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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jun 25, 2007 15:14:24 GMT -5
@tom - yeah, go for the WD60GB Scorpio. I have been using WD IDE and SATA drives for ages and have never had any issues.  Now onto the results of my SCSI WD HDD testing...  ...and OH DEAR!  It's not like I can exactly complain, as they WERE "untested"...but oh well! WDE 4550 - Drive #1  TOTALLY DEAD - All this drive did was "tick-tick stop", the SCSI host card couldn't even find the drive! If it were any more dead, you would need a grave stone for it! WDE 4550 - Drive #2  HALF DEAD - This drive is detected by the SCSI host, but you cannot access it as a mountable volume (even Partition Magic refuses to start). Might be salvageable with "GParted" - but probably going to end up in the bin! WDE 4550 - Drive #3  REPAIRED (Almost) - This drive had a resistor missing and two tracks on the controller board were severed. After some reworking the drive is detected by the SCSI host and can be accessed. However, it has a "Bad Partition Table Error 108" - a partition resize with "GParted" should cure this and render the disk usable. For GParted Live-CD, check out HERE: gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.phpSeems like there is a LOT of bad luck with HDDs happening - be careful out there folks! ==edit== GParted Live-CD doesn't recognise my SCSI Host card - so much for that plan... I'm downloading something else I will try later...I'll report back on the results... ==edit 2== Hmm...another Linux Live-CD called "Parted Magic" which seems to have SCSI support...I'll give it a try! www.partedmagic.com/Hey, it finds the HDD! I'll let you guys know how it goes... ==edit teh final== FINAL STATUS REPORT BEGINS  WDE 4550 - Drive #1  Status = Binned. Tests = None, not worth it! WDE 4550 - Drive #2 Status = Binned. Tests = Drive is found with "Parted Magic", but reports only 256MB of 4.3GB... Created a small NTFS partition to test the drive - worked (so far). Rebooted PC - drive is NO LONGER found by SCSI host card. Officially DEAD and binned.  WDE 4550 - Drive #3 Status = FULLY Reworked and recovered!!! ;D Tests = Drive is found with "Parted Magic" - 4.3GB Erased old partition table and created small NTFS partition.  Rebooted PC and used DOS "PowerQuest Partition Magic" to create appropriate FAT16 partitions for my Cx486sx/387sx hybrid PC.  Used Norton Ghost to clone all of the Data from my old "Quantum Fireball 4.1GB" to the new "WDE 4550 4.3GB" drive. ;D Drive is now housed in my Cx486sx/387sx hybrid PC and is working BEAUTIFULLY! If you guys EVER need to recover a partition table on a HDD - go and get that "Parted Magic" Live-CD...it's a TOTAL Godsend! [Also it's the ONLY way to recover from an "Error 108 bad partition table" problem] AWESOME! |
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jun 26, 2007 7:21:00 GMT -5
And here is WHY WD had to quit from "Enterprise" market: they had the tech, but not the budget, and they ended like Maxtor (making fair home drives, but shitty hi-end stuff), then they did "The Samsung Way(r)": "either we start to make GOOD drives, or refocus our developments in another target". They went for the refocusing: drop the Enterprise line, redesign the Caviar, invent the Raptor (the first generation was crappy, but the later ones were awesome), and relaunch their laptop line (they had the 3" Portfolio, but that design flopped, so they went with something more standard and invented the Scorpio). I'm not very sure about recent Caviars, but surely the Scorpios look like "good things to have". And, about SCSI testing: here are the results of the second attempt: - The SCSI card crashed Windows because it was using an I/O address that was already allocated to the sound card. I had to switch from 330h (Adaptec' default) to 334h (DMA and IRQ lines were OK), and everything went fine... BUT.... - I had to disable the onboard card BIOS becuase if you change the I/O address, it will not work (according with the AHA-154x manual). This means that you will need to use drivers under your OS, so no fancy boot messages at the POST screens - I had to run "Add Hardware Wizard" on W95, but after a LONG wait, it detected my card. It installed the drivers, and i didn't needed to reboot! The drive was detected instantly as a "HP 2.1G" (HP branding on their SCSI drives is deeply buried in the drive's firmware), and a 200MB FAT16 partition quickly appeared. It had DOS6 and Netware Server stuff. - Neither Partition Magic nor HDAT nor FDISK detected my drive! For now i'm unable to wipe it or partition it, so i'm stuck with 10% of usable space. But at least i can write to it, so the drive is not too bad... - Tried to wipe the drive with Adaptec's SCSIFMT.EXE? No luck The drive will pass surface reading tests, but, although it will receive "format drive" command, it will stay unchanged. Tried to partition it with a Win98 bootdisk: the AHA-154XB driver of this bootdisk did not detected my card (nor did the HDAT2 disk too). Anyone knows any configuration options for ASPI4DOS.SYS? (the driver for AHA-154XB). - The difference between AHA-1540B and 1542B is that the second one has a onboard floppy controller. Useless there, but may come handy on servers (and "naked" 386 motherboards). Now, while looking for a partition tool that works with my card, this Quantum is now inside my 386 box, waiting for something good ;D |
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jun 26, 2007 8:04:26 GMT -5
@tom - if you have any 'newer' PC's that have ISA slots for that Adaptec card, then do the following... 1) Transfer card and drive to a newer machine (any mainboard that allows boot from CDROM) 2) Go and download the "Parted Magic" Live-CD. 3) Boot using default options. If THIS doesn't allow you to wipe/resize the partition, then NOTHING will! Give it a shot! |
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jun 29, 2007 15:51:03 GMT -5
I solved the partitioning issue (no LiveCDs needed): i got a copy of Adaptec's EZ-SCSI 4.0 Lite (an suite of tools that Adaptec sells for their cards). I was able to format and repartition the HD (only FAT16 partitions), but... this Quantum seems to have the dreaded "tic-tic-scratch" syndrome too The drive may work fine sometimes, but if you try to do a full Scandisk over it, it will freeze Scandisk, while you hear a "tic-tic-scratch" from the actuator arm. I've read that Fireballs are very prone to mechanical problems, but this drive is even worse: sometimes it DISSAPEARS in the middle of a session! I must shutdown the PC to get the drive in service again... until the next Scandisk crash I left Scandisk scanning the drive last night, but at the next morning i found a dead box... Warm, but dead. It seems that the PSU did not supported the load, because i had to replace it. The machine is back to service, but i had to rip the PSU of my IBM box (Poor Asumi...). My bad luck with hardware never ends... As for the drive: where is my trash can? Oh, wait!, the drive is a national asset! I must return it soon. ;D |
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jun 29, 2007 21:26:31 GMT -5
I know what you mean about those ANCIENT Quantum drives... My old 4.1GB Quantum (though perfectly functional) would sometimes COMPLETELY cycle-down the motor...then spin-up again - WTF?!? Also sometimes it would make a BOOOAAAP 'grinding' noise (as though the motor was slipping or something).  I've done a Low Level Format on the drive and it will be going back into service as a 'temp storage' area for my 486/387 hybrid... ...no idea if the LLF solved the issue (it 'might' have as it will bypass any previous bad sectors) - but we will see! Thankfully 'newer' Quantum drives from the SCSI160 era are pretty awesome in comparison! |
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Jun 30, 2007 0:05:33 GMT -5
I really don't know what the problem is with all of those Quantum drives, I have 4 or 5 of them that are at least 15 years old and they still work like a charm. Maybe they got dropped too many times >.>
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jun 30, 2007 14:30:42 GMT -5
BREAKING NEWS: while the Glasgow airport is burning in flames, my ST94019 is officially DEAD, with the following results: - I recovered almost everything from the Windows partition (save for some photos and the Share cache) UPDATE: D'OH! I deleted my recent GBA savestates! Months of Pokemon and Polarium Advance went right to the void... ;D - The Linux partition was severely corrupted beyond repair... nothing to rescue here - The "shared" 1gig FAT32 partition at the end of my disk was fully recovered with no errors! (including 500MB of mailboxes and misc stuff) - The remainings of the drive are being wiped right now from Knoppix, to see if it can still be used for something... - I almost lost the data of the HD of my Dell today (needed to carry it to home to perform backups and end some homework), in an incident involving a metal detector and a DUMB security personnel in a bus terminal! Luckily for me, the disk survived 3 seconds of that dreaded machine. Never, EVER use a metal detector NEAR from an harddrive! Instead, show the computer to the security staff. I know that Dell had problems with their explosive batteries, but that was a long time ago! Also, could you blow a bus with a small laptop? ;D ;D ;D Oh, the drive also survived another long and boring trip on the lousy suspensions of Volvo buses over forgotten roads... RIP ST94019A? Nah... it was a piece of crap since the start. Man, i had a REAL bad luck with harddrives lately... the only ones that haven't failed yet are the trio of Samsungs of my anime recording box (Saki), and this "mighty" Travelstar... Now, Prolog and Java projects, fresh SAK episodes, and 1 gig of Linux updates are waiting for me ;D UPDATE: The Seacrap is back to service: a couple of wipe cycles later it's clean, although with a lot of remapped sectors and SLOWER than ever! But at least the full wipe did the trick however, this drive is unsafe. |
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jul 1, 2007 20:24:41 GMT -5
Translation - the drive was originally built by trained monkeys using duck tape, chewing gum and spaghetti. LOL! ;D |
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 1, 2007 20:59:29 GMT -5
From the company that certifies drives for pr0n, there should be no surprises. Talking about drives: check out the latest additions to the "Terabyte train", from Seagate and Samsung: - The Barracuda 7200.11: 4 250-gig platters: will it be safe? Or will it just be a nice pr0n cache for the next year only? ;D - The SpinPoint F1 (don't be fooled with that silly name): 3 MASSIVE 334 gig platters!!! They're stuck with their ancient designs (their classic S-series two-halve chassis holds up to two platters, and they can push an extra one with their new T-series chassis, unlike Seagate and Hitachi 4/5-platter monsters), but it's an awesome achievement. Handle with care! - The Caviar: not yet... WDC is still at 0.75TB, but it's coming soon. As for the Momentus: i will order the drive the next week. Not sure if it will be a Scorpio, SpinPoint, Travelstar, or even a Fujitsu drive, but it will be at least a 60 gig model, 5400RPM. Let's see what good deals can i find the next week in the net... For now, the basic Windows OS was restored, and Share is up and downloading, so PROJECT Spica will be able to continue with fresh raws Save this litte gem for your records: |
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Jul 2, 2007 12:59:06 GMT -5
5400 RPM drives are slow and should only be used in things like laptops where heat and power requirements are crucial. I'd go with a 7200 RPM drive.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 2, 2007 15:15:53 GMT -5
The problem is that I CAN'T FIND 7200RPM laptop drives anywhere! Stores don't carry these, i see only scams on eBay, and in MercadoLibre (also 0wn3d by eBay), it's a mixed bag of scams and overpriced small and slow drives.
Also, a 7200RPM drive would run too hot in a laptop (my current drives have reached up to 60ºC on high loads, and they're just 5400RPM models!), and would be hell expensive... But the idea is not bad, just that this is not the time.
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jul 2, 2007 21:25:24 GMT -5
GiGaBiTe - you also have to remember that @tom lives in a HOT country...so lower speed (less heat dissipation) drives will have greater durability over there. On another topic - for my latest CRAZY experiment with the Cx486sx/387sx hybrid PC, check HERE : board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=148971#148971And yes, I'm probably quite mad to do that...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 3, 2007 17:04:34 GMT -5
How many time should take to compile a Linux kernel there (For reference, in my P133 it takes 1 hour)... That's really nasty! But if you were stuck in the middle of nowhere with only you and your "monster", at least you can do something...
If only that Quantum crap just worked, i would do such kind of experiments... but i don't want to lose another PSU... yet ;D
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Jul 4, 2007 11:49:33 GMT -5
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 5, 2007 10:14:10 GMT -5
Someone at AMD is either... ... watching too much anime, or ... reading too much greek mythology books, or ... eating too much bran flakes ;D "Lima", "Rana", "Sparta", "Spica"... Smaller is beautiful After checking the kilometric Core 2 Duo errata, i can guess that my next CPU will be an AMD dual/quad-core... once they solve those 65/45nm processes. I've read recently in Slashdot that AMD will no longer make CPUs, instead, they will outsource such process to third-party fabs. Guess what? Your next Sempron may be "Made in China" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! On other news, my Steel Angel Kurumi collection (with Latin audio) is almost complete. Expect some HQ DVDs later in this year (and yes, i already "outsourced" the audio ripping process for this one ;D but not to Asia) |
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