Hitachi SATA 500gb failure

[Holden]

I am so glad this forum exists.

I have a Fantom 1tb FW400/800 box w/2x Hitachi SATA 500gb (part #0A33437) ... i've read these drives are failure-prone drive, and true to form, mine did.

Only a few days old ... they just stopped mounting. After a few hours, I tried again and it mounted, then I ran Drive Genius diagnostic which it passed interestingly, then it failed after I tried to access a folder on the drives. It did "The Click" just before failure this time but not initially.

Currently both drives spin up, no clicking, but they fail to mount. They're so new i'm thinking its not a physical failure.

Thoughts? I'm optimistically thinking its the control cards which I believe I can swap ...

TIA
Holden

[beto]

Try to use a good tool like mhdd and check ATA registers what its showing?

if u get DRDY DSC , try the ID command , if u get errors like ERR ABRT; so u could be a SAproblem. if not, try a Scan, maybe u have bad sectors on the windows system area, or maybe a weak head, wich its begint to get problems´

Best Regards

Alberto

[Holden]

Thanks for your reply. The drives mounted again and I'm copying all the data off of them. The bulk of the transfer was quite fast but the last 20GB have been painfully slow ... after this, i'm discarding the drives.

No more cheap drives!