Tim,
Thanks for your explanation. Your explanation is truly scary, but, does
explain many of the subtle hd errors we now see. Suspect there is logic to
the madness, though I do not see it yet. I suppose I need to go back to
school again. Modern hd's are just so much PFM any more!
Thanks. It was so easy with the BK8-A2A, 5-platter removable, 80MB drive! LOL!
Best,
Duncan
At 12:02 01/17/2008 -0800, you wrote:
Servo tracks are not red only. Parts of them are changed on a constant
basis, such as the growing bad sector list, etc. The servo tracks are
written normally like regular data on the media surface. The permanent
components of the servo are sometimes written to the Processor or CMOS of
the hard drive.
Servo tracks are spread across all sides of the hard drive so the sides can
sync with each other for optimum performance. Hard Drives are quite
complicated when you look at the actual components and whats actually
written to the media surface.
Regards,
Tim "The Beave" Lider
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of DHSinclair
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:25 AM
To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com
Subject: Re: [H] I'm losin' it...
Tim,
I agree with your experience. But, I am confused a bit. You mention
"...Track 0 (Servo Tracks) are being destroyed for some reason or
another...." Sounds appropriate.
But, I always thought that a drive's Servo Tracks are recorded at Mfg. AND
that the head used to process the Servo Track was always READ Only. The
Servo head can never, ever Write (erase) the Servo tracks. I always thought
that the servo tracks were laser burned/encoded to make them as permanent
as possible. Perhaps I am still a bit too old-school!
Do you mean that the Servo Read head could be getting flakey? I do recall
that if the Servo Read head ever crashed, the whole drive was
toast! Really do like your 3 rules! LOL!
Just wondering...... :)
Best,
Duncan
At 10:53 01/17/2008 -0800, you wrote:
>Most SMART errors are letting you know the drive will fail. There is an
>ANSI standard for the Errors you receive. I forget where I used to get the
>codes. Now a days I just get the drive duplicated as soon as possible.
>
>IMO, most SMART problems are due to the Track 0 (Servo Tracks) are being
>destroyed for some reason or another. You are unable to repair those
>sectors, it has valuable servo information about your unique hard drive.
On
>the other hand it could be a CC error in the Upper area as well that's
>creating the error. I would still duplicate it and get it replaced.
>
>Rule 1: Back the data up
>Rule 2: See rule one
>Rule 3: No Backup, cry and look for ways to get it back.
>
>Regards,
>
>Tim "The Beave" Lider
>E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joe User
>Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 10:31 AM
>To: The Hardware List
>Subject: [H] I'm losin' it...
>
>Hello,
>
>I think I am losing it. I have a Maxtor drive that *may* be going out
>on me. I came in to see my WinXP Pro SP2 machine with a powered
>monitor but all black screen (It should have been on power save).
>System was (i think) not responding. So I reboot and then come back
>later to the same thing. So I go through the event viewer and see
>this:
>
>
>
>Event Type: Warning
>Event Source: Disk
>Event Category: None
>Event ID: 52
>Date: 1/17/2008
>Time: 2:24:02 AM
>User: N/A
>Computer: VENUS
>Description:
>The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has predicted
that
>it will fail.
>Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure
>may be imminent.
>
>For more information, see Help and Support Center at
>http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
>Data:
>0000: 0e 00 03 00 01 00 5e 00 ......^.
>0008: 00 00 00 00 34 00 04 80 ....4..?
>0010: 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
>0018: 00 00 00 00 00 11 2d 00 ......-.
>0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
>0028: 00 00 00 ...
>
>
>So I already know that SMART isn't *always* smart but I start
>xcopy'ing everything nonetheless. I grab my famous PROGRAMS DISCS and
>start loading Partition Magic and Drive Image. I pick another drive in
>this same system (there are 4 physical drives - 2 on Promise 100
>card) and xcopy both partition on the drive over to this new(ish) one.
>I have to do this because the original and possibly failing drive is a
>30gb split in half with a FAT32 Win98 install on C: (First half of
>drive) and a NTFS WinXP Pro install on E: (Second half of the drive)
>AND the new one is a 20GB. Size isn't the same so Drive Image won't do
>a copy disk to disk for me. No worries, I think, I partition the 20GB
>in FAT32 the first 40% and NTFS the last 60%. I copy the data over
>(again). I make sure boot.ini (on first partition) and ntdetect.com
>and all that are there on that 98 partition and all that. They are
>exactly the same. So I pull the system swpa the drive and put the 20GB
>in the (failing?) 30gb spot and jumper them etc. I mark the 20GB drive
>active with 98 disk AND do a fixmbr and fixboot with XP and still the
>drive will only boot to 98. If I mark the NTFS/XP partition it just
>sits blinking cursor - no boot menu - no nothing. WTF am I missing
>here?
>
>
>Is there a program that can query SMART error messages? I would really
>like to know what is wrong with the drive because it's still just chugging
>along here. Thank god the bios allows me to boot from scsi devices.
>
>
>--
>Regards,
> joeuser - Still looking for the 'any' key...
