Hello,

I bought a couple of 40GB IBM Deskstar 7,200rpm for my desktop computer a month back. Last night suddently one of them started acting wierd. It started making the sound of a SCSI disk working and then *beep* (the beep was probably from the PC speakers). And same thing over and over again, loud sound and then *beep*, loud sound and then *beep*, etc.. Then program after program they started to freeze and finally the whole computer froze and it worked just fine after a reboot. But then it happened a few hours later again and again it works just fine after a reboot.

Anyone know what the problem is and/or how I can fix this?

Thank you in advance,
Saeed

Tell IBM and you get another one from them. Probably just a faulty drive...

I have always heard good things about IBM drives. However, I put a 20 GB Travelmate in my Notebook, and while it works fine, every now and then I get this clunk sound and the drive seems to freeze for about half a second.

After some research I found that this is a very common problem with this drive, but that it supposedly doesn't affect performance at all... though this probably has nothing to do with your situation, I just thought I'd throw it out there.

Is your drive well ventilated? It almost sounds like it might be getting too hot... also, are you finding any error messages anywhere? I didn't gather if this is on a Unix or Windows system, but if Unix, check syslog. If Windows 2k, check the "event log", though I'm not sure how useful that tool is...

And of course there's the possibility that it might actually be defective. In any case, if you have anything important on the drive, back it up before going any further.

<EDIT>
I just noticed the "a couple of" -- which further leads me to think it might be a heat problem, especially if they are stacked together... 7200 RPM drives produce quite a bit of heat, and also suck a lot of power. I'd also check the power leads, making sure they are solid.

Finally, if you also have a CD/DVD drive or two, you might just be overloading the power supply. Do the lights dim when you power up? (j/k)

Anyway, as I said, back up your MP3s (what else would be on two 40 gig drives?) before trying anything...
</EDIT>

The drive is brand new (maybe 2 weeks old) and I could easily have it replaced. The problem is that I have 40GB data on it that I can't copy. I even tried Norton Utilities 2001 and it couldn't fix it.

This is the error I recieve in event log: The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, has a bad block.

Anyone else know how I can save my data or the disk even?

When I try to copy a file from that drive, the computer gets slow and I can hear the disk spin wierdly and then I get the following message: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)

I'm afraid the only way to get your data back is to go to one of those shops that specialize in data recovery. It will probably be expensive though. I already had _two_ IBM deskstars fail on me, so I'm not using their hard disks any more -- I'm happy with the latest 7200 rpm Fujitsu drives that are actually faster than IBMs, and much more quiet too.

Yeah, it's a bad drive apparently... My question is this: how did you get 40 gigs of data on the drive in 2 weeks, where you now do not have a copy of it (eg the original source)? I'm just curious there...

I would definately go to a place that does recovery, of course depending on how much they charge and how valuable the data is to you...

I've always used and liked Maxtor drives. The 7200 RPM models run hot and make an annoying whining noise, but I have yet to have a single problem out of any of them (I have 5, 2 of which are 7200 RPM). I've heard good things about Fujitsu, and Quantum, but I'd also heard good things about IBM, so don't take my advice too seriously (except on Maxtors). Oh, but do stay away from Western Digital...

Well, I couldn't save that data on that drive. What I did is I removed the 40GB NTFS partition and created a new FAT32 one and now it seems like it's working just fine again.

I'm going to give it another try since I've had nothing buy good experience with other IBM drives and this kind of makes me think that is was a MS Windows issue.

In most cases I've seen, if a hard disk starts to have bad blocks, it usually keeps getting more and more of them with time until the whole thing crashes completely. So unless you don't really care about the data on that drive, I'd say get a new one. Hard disks don't just get bad blocks all of a sudden, it's usually a sign of a mechanical problem or one of the platter surfaces is defective.

I second that, and wanted to add that the reason a reformat "fixed" it is because formatting will mark the bad blocks as unusable. After while (a few days at most), more will likely pop up.

I say return the drive while it's still under warranty, and before you put any more valuable data on it...

Returning the drive is the best thing you can do. I once had a drive for 2 months, I can't remember which comapany (either WD, or Maxtor), that started making "kerplunk kerplunk" noises, but still worked. I spoke to the manufacturers technician and the guy said it's probably faulty and replacing it would only cost me one way Shipping&Handling.

The drive they sent back was the same model and it worked fine. I still have it in one of my computers.

Im currently having those exact same problems with my Hard drive, same model, 40Gb IBM 2MB cache and 7200 rpm.
Im going to ring up scan tomorow and get areplacement..
Computer is dieing heh

Craig