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MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 26th, 2010, 11:51

I was trying out "erase delays" in MHDD on a new WD2001FASS 2TB, but got this message after a while:

* * * CATASTROPHIC FAILURE * * *
Drive hangs on erase sectors.

Why did that happen? Does it mean the drive is bad? It was throwing several warnings (WW) during the diagnostic.

Re: MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 28th, 2010, 7:59

It means that your drive has serious problems beyond MHDD possibilities. Yes, according to this scenario it's bad. RMA if possible , get pro service for repair or get a new one.

Re: MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 28th, 2010, 8:36

In a couple of situations I have seen MHDD show "catastrophic failure" messages incorrectly.... though if you were getting other warnings then that may not be the case.

Re: MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 28th, 2010, 9:05

Arent these disks the ones with 4kb sectors? Maybe MHDD cant handle these

Re: MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 28th, 2010, 9:26

The new "advanced format" drives emulate 512-byte sectors to the interface, so I don't think that should make any difference.

Re: MHDD: Catastropic failure

April 28th, 2010, 12:33

Depends if MHDD is setup for correct 48bit LBA support I guess. Maybe ask the author?
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