🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 23:46:22 -0700 (PDT), Penang
<kalambong@gmail.com> wrote:

>I need to to know if people with huge capacity SATA hard drives (500GB
>and up) have the following problem :
>
>Bought a new hard drive, install it, formatted the disk, install the
>OS, use it for 2 months, and then weird things start popping up.
>
>The hard drive that I am using is Western Digital's WD6400AAKS -- a
>640GB hard drive.
>
>I bought it to replace my 250 GB drive, which is running out of
>capacity. I do a lot of video editing.
>
>Bought the hard drive back in 2nd of July this year. Install the hard
>drive into my PC, partitioned it into 2 logical volume (Drive C: and
>Drive D:) and then install the OS onto it. The OS that I use is Win
>XP. The HD is formatted under NTFS file system.
>
>Drive C: has 30 GB and the rest, about 570GB, falls under drive D:
>
>I ran chkdsk (check disk) on both partitions (chkdsk /f /r /x) and
>there wasn't any error. So I thought I had bought a good drive and was
>feeling very happy.
>
>It runs okay for 2 months, and then ...
>
>Sometimes when I start my PC, the PC can't find the drive.
>
>Other times, the PC can find the drive, but running extra ordinarily
>slow.
>
>I dropped down to the Command Prompt level, use "chkdsk" again to
>check what's wrong.
>
>The command that I use is still the same "chkdsk /x /r /f" --- to
>dismount the disk, and to "fix" the disk if there is anything wrong,
>and to check (recover) bad sector.
>
>Long and behold, there _ARE_ bad sectors !!
>
>Drive C has 82KB of bad sectors, and Drive D has 288KB of bad sectors.
>
>This is a drive that I'd just used for 2 months !! And the
>manufacturing date (the date stamped on the label of the drive)
>indicated that it was made June, 2008. In all account, this is a _NEW_
>drive, and it is developing BAD SECTORS !!!
>
>The 250GB drive that I used never gave me any problem. This 640GB,
>however, worries me !
>
>I know that 400KB of bad sector, for a 640GB (actually it's 597GB
>after formatted) hard drive, is insignificant. But still, bad sectors
>are still BAD SECTORS, and I am afraid that the bad sectors would
>spread !!
>
>That is why I am posting this message, asking the people who have more
>experience than me in using huge capacity hard drive --- is the bad
>sectors common occurrance?
>
>Or that I'm just too unlucky to get myself a lemon?
>
>BTW, the hard drive is EXTREMELY HOT, not warm, but VERY HOT !!! I do
>not have the actual temperature in it (I do not know if there is any
>utility out there that would give me the drive's actual temperature)
>but when I touch the drive, it was very HOT !!!
>
>Please, please help.
>
>Thank you !

These are not problems specific to 500GB or larger drives.
Run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics, look at your Windows
Event Viewer to see if any seemingly associated errors are
logged, and try disconnecting and reconnecting the cables
(including the motherboard end).

As for the PC not finding the drive, does it have a very
short POST before trying to boot?  If so, perhaps the drive
isn't spinning up fast enough, see if there is a bios
setting for a time period it might wait and set that for a
couple seconds or more.