Now how do you reckon I can prove that a drive is faulty? My 80GB Maxtor has been making noises like this for over a year now, its a lot worse currently and I am pretty sure its going to die sooner or later, I would just like to prove it inside the warranty period. Reckon power tools would show up a fault like this?
I saw the title and instantly thought "Someone's got a deathstar" just RMA it... say it periodically looses files you store and make a high pitched whine and also say something about heat if you like...
To be a fair the drive has spent most of its life as the main backbone for an episode server (cough) at uni, with uploads and downloads measured in the multiple TB, not to mention my own copying to and from the drive. It has put in between 8000-10,000 hours of usage, sometimes for weeks at a time solid usage. Its been a while since I ran the server now (1st 2 years at uni, end of 3rd year now), but it started making nasty noises well over a year ago and its still going. It'll be like saying goodbye to a faithful friend,
If you have the floppy disk of utilities you could run those. My drive (Maxtor too) failed the same part of 4 different tests. Submitted those results to Maxtor and got an RMA no problem. Although I have heard Maxtor RMAs are not hard to get anyways. You can probably get the utilities of their website and put them on a blank floppy if you don't have the one that came with the drive (or if you got it OEM).
I've RMA'd quite a few drives to maxtor, all done online.. no hassles, just send it back. They'll even tell you if it's in warranty.
I had a WD 40gig that made the exact same noises! I would happen for about two weeks, then the drive died. Good thing I started moving files off it the minute I heard the noises! I just RMAed it and they sent me a new one, no problem. ~Davy
