harddisk vibration

[VJ]

Hello,

I'm having issues with an IBM UltraStar 36lzx (10K U160 SCSI drive). I ran Drive Fitness Tools and contacted IBM/Hitachi. They are very fast to react , and give this answer:

I have now analysed your DFT log file and found that the drive suffers from too much vibration. That would explain the problems you are having because
I assume the vibration prevents the heads from reading and writing to the drive properly.

Therefore I suggest that this drive needs to be replaced.

edit: (perhaps not clear in this excerpt): they will RMA the drive.

This 'too much vibration', is that internally in the drive, or should I change anything to the case ?

My case is a Lian Li PC70 ( http://www.lian-li.com/product.php?a...ewPD&prdid=374 ), the drive is mounted in the bottom front drivecage, together with a Seagate Cheetah 10K.6. Both drives are mounted on their side (which is ok, according to the manuals), and fixed with 4 screws/drive. The drivecage itself is also firmly fixed to the chassis, and the chassis is positioned stable. There are 6 places to put a harddisk in this cage, if you number them from left to right (1 to 6), my drives are in positions 2 and 5.
There appears to be no freedom at all (as far as I can tell).
(there are no road-works or construction sites in the vicinity; no heavy traffic; no earthquakes; building is 5 stories, I'm on the third floor)

So, should I worry the vibrations come from an external source (and if so, how can I tell and what can I do) or not ?


Jörg

[Wombat]

Nah, I doubt your case or setup has anything to do with it.

That drive is a 7200rpm gyroscope. If it's got a little issue with the weight distribution, that drive is going to shake itself crazy because the axle won't be centered.

[Kurt]

Good for you they RMA the drive.

Once I had an IBM techie that refused to give me an RMA for a bad sectors problem. I had explained that it had happened right after shutting down the PC. So the guy started lecturing me on the fact that dropping drives or mistreatig them was not covered by the warranty (the argument lasted a good 10mins). He had a hard time believing sh*t happens apparently...I got pretty pissed off too but they finally RMA'd the drive...

[VJ]

Wombat: 10K gyroscope... But yes, that is true... I actually bought the case in the first place because of the 10K drives: adequate cooling, proper mounting, ...

Kurt: Hitachi (who bought the IBM harddisk division) seem to do a great support-job. This 10K drive is mine, but at work we had an IBM Deskstar (7200) crashing: it gave numerous bad sectors, stopped spinning, ... We sent it back (through the dealer) and got a new one. No arguments. The drive was just the last week within warranty.


Jörg

[DGhost]

shiett.. IBM was always great for us to RMA drives to... they would take RMA's back for just about anything (including the "vibration" issue)...

[VJ]

Originally posted by DGhost
shiett.. IBM was always great for us to RMA drives to... they would take RMA's back for just about anything (including the "vibration" issue)...

You mean you also had drives that exhibited this ?

Yesterday, I tried to copy the files on it to another disk. The drive kept delaying the reads, XP kept adding to the eventlog, but it did work... (at one time took well over 10 minutes to copy 100 MB )

Jörg

[Wombat]

Originally posted by DGhost
shiett.. IBM was always great for us to RMA drives to... they would take RMA's back for just about anything (including the "vibration" issue)...

Not always. During the Deathstar thing they stopped doing cross-shipping.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by VJ
Wombat: 10K gyroscope... But yes, that is true... I actually bought the case in the first place because of the 10K drives: adequate cooling, proper mounting, ...

Kurt: Hitachi (who bought the IBM harddisk division) seem to do a great support-job. This 10K drive is mine, but at work we had an IBM Deskstar (7200) crashing: it gave numerous bad sectors, stopped spinning, ... We sent it back (through the dealer) and got a new one. No arguments. The drive was just the last week within warranty.


Jörg

I haven't had trouble with them since, I just didn't need to RMA a drive...

Anyway, I'm sure IBM was doing a good job too - I just happened to talk to the daft-star...

[DGhost]

Originally posted by VJ
You mean you also had drives that exhibited this ?

Yesterday, I tried to copy the files on it to another disk. The drive kept delaying the reads, XP kept adding to the eventlog, but it did work... (at one time took well over 10 minutes to copy 100 MB )

Jörg

yes. i've had drives that when removed entirely from the system seemed to run a bit hot, made a bit too much noise and seemed to vibrate a little too much. we RMA'd them when we noticed it - i believe i was having some errors with the thing, but nothing major. a random case of bad sectors that would disappear and reappear.

edit: as an update, i should point out that we were RMAing the ATA/100 Desktars (75GXP's and up) instead. the "we" i am refering to was acctually also the computer shop i was working for, so they were usually very good about handling RMA's.

also... Wombat... we never really dealt with them doing cross shipping... so...