[Thinkpad] Re: Hard drive troubles!

Hello,

I think you hit on the problem in your original series of testing. It
sounds like the 40GB 5400RPM Toshiba hard disk drive is faulty. You
may wish to re-run the Drive Fitness Test Program again (latest version
available from http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT) and
verify the problem report hasn't changed.

Contact Computer Geeks' RMA department and explain the steps you took to
isolate the problem and the results, including a print screen or written
description of the error report from the Drive Fitness Test software.
You may wish to emphasize the fact that the problem is subtle and requires
extensive testing with manufacturers diagnostics for it to show up, e.g.,
a simple FDISK and FORMAT will not be illuminating.

Hopefully, they will give you a new, working hard disk drive.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

At 01:13 PM 8/7/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Message: 2
>Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 09:25:35 -0500
>To: thinkpad@stderr.org
>From: William Lueders <w.lueders@mchsi.com>
>Subject: [Thinkpad] Hard drive troubles!
>
>
>Hi all,
>I have a perplexing problem with hard drives (plural, two so far). I
>purchased a 40gig, 5400rpm Toshiba drive. I installed the drive in a
>560z. After successful install and use for several days (?) the computer
>began to loose data and corrupt files. Shortly after this, minutes really,
>it failed to boot at all showing "no operating system installed" or some
>such message.
>Thinking that I had run into the size restriction in the bios I attempted
>to use "Disk Manager 2000" to install the boot overlay to this drive. All
>attempts failed. Using my A20p I would format the drive and then attempt
>to apply the overlay. All I would get is a message from Disk Manager that
>"no drives requiring the overlay were present. Nothing I tried would cause
>the overlay to be applied. Either in the 560z or the A20p. When the drive
>was in the 560z, Disk Manager would indicate two drives detected and one of
>them was the Toshiba correctly indicated. The other was a "ATA drive with
>120.Gigs"or some such thing. I could never get it to give me only the
>correct value for the only drive in the system. In other words it
>continued to show both drives when only the Toshiba was present. As a
>result Disk Manager would default out of the program. Wouldn't set up the
>drive. I had to format and copy the windows install package to the hard
>drive in the A20p and then swap to the 560z, boot from a boot disk and
>start the install.
>All would go well for some time. Days even a week or so. Then at some
>point the computer would not come out of suspend or boot up or some thing
>else would show up and quickly the thing would not boot at all.
>This computer worked perfectly with a 6.4 gig drive. I came upon a
>Travelstar 10gig so I thought I might try that. Formatted it in the A20p
>and successfully installed the boot overlay that the 40gig would not
>take. This drive worked for several weeks or more with no problems. Still
>had no luck with the 40gig so I returned it as defective to "Computer
>Geeks" where I purchased it (IBM DFT showed the disk had "Issues"). They
>checked the disk (or said they did) found no defects and returned it to me.
>While the disk was gone I sold the 560z and purchased a 570 (2644, 300mhz,
>64K etc). When it arrived I attempted to install the 40gig in the
>570. Disk Manager saw the disk, installed it, said I didn't need the
>overlay and off I went. Put Win 98 on the machine and other stuff all
>seemed well. Five days later the machine would not come out of
>suspend. When shut off and restarted it came up "no operating system
>present" then a second reboot brought "no fixed disk present". Disk
>Manager showed no, or corrupted FAT on the drive. No symptoms were noted
>working up to this. All worked very well and then disaster.
>I replaced the 40gig with the already imaged 10gig from the 560z and it
>fired up, I loaded all the drivers and rebooted several times as asked by
>the OS while the new drivers were installed.
>The following morning (this morning) the unit would not come out of suspend
>and when rebooted indicated "no system installed"! This was the drive that
>had the overlay and had worked for a long time in the 560z.
>Other data points: I use 98 Lite on both of the drives. The System Device
>Manager in Win98 indicated a conflict with two different IDE Drivers for
>hard drives indicated. One worked well and the other had the Yellow
>exclamation point showing (570 only). It may be that this occours most
>often when coming out of suspend but I am not sure that this is always the
>case. The 560z tested out perfect on all of the internal tests including
>tests with both the 10gig and the 40gig installed. The 570 does not have
>any of the internal test screens, at least I haven't found them.
>What's up here? What should I do next? I have a 366mhz 570 with the 13.3
>inch screen on the way to me along with a base and CD drive. Perhaps
>someone reading this would have a IBM recovery disk for this machine that I
>might try to see if I am missing a driver somewhere? I am lost and will
>accept all suggestions as I want to use the 366 570 with the 40gig for a
>particular job. Sorry about the long wind here but I thought the
>background would help.
>
>Cheers, Bill Lueders.

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Received on Thu Aug 7 17:56:13 2003