Is this PC doa? (was a formatting question)

[Basil Chupin]

On 16/11/2010 20:24, Mark wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Basil Chupin<blchupin at iinet.net.au>  wrote:
>    
>> Yea, which is what I was implying.
>>
>> The HDs I am talking about are actually Maxtors - and Maxtor was
>> acquired by Seagate which is why I had to use Seagate SeaTools on them.
>> The drives are still working and still do not display any SMART error
>> messages and SeaTools still shows that they are OK.
>>
>>      
> I used to swear by Maxtors until I had one that crashed a head and
> lost a few files (because a friend of mine in my company's IT
> department at that time used a $5000 disc recovery hardware tool and
> restored 99% of the files.  Those few that were lost were gone.
>    

[pruned]

Isn't computer equipment exciting? :-) .

Since 1990 I have had nothing but Quantums and Maxtors - and never a 
smiggin of a problem. Well.... one of the Quantums I bought gave up the 
ghost a week or so after I bought back in 1992.

All the Quantums and Maxtors I bought until late 2009 have had not 
hassles and are still running - ableit a couple of them are showing some 
signs of losing sectors.

On the other hand, the recent Seagates and WDs I wasted my money on have 
not performed according to expectations. But one Maxtor 500GB I bought 2 
years ago as an external USB drive for backups hasn't faltered at all. 
One WD 500GB is now doorstop even thought it is still under warranty 
because it contains personal information which I can wipe but which will 
then void the warranty, and one of the Seagates (I always buy HDs in 
pairs) cannot be used as the MAIN (ie, Master) HD but only as a Slave 
even though Seagate's SeaTools "tells" me that there is nothing wrong 
with the HD - go figure :-( .


[pruned]


> I've heard nasty remarks about Seagates, too, which makes their
> swallowing Maxtor that much worse.
>
> My latest is a Hitachi, which I've heard is a cut above all the
> others, but most people seem to agree that they're all pretty much the
> same - sometimes you just get a bad one.
>    

Hitachi, eh? Got your guarantee on this, right? :-)

I've got nothing to lose at this point so the next time - real soon now 
- I will try Hitachi. And if it fails, I'm sending Guido over to see you 
:-D .

BC

-- 
A man kept complaining about not having shoes to wear - until he saw a man with no legs.