in the past, when I was feeling a drive would let me down soon, i'd backup the drive on another, whack the drive on hard floor a couple of time.. cause they tend to be hard to break, and plug it back in to make sure it's been done properly. When you hear a loud clicking noise, you do over maxtor website (i've always purchase maxtor, because i dont like wd and seagate.. well.. i dont mind, but maxtor warranty is just too awesome) and do an advanced replacement.. you give your credit card number and you'll get a drive in the next week... then you return your drive in the box they sent you the new drive in, and you're done.

As for things you can do to help your drive...

Make sure they are really well vented... cause they tend to heat, and heat for harddrive = reduced life by alot... just to tell you, i bought some cheap usb case sometime, put a 5-6month 200gb inside, and smoked it while defragging it... it became too hot and started clicking... i couldn't even get the drive out the case as it was too hot to touch. But that's extreme..

In a desktop case, try to get one that let you put either two 8cm fan in the front, or one real big one (i dont remember the size of those) but the big one are better.. they are equally effective if not more than two little, and produce way less noise.. put them another big in the back... and also, let some space between drive.. they dont like to cuddle themselves I've lost 4 drives in RAID-0 sometimes because they weren't spaced properly in a cluttered desktop case (i couldnt afford a bigger case, but when that happenned, i did buy a proper one)

And if you ever happen to put multiple drive, make sure you have a good power supply, as you can smoke your drive too by not having enough power.. the drive will cut down due to power loss sometime, and overtime, the drive will become really messed up, or even worse.. totalled... so

Hope that helped!

Pierre-Andre

PS: If your drive isn't on warranty, I highly suggest you buy another maxtor again, as when you'll have to return it sometime, and trust me, those days, i haven't seen much people who does extensive work on his computer (like p2p.. p2p really screws your harddrive over... if you want to lessen the burden on the harddrive in p2p that support this, allocate the file all at once, it may be longer to start the download, and fills up space more rapidly, but trust me, it's well worth it.. and in linux, try to not fill your partition over 80% and in windows defrag every day on a schedule over night if you use a lot your computer.. move file around, delete, p2p, etc... unzip, burn iso, delete.. etc...

If you have any other question regarding this, feel free to ask!

Pierre-Andre

[avieth]

Thanks for the help, i cant smash it cause I dont got a warranty. I think ill just sell my drive for $30 or so and put that money towards a 120 gb SATA. I have grown to hate IDE.