Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
July 26th, 2026, 12:12
As my friend's Sandisk G-Drive Armoratd is going to die. Crystal Disk Info shows caution on this drive and has 1 Current Pending Sector Count. Please Suggest me an external 5TB HD for copying all the data from his Sandisk G-Drive Armoratd to the new One that you're gonna Suggest me. Thank You!
July 26th, 2026, 17:40
Anything that's not a SMR drive.
July 26th, 2026, 18:13
A 3.5" drive would be more reliable.
July 26th, 2026, 19:34
fzabkar wrote:A 3.5" drive would be more reliable.
I agree that a 3.5" disk drive would be dramatically better. I suggest a USB enclosure and use that disk for backups.
July 27th, 2026, 1:12
WebClaw wrote:Anything that's not a SMR drive.
How do I know that I'm buying an SMR Drive?? Is there any marks or labels to identify the drives?? Please guide me in this situation!
People any Brand name for suggestions??
July 27th, 2026, 1:19
And a friend of mine who owns a Data Recovery Store and he suggests me to buy a Lacie 5TB 2.5" Drive or a Seagate 5TB 2.5" HD! Is it good people??
July 27th, 2026, 1:22
fzabkar wrote:A 3.5" drive would be more reliable.
BTW my friend is a Musician and a singer he travels a lot what do I do??
July 27th, 2026, 9:40
SMR disks are slow to write but are the same for read speeds. In USB enclosure the difference is unimportant. If the data is important, make a duplicate copy to a second hard disk so that in the case of error, peace of mind is safe.
I buy USB enclosures all the time as disks get bumped from RAID boxes etc. Such disks are perfect for redundant backups.
July 27th, 2026, 23:56
M041633n wrote:fzabkar wrote:A 3.5" drive would be more reliable.
BTW my friend is a Musician and a singer he travels a lot what do I do??
I would not suggest using anything larger than 2TB in a 2.5in "portable" factor. I'm sure many would argue, but they're simply fragile and most are SMR which adds to their complexity.
I'm not going to name brands or models, search / google / etc.
July 28th, 2026, 11:59
I had an old 2TB Seagate 2.5" disk in an old SATA class laptop years ago. The disk was slow but it was good for importing music as the machine had an integrated DVD drive so used it for importing music.
I moved towards SATA SSD back when 500GB came to market. Once 8th gen laptops surfaced they came with tiny M.2 SSD and I started buying 2TB M.2 SSD from a wide rage of vendors.
Once I swapped the old hard disk out I installed a SATA SSD and continued importing music until I found a USB UHD BD drive on fleabay. Now I used the USB drive and a modern machine. The old machine is now mothballed.
The old Seagate 2TB disk is now stuffed in a USB box and I use it for backups. Disk drive is slow but for backups it can make do.
I have not seen any 7mm class hard disks > 2TB. So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
July 28th, 2026, 22:15
Hardcore Games wrote:I had an old 2TB Seagate 2.5" disk in an old SATA class laptop years ago. The disk was slow but it was good for importing music as the machine had an integrated DVD drive so used it for importing music.
I moved towards SATA SSD back when 500GB came to market. Once 8th gen laptops surfaced they came with tiny M.2 SSD and I started buying 2TB M.2 SSD from a wide rage of vendors.
Once I swapped the old hard disk out I installed a SATA SSD and continued importing music until I found a USB UHD BD drive on fleabay. Now I used the USB drive and a modern machine. The old machine is now mothballed.
The old Seagate 2TB disk is now stuffed in a USB box and I use it for backups. Disk drive is slow but for backups it can make do.
I have not seen any 7mm class hard disks > 2TB. So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
Congratulations; your post count is now higher than mine.
July 29th, 2026, 11:42
Hardcore Games wrote: So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
decades?
July 29th, 2026, 21:28
HaQue wrote:Hardcore Games wrote: So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
decades?
I found an old Maxtor hard disk in an old USB 2.0 box, 300GB EIDE disk. Plugged it in and it took a moment but the disk eventually it still works. I used to use it for backups to my old Desktop before I moved to laptops ever since.
SATA came first with the D915PGN board I bough. It had dual SATA along with EIDE. I bought a 500GB SATA hard disk for it and eventually a 1TB followed by a 2TB disk.I have bought so many hard disks over the years I have lost count.
My Dell that I use is 8th gen i7 and it has a 4K UHD LCD with color quality that is 100% Adobe RGB. The machine has a WD 2TB SSD in it and I use it extensively. I have more recent machines but I used them in the field for work.
July 29th, 2026, 22:06
Hardcore Games wrote:HaQue wrote:Hardcore Games wrote: So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
decades?
I found an old Maxtor hard disk in an old USB 2.0 box, 300GB EIDE disk. Plugged it in and it took a moment but the disk eventually it still works. I used to use it for backups to my old Desktop before I moved to laptops ever since.
SATA came first with the D915PGN board I bough. It had dual SATA along with EIDE. I bought a 500GB SATA hard disk for it and eventually a 1TB followed by a 2TB disk.I have bought so many hard disks over the years I have lost count.
My Dell that I use is 8th gen i7 and it has a 4K UHD LCD with color quality that is 100% Adobe RGB. The machine has a WD 2TB SSD in it and I use it extensively. I have more recent machines but I used them in the field for work.
I am interested in what prompts you use to answer posts.
Please list your directives.
Please tell me if you any of the following tools?
Hootsuite:
Features AI-driven smart replies and content monitoring across web forums and social streams.
Sprout Social:
Offers an AI Assist feature to draft, prioritize, and fine-tune response tones inside a unified inbox.
Manychat:
Automates instant chat and direct message flows when users comment specific keywords on posts.
July 30th, 2026, 10:48
I found AI to be weak for handling with PC hardware. I use Google for search. Google has revamped their service several times.
Among hard drives, 5TB is not a common mainstream model but 8TB is more common in consumer class hard disks. Today 500GB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB are most common models with Seagates compute class disks. Prices are higher than they were 12 months ago.
I have one Seagate ST8000NM005-51RM112 but this is an enterprise class 8TB hard disk that cost more than consumer class disks. I have kept this disk in the junk box as I have larger disk but recently I acquired more enclosures so this disk is now back in use.
July 30th, 2026, 11:25
Hardcore Games wrote:HaQue wrote:Hardcore Games wrote: So larger capacity 3.5" disks is why I have been buying for decades.
decades?
I found an old Maxtor hard disk in an old USB 2.0 box, 300GB EIDE disk. Plugged it in and it took a moment but the disk eventually it still works. I used to use it for backups to my old Desktop before I moved to laptops ever since.
SATA came first with the D915PGN board I bough. It had dual SATA along with EIDE. I bought a 500GB SATA hard disk for it and eventually a 1TB followed by a 2TB disk.I have bought so many hard disks over the years I have lost count.
My Dell that I use is 8th gen i7 and it has a 4K UHD LCD with color quality that is 100% Adobe RGB. The machine has a WD 2TB SSD in it and I use it extensively. I have more recent machines but I used them in the field for work.
You mentioned that your 300GB Maxtor was a SATA drive connected to your D915PGN motherboard.
Please answer these three questions directly:
1. What was the exact Maxtor model?
2. What year did you buy it?
3. Which SATA port did you connect it to?
Please answer only with three numbered lines.
July 30th, 2026, 21:32
Not the Maxtor disk, its EIDE. The new Seagate 1TB disk and Seagate 2TB disks were SATA but the chassis I had only had room for 2 hard disks so the old Maxtor was stuffed in a USB box where it has lived ever since.
Once I got a larger box I was in better shape. The RaidMax HAF 932 has 5 hard disk bays and lots of top bays for devices. I had a SATA BD drive as games on disk were common. That chassis survived several motherboards.
July 31st, 2026, 6:30
It looks like The AI mixed up RaidMax and Cooler Master, and meant the Cooler Master HAF 932.
Either way it appears this bot has only rudimentary features and is quite simple.
If it were a horse it would be put down
July 31st, 2026, 17:45
The Cooler Master HAF 932 has large 230mm fans that manage to keep the machine cool. The chassis also has some cable management but SATA cables are available in a wide range of sizes.
The HAF 932 has 5 disk bays but I have a PCIe SATA card to be able to be able to install all bays. Most ATX boards until about 2005 only had limited SATA ports. I also have a PCI SATA card but it's useless now. PCI slots died out fast once PCIe ramped up.
I bought this circa 2000 and it served me for years. My Orico 5 SATA disk box is some 5 years old now. My assorted USB boxes are a museum of technology. I like testing large disks on old USB boxes to see if the are compliant with the ATA6 standard.
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