Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Bricked Harddrive

DVA4295
Captain, B767-300

Joined on April 05 2007
Online Century Club
Double Century Club

Stratford, CT USA

212 legs, 397.9 hours
194 legs, 368.4 hours online
190 legs, 356.7 hours ACARS
3 legs, 6.7 hours event
19 legs dispatched, 10.0 hours

Posted onPost created on June 05 2010 11:59 ET by John Alusik

So I discovered today the my FS computer's hard drive is probably dead, even though I'm not sure, so I'm trying to figure out if I should try a new storage option. The drive isn't even 2 years old and it has a 5 year warranty, its a Seagate 500gb 7200rpm SATA II drive. I found a 1tb Seagate on sale for $50. Looking for opinions on the idea of getting my 500gb replaced through warranty, short stroking it and turn that into my bootable drive and then buy the 1TB and use it as a storage drive?

Or maybe we can solve my current problem. Went to turn on my computer today, and it took for ever to start booting devices, it would take a minute or two just to tell me there was no boot drive available. The harddrive is not detected in my BIOS setup. I have changed cables and ports and have gotten nothing. But when I don't plug the drive it at all, it only takes about 30 seconds for my computer to tell me that there is no bootable drive. When I plugged it into my old computer, I plug it into the other sata port and that computer doesn't find any drive, not the one I plugged in nor the one that was already plugged in, but once I unplug the drive I plugged in it boots up fine. The drive spins up and I can hear the needles move but I still get no drive detected. Any ideas?

John Alusik

Captain, B767-300

DVA5919
Captain, MD-11

Joined on May 13 2008
Everett Century Club
50 State Club
Commuter Conquest
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
Quincentenary Club

"...and don't call me Shirley"
Hillsboro, OR USA

507 legs, 1,438.9 hours
4 legs, 3.7 hours online
506 legs, 1,436.4 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on June 05 2010 17:42 ET by Jack Vogel

Sounds to me like its dead Jim smile

I hope you had data backed up somehow.

Personally I would go for the Western Digital Black series for your next drive,
they seem to be more reliable, however at the end of the day its all subject
to entropy and the real world, every brand can have a failure. Good luck!

Jack Vogel

Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on June 06 2010 11:32 ET by John Alusik

The drive is a Seagate 7200.11 which I guess has had problems with the firmware causing the drive to become bricked, however I never updated my firmware, never knew I could, and I can't update it now.

John Alusik

Captain, B767-300

Posted onPost created on June 07 2010 10:03 ET by John Alusik

Looks like I won't be able to fly for a few weeks, I have to send my drive to Seagate's data recovery service. It is likely just a firmware issue however I can't fix it without taking my drive apart, and I'd rather not do that.

John Alusik

Captain, B767-300

DVA7196
Captain, B767-300

Joined on March 29 2009
50 State Club
Quatercentenary Club

Seattle, WA USA

472 legs, 1,383.9 hours
30 legs, 55.7 hours online
469 legs, 1,368.8 hours ACARS
18 legs, 35.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on June 09 2010 10:40 ET by Tom Scholl

Jack Vogel wrote:

Sounds to me like its dead Jim I hope you had data backed up somehow.

Personally I would go for the Western Digital Black series for your next drive,
they seem to be more reliable, however at the end of the day its all subject
to entropy and the real world, every brand can have a failure. Good luck!

Eh...WD recently kind of screwed over some of their customers with the WD Blacks. It used to be the WD Blacks had re-flashable firmware like their RE (RAID Enabled) disks. You could buy the WD Blacks, re-flash them and they'd work great in an array. Specifically because they allowed you enable/disable TLER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery).

I try to stagger my disk purchases throughout the year with different vendors. The problem with buying disks at the same time (even from multiple vendors) is that somewhere down the line, they have common components.

One good thing about WD (not sure if Seagate has it), is that they have Advanced RMA. As soon as the disk fails and if its under warranty, you can call up and have them ship a disk out to you. They give you about ~30 days to return the old disk (and require a cc #, in case you don't return it).

I'd also steer clear of Hitachi...bad company to deal with when it comes to returns.

Tom Scholl

Captain, B767-300

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