3 DAYS to write zeros???

[Steve83]

My last attempt to salvage my system involves writing zeros to all of the HDDs, & a few formats on each one. (BTW What's fdisk, and can W2KP do it?) The first one took ~18 hrs on a Maxtor 250G, but the 2nd took over 3 days. What's up with THAT? Most of the Maxtors (maybe 5 of them) are showing some degree of failure by the PowerMax test procedure, but they still work.



Side note: even when you're doing a LOT of rearranging & swapping, DON'T stack running HDDs. My Seagate caught fire.

[drfsupercenter]

I found the Windows XP CD formats really well.

[Chewy]

steve,

Cramming too many drives into a standard case and using an underpowered low quality power supply is asking for trouble.

I had voltage surges that hosed a couple of drives several years ago, the maxtor and wd utility for writting 0's fixed them.

[marfab]

My last attempt to salvage my system involves writing zeros to all of the HDDs, & a few formats on each one. (BTW What's fdisk, and can W2KP do it?) The first one took ~18 hrs on a Maxtor 250G, but the 2nd took over 3 days. What's up with THAT? Most of the Maxtors (maybe 5 of them) are showing some degree of failure by the PowerMax test procedure, but they still work.



Side note: even when you're doing a LOT of rearranging & swapping, DON'T stack running HDDs. My Seagate caught fire.

Why the heck would you want to keep using a disc that showing signs of failing? God sakes...backem up and drill a hole in them and get new ones.
Interesting advice re:stacked drives. I've never heard of em catching fire. Maybe you should invest in some cooling fans when you pick up your new drives.

[Steve83]

I only had 2 drives running in the case, but plenty of fans. When I said "stacked", I meant "stacked". As in: one resting directly on top of another. I bumped the case, they shifted, & the bottom of the Seagate got shorted against the top of a Maxtor. One of the IC chips burst into flame. It didn't smell good.

But that's off-topic...


This question relates to a different Maxtor. I'm just wondering if the slow writing could indicate some malware hiding on the drive, or is it just another reason to set fire to this whole system, buy a dual-CPU board & drop a couple of dual-core processors in? I'm not afraid of spending money on good new stuff, but I'm absolutely TERRIFIED that it's not a hardware problem, and I'll carry these symptoms to the new system. That's why I'm spending soooooooooo much time trying to diagnose this system: I want KNOW what's wrong with it.

So any ideas on the slow zero-writing?

And is it possible that a backup copy of an OS install CD (that was good a few years ago & carefully stored during that time) is now somehow corrupt, and causing the HDDs to crash, even though the OS seems to run for weeks after reinstallation?

[Chewy]

writting zeros to a drive is slow, by design, it's a quasi low level format.

it's doing it in a pure dos mode, no dma?
last drive I did it on was only a 20 gig, probably a 13 gig.

took 2-3 hours

get a good power supply

[Steve83]

MaxBlast was doing it - IDK if that's "pure DOS" &/or DMA modes. But the first one (same size, brand, & model) took less than 1/3 the time.

Do you still recommend that Hyper PS with the modular wiring? I'm hesitant to drop $100 on such a new product. Is there a better-established brand with similar features & price?

[Chewy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931

highest ratings that can handle lots of drives

btw I smoked a cheapo power supply by just hooking up a bad drive to it and booting
better PS trip(hopefully)

[Steve83]

I like the variety of dedicated connectors, but WHAT A RAT-NEST!

So do you think this will actually fix anything, or is it just a preventative measure to eliminate possibilities?


BTW
I finally got my spare system back (a slightly modified HP Pavillion 325c), and it was working fine until I rebooted it. I MIGHT have transferred a couple of files from backups, but I'm pretty sure I only downloaded a couple of utilities from official sites. When I powered it up after it sat off overnight, the FIRST bios screen stopped & it locked showing no memory testing, no hard drive detection, but the header & footer info were there. Near the bottom line, it said "To enter setup, press F1 or E C" like the bios was corrupt and the rest of that line was missing. It did that twice. So I let it sit a few hours, then unplugged the ethernet, USB printer & scanner, & removed the SanDisk .5G thumb drive, and it powered up fine. AFAIK, no data has been transferred between this system & the one I'm having the MAJOR problems with, and my mother (who's been using the HP for a few months) never had any trouble from it.

Am I just cursed or what? I'm using it now with the printer & scanner, but I haven't reconnected the thumb drive.