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500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 6th 09, 02:02 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
PeeCee
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 61
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

"Band" wrote in message
...

"PeeCee" wrote in message
...
"muzician21" wrote in message
...
I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive? Would be a huge
Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Thanks for all assistance.





Is it this one?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=351


No, the OP stated it is a firewire drive, the link you posted is to a USB
drive...



OK so it's more likely this one
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=355

Same comments apply

P.

  #12  
Old April 6th 09, 02:12 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
PeeCee
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 61
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...
snip
Unless a drive has a decent volume of air moved across the PCB, it's
doomed to a short life.


snip

Google's research suggests otherwise:

From http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
quote
Contrary to previously reported results, we found
very little correlation between failure rates and either
elevated temperature or activity levels.
/quote

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/m...resting-thing/
notes:
quote
there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates
than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively
actually fail more often than those running a little hot
/quote


best
Paul.


Not my experience.

I used to run my drives fanless.
Had about 5 failures over 2 years.
Since then (about five years ago) I've been running another 5 or so with
fans .... and not a SINGLE failure.
All were and continue to be on high quality PSU's and mobo's.

Coincidence ?
Doubtful.





quote
The data in this study are collected from a large number
of disk drives, deployed in several types of systems
across all of Google's services. More than one hundred
thousand disk drives were used for all the results presented
here.
/quote

So your 10 drive 'experience' is more valid than the "more than one hundred
thousand' Google used in their research.
I don't think so.

Yes it is good practice to have good ventilation for a PC in general.
But freezing the balls of a Hard drives logic board is no guarantee it is
not going to die.
In fact if you 'read' the Google document and observe Figure 4, you should
note that cooling the drive to much is likely to 'increase' the failure
rate.

Paul.

  #13  
Old April 6th 09, 03:34 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
muzician21
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 22
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

I got the drive free, it's a SATA drive, I hooked up one of the SATA
power connectors and the drive spins up but have to get a data cable
to see if the drive is accesible. The other SATA drive I have uses
some kind of different kind of cable with what they're calling a
legacy power connection.

  #14  
Old April 6th 09, 07:38 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Centre Parting
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...
snip
Unless a drive has a decent volume of air moved across the PCB,
it's doomed to a short life.

snip

Google's research suggests otherwise:

From http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
quote
Contrary to previously reported results, we found
very little correlation between failure rates and either
elevated temperature or activity levels.
/quote

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/m...resting-thing/
notes:
quote
there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure
rates than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled
excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot
/quote


best
Paul.


Not my experience.

I used to run my drives fanless.
Had about 5 failures over 2 years.
Since then (about five years ago) I've been running another 5 or so
with fans .... and not a SINGLE failure.
All were and continue to be on high quality PSU's and mobo's.

Coincidence ?
Doubtful.





quote
The data in this study are collected from a large number
of disk drives, deployed in several types of systems
across all of Google's services. More than one hundred
thousand disk drives were used for all the results presented
here.
/quote

So your 10 drive 'experience' is more valid than the "more than one
hundred thousand' Google used in their research.
I don't think so.

Yes it is good practice to have good ventilation for a PC in general.
But freezing the balls of a Hard drives logic board is no guarantee
it is not going to die.


Freezing ?
Even with a fan, they're still quite warm.

But ultimately, you appear to be unaware of the class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.
And totally oblivious to the vested commercial interests at play here.
This study was not conducted by any kind of academic institution - or
subject to any kind of peer review.

We have no knowledge of who funded it - or any way of qualifying its
veracity.
Anyone can claim to have conducted a massive study - and go on to draw
whatever conclusions they choose.

I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some bull****
'study' (read : commercial propaganda).
Other than which, any overclocker will tell you that nothing kills a chip
faster than heat.
Try removing the heatsink from your GPU.
It's common sense, if nothing else.


In fact if you 'read' the Google document and observe Figure 4, you
should note that cooling the drive to much is likely to 'increase'
the failure rate.

Paul.



  #15  
Old April 6th 09, 10:25 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
darklight
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 233
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

muzician21 wrote:

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive? Would be a huge
Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Thanks for all assistance.


can you take the hard drive out of the case and hook it up internally ?
  #16  
Old April 6th 09, 10:34 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
darklight
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 233
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

muzician21 wrote:

I got the drive free, it's a SATA drive, I hooked up one of the SATA
power connectors and the drive spins up but have to get a data cable
to see if the drive is accesible. The other SATA drive I have uses
some kind of different kind of cable with what they're calling a
legacy power connection.


My advise to you is bye a separate external drive enclosure that way if HDD
fails you can change it.
  #17  
Old April 6th 09, 10:44 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
thanatoid
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 56
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

muzician21 wrote in

oups.com:

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive
I've been using to store mostly video files for a big video
project. It doesn't have an on/off switch, it powers up
when power is first applied, goes dormant after a period of
inactivity and restarts when you try to access it. It's
worked flawlessly until today.


Without reading the rest, or the replies, I will just say one
thing.

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the $10
Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the same drive
inside that you could have put inside you machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations) are the
only way to backup safely.
  #18  
Old April 6th 09, 10:54 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Rod Speed
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 8,559
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

thanatoid wrote:
muzician21 wrote in

oups.com:

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive
I've been using to store mostly video files for a big video
project. It doesn't have an on/off switch, it powers up
when power is first applied, goes dormant after a period of
inactivity and restarts when you try to access it. It's
worked flawlessly until today.


Without reading the rest, or the replies, I will just say one
thing.

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the $10
Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the same drive
inside that you could have put inside you machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations) are the only way to backup safely.


Wrong, as always.


  #19  
Old April 6th 09, 10:58 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
PeeCee
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 61
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.



I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a url?
Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other business
actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'



Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing on a
Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14 installed.
This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the underneath
from new, it died at about 24 Months.
Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air over them
(again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage under the floppy
drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died, again at
about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a fan
blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

  #20  
Old April 6th 09, 11:24 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware,24hoursupport.helpdesk,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Centre Parting
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18
Default 500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.



I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other
business actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'



Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.


Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors from
doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to accept
things they cannot understand - a typically left-brain-dominant
characteristic that derives from an ability to see the bigger picture.
Techies are predominantly left-brain thinkers and as such, frequently
express frustration when unable to understand WHY something happens.

This is frequently manifest as an autistic-like, stubborn refusal to accept
what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest as a need to
prove the opposite of what they see before them, so irksome do they find
their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they lack the
vision and imagination required to see the wood for the trees.

Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed HDD's.
My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.


Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air
over them (again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage under
the floppy drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died, again
at about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a
fan blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.



 




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