[ale] OT. Dead harddrive on laptop

[Ron Frazier]

If I were to buy a hard drive now, I'd look at look at hybrid SSD / 
magnetic technology.  It combines the best features of magnetic and the 
best features of SSD.  I have 2 of these in service, from Seagate, and I 
really like them.  They're 7200 RPM, have a 4 GB SSD cache, and (when I 
bought them) have 5 year warranty.  Regarding the warranty, you have to 
check each part number individually.  Sometimes they're different even 
though the features are the same.  The hybrid technology makes the 
computer boot MUCH faster, and makes certain applications run much 
faster.  I cannot speak to the long term longevity of the SSD part of 
the system, and indeed, I have serious misgivings about the long term 
longevity of SSD devices.  I had my GPS once decide it just wasn't going 
to read parts of it's internal SSD memory.  I had to restore it three 
times to get it working again.  Now it's happy again.  We just don't 
have 20 years of experience with SSD like we do with spinning media.  
Hopefully, whatever they're caching in the SSD part is also stored on 
the magnetic part.  However, I can say I certainly like the performance 
of these drives up to this point.

For some reason, I couldn't get to the newegg site while writing this 
email, but here are a couple of links you can look at.  I'm assuming 
we're talking SATA interface, not PATA.  If his computer is old, it 
could be PATA.  Anyway, Frys has the unit in the link below, which is a 
500 GB, 7200 RPM, notebook hybrid HDD, for $ 150, limit 1 / household.  
The first link is to an older Seagate part number which may have changed 
by now.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st95005620as-momentus-xt-sata-3gbs-4gb-500gb-drv&vgnextoid=8ba8576b12b38210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&vgnextchannel=f424072516d8c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Support

http://www.frys.com/product/6320511?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Sincerely,

Ron

On 1/25/2012 12:13 AM, Greg Clifton wrote:
> Cornelius,
>
> Most likely it is the hard drive itself, though it could be a BIOS 
> issue (in times past you wouldn't be able to boot if your CMOS battery 
> failed because the drive parameters stored in the BIOS were lost, but 
> that was resolved many years ago with PNP by having the BIOS poll the 
> drive for the parameters), since that is the moving part and those are 
> what generally fail. If you suspect the controller, you could shuck 
> out the drive and put it in an external USB enclosure and test on 
> another machine to verify that it is not anything else with this 
> laptop that is causing you grief.
>
> Assuming it is the hard drive, it **should** be a SATA drive, but if 
> much more than 4 or 5 years old, it could be an IDE  drive. If SATA, 
> you can get a new 500GB drive from NewEgg for ~ $100 to $120, or a 
> 320GB for pretty much the same price, if you prefer. Your timing is 
> bad on this as hard drives have gone up considerably in price since 
> the flood in Thailand, but still 500GB 2.5" drive for less than $150 
> delivered isn't bad compared to what you would have paid for one that 
> size just 2-3 years ago.
>
> Someone posted about 7.2K 5 year warranty drives and yes, those are 
> pretty much gone away. You only get the 5 year warranty on Enterprise 
> Class Drives and "you gets what you pays for", as they say. But 
> honestly folks, how can you expect the corporapist drive manufacturers 
> to stay in business while selling a 3TB hard drive for ~ $150 retail 
> (prior to the flood) and cover it for 5 or even 3 years. We all know 
> that drives are generally MUCH more reliable than they were back in 
> the MFM and RLL days not to mention BIGGER, FASTER and CHEAPER. So go 
> cry in your beer if you can't find a 5 yr warranty drive for less than 
> $300 now after the flood. But it is still pretty damn cheap for what 
> you get with a 1 year warranty even after the flood.
>
> BTW for you Seagate lovers/haters among us, they just recently agreed 
> to buy the Samsung HDD business. I don't think the deal has closed 
> yet, but probably won't be wrong. My guess is that Samsung didn't have 
> good contracts for the parts that are in shortage since the flood and 
> they are going to concentrate on SSDs, but I didn't actually read 
> anything on that.
>
> Regards,
> Greg Clifton

-- 

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Ron Frazier

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