Faulty Maxtor 5T030H3 - best replacement?

[Helen Smith]

Hello,

Apologies first of all for my near-complete ignorance - I'm a beginner
in the area of replacing a hard drive myself.

My PC (Athlon 1 GHz, Asus A7V, Windows ME) is now on its second Maxtor
5T030H3 (Diamondmax Plus 60, 30GB) hard drive. The first one was
replaced by the PC manufacturer's engineer at two years old as it was,
with increasing regularity, failing to spin up on time when the system
was switched on, and failing to be detected by the Promise UDMA 100
controller built onto my system's A7V (original A7V with no suffix)
motherboard. There was no other misbehaviour from the drive. An
apparently-identical replacement was fitted (possibly "new old" stock or
a refurbished one, since the model wasn't still current by then), and
has been no trouble until just now, one year later, when I noticed the
system (whilst idle but with plenty of open files and programs) making
an odd noise, which proved to come from the HD. It was a fairly quiet
"ker-plunk", followed by a burst of sustained disc access (this drive is
always quite loud in my PC's case) with the access light constantly lit
- lasting about 5 seconds, and the performance repeated every 10 seconds
or so. I panicked and started shutting files and programs ready to back
up important files to CD, but the system immediately froze. After
hitting the restart button on the PC's case, the HD was declared absent
by the Promise BIOS on the restart, but after a proper power-off and 10
minute rest, operated normally, with no bad sectors detected and no more
than the expected lost clusters from an improper shutdown. I removed
dust from the case and ensured the connectors were all pressed firmly
home (neither seemed factor seemed to have been a problem though) and it
has behaved normally in the week since. However, I do feel this is a
warning and it must be time to replace/upgrade it.

Firstly, are there known issues with the Maxtor 5T030H3? I'm feeling a
bit suspicious about having two problems with this model of drive in a
relatively short time. Could the PC's internal and external environment
have any influence? By necessity, it has to live in a room without
central heating (but with portable heating) so the temperature's not as
constant as it could be (though I live in a pretty "temperate" area!)
and the room is a bit inherently dusty (bedroom). Then there's the PC
itself - it has a 250W power supply which I wonder is a bit weedy for
this type of system (though the PC vendors have always insisted to me
that they tested it and it's "high quality and perfectly adequate"), and
also runs at a pretty high temperature (41-52 degrees C for the CPU,
30-38 for the motherboard, according to VCool, though Asusprobe (in
Windows) says 10 degrees C higher for the CPU, but it's a version that
was known to give too-high readings and the figures given in the
system's BIOS match the lower VCool temperature [when the system is
well-warmed up, obviously]).

Secondly, I am thinking of replacing the drive with an 80GB unit and my
choices appear to be the following: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y080L0 or
6Y080P0 with the bigger cache (thought maybe I should give Maxtor a miss
this time?!), Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A, or Hitachi Deskstar
7K250 HDS722580VLAT20, Western Digital Caviar WD800LB, or maybe the
Samsung Spinpoint P80 SP0802N. Is there anything I should be
particularly avoiding amongst those? It would be nice to have a quieter
drive, as the 5T030H3 has always been pretty thunderous in my PC, though
that could be fault of the case acoustics, I suppose.

I'm sorry for the length of this message and hope somebody can advise
me. I tried searching the forum first, of course, but there were so
many references to these drives with conflicting opinions that I got
rather swamped.

Thanks in advance,

H

 

[Rod Speed]

Apologies first of all for my near-complete ignorance -
I'm a beginner in the area of replacing a hard drive myself.

My PC (Athlon 1 GHz, Asus A7V, Windows ME) is now on its second
Maxtor 5T030H3 (Diamondmax Plus 60, 30GB) hard drive. The first
one was replaced by the PC manufacturer's engineer at two years old
as it was, with increasing regularity, failing to spin up on time when the
system was switched on, and failing to be detected by the Promise
UDMA 100 controller built onto my system's A7V (original A7V with no
suffix) motherboard. There was no other misbehaviour from the drive.
An apparently-identical replacement was fitted (possibly "new old" stock
or a refurbished one, since the model wasn't still current by then), and
has been no trouble until just now, one year later, when I noticed the
system (whilst idle but with plenty of open files and programs) making
an odd noise, which proved to come from the HD. It was a fairly quiet
"ker-plunk", followed by a burst of sustained disc access (this drive is
always quite loud in my PC's case) with the access light constantly lit
- lasting about 5 seconds, and the performance repeated every 10
seconds or so. I panicked and started shutting files and programs
ready to back up important files to CD, but the system immediately froze.
After hitting the restart button on the PC's case, the HD was declared
absent by the Promise BIOS on the restart, but after a proper power-off
and 10 minute rest, operated normally, with no bad sectors detected
and no more than the expected lost clusters from an improper shutdown.

That is clear evidence that it might be
getting too hot except for the time of year.

I removed dust from the case

That shouldnt matter with a hard drive.

and ensured the connectors were all pressed firmly home
(neither seemed factor seemed to have been a problem though)
and it has behaved normally in the week since. However, I do
feel this is a warning and it must be time to replace/upgrade it.

Yeah, with hard drives so cheap now, thats a sensible approach.

Firstly, are there known issues with the Maxtor 5T030H3?

Not really.

I'm feeling a bit suspicious about having two problems with
this model of drive in a relatively short time. Could the PC's
internal and external environment have any influence?

Yes, but its unlikely to be getting stinking hot at this
time of year unless one of the case fans has failed etc.

By necessity, it has to live in a room without
central heating (but with portable heating) so the
temperature's not as constant as it could be

Doesnt matter. Its the times when the environment is hot that matters.
Drives that arent getting enough cooling can get surprisingly stinking
hot when the room temp is very high. Not likely at this time of year tho.

(though I live in a pretty "temperate" area!) and
the room is a bit inherently dusty (bedroom).

Thats shouldnt matter with a hard drive. It can be a problem
with cpu fans, you can get a surprising buildup of fur on them.

Then there's the PC itself - it has a 250W power supply
which I wonder is a bit weedy for this type of system

It is a bit on the low side for an Athlon.

(though the PC vendors have always insisted to me that
they tested it and it's "high quality and perfectly adequate"),

They're likely right and an inadequate power supply
shouldnt produce the cool down symptom you saw too.

and also runs at a pretty high temperature (41-52 degrees C for the CPU,

Thats fine for an Athlon.

30-38 for the motherboard, according to VCool,
Ditto.

though Asusprobe (in Windows) says 10 degrees C higher for the CPU,

Thats a bit of a worry, getting up a bit.

but it's a version that was known to give too-high readings and the
figures given in the system's BIOS match the lower VCool temperature

Trouble is that bios temperatures dont mean much with a cpu
because the cpu is doing bugger all work just displaying those values.

[when the system is well-warmed up, obviously]).

Try SpeedFan and see what it says about the cpu temp and hard drive temp.

Secondly, I am thinking of replacing the drive with an 80GB unit

Yeah, makes a lot of sense if you are a bit short of space anyways.

and my choices appear to be the following: Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y080L0 or 6Y080P0 with the bigger
cache (thought maybe I should give Maxtor a miss this time?!),

Yeah, I would, but thats mainly because I dont
like their warranty proceedures in my country.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A,

You likely wont like the noise from this one. They've stupidly decided
to disable AAM because of a percieved patent infringement.

or Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 HDS722580VLAT20,

I wont touch Hitachi because of their warranty proceedures everywhere.

Western Digital Caviar WD800LB,

I used to use these, but dont anymore. I think the
Samsungs are better, particularly on the noise level.

or maybe the Samsung Spinpoint P80 SP0802N. Is there anything
I should be particularly avoiding amongst those? It would be nice to
have a quieter drive, as the 5T030H3 has always been pretty thunderous
in my PC, though that could be fault of the case acoustics, I suppose.

Yeah, quite likely. I'd get a Samsung myself, in fact
I've done that. And had to feel the drive to be sure it was
spinning up at install with the covers off the case, its so quiet.

I'm sorry for the length of this message

Dont be, much better to spell it all out in the original post.

and hope somebody can advise me. I tried searching the
forum first, of course, but there were so many references to
these drives with conflicting opinions that I got rather swamped.

Yeah, can be a problem.

 

[Helen Smith]

in message

Thanks very much for your reply, Rod. I have responded to your comments
as they appear in the text.

That is clear evidence that it might be
getting too hot except for the time of year.

Yes, it was pretty cool in the room on the day of the problem - in the
very hottest days of summer it does drive my system temperature up about
6 degrees C or so, but not the rest of the time.

Yes, but its unlikely to be getting stinking hot at this
time of year unless one of the case fans has failed etc.

Which they haven't (I also checked visually, just to be sure).

Then there's the PC itself - it has a 250W power supply
which I wonder is a bit weedy for this type of system

It is a bit on the low side for an Athlon.

(though the PC vendors have always insisted to me that
they tested it and it's "high quality and perfectly adequate"),

They're likely right and an inadequate power supply
shouldnt produce the cool down symptom you saw too.

and also runs at a pretty high temperature (41-52 degrees C for the CPU,

Thats fine for an Athlon.

30-38 for the motherboard, according to VCool,

Ditto.


though Asusprobe (in Windows) says 10 degrees C higher for the CPU,

Thats a bit of a worry, getting up a bit.

but it's a version that was known to give too-high readings and the
figures given in the system's BIOS match the lower VCool temperature

Trouble is that bios temperatures dont mean much with a cpu
because the cpu is doing bugger all work just displaying those values.

[when the system is well-warmed up, obviously]).

Try SpeedFan and see what it says about the cpu temp and hard drive temp.

It agrees with VCool (exactly) about the CPU and motherboard
temperatures. Unfortunately, the Promise controller (which seems to be
a sort of independent entity on this motherboard) blocks any information
from the hard drive, because apparently it acts a bit like a SCSI
device. If I feel daring, I will connect the hard drive to one of the
UDMA 66 connectors on the motherboard some time and see what SpeedFan
says about the drive.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense if you are a bit short of space anyways.




Yeah, I would, but thats mainly because I dont
like their warranty proceedures in my country.

Which country? I'm in the UK (which you probably already worked out).

You likely wont like the noise from this one. They've stupidly decided
to disable AAM because of a percieved patent infringement.

Though it's hard to imagine anything sounding louder than my current drive!

I wont touch Hitachi because of their warranty proceedures everywhere.




I used to use these, but dont anymore. I think the
Samsungs are better, particularly on the noise level.




Yeah, quite likely. I'd get a Samsung myself, in fact
I've done that. And had to feel the drive to be sure it was
spinning up at install with the covers off the case, its so quiet.




Dont be, much better to spell it all out in the original post.

Thanks for the reassurance regarding message length. I keep wondering
what caused this (so far isolated) possible overheat. Only the CPU and
motherboard temperatures in my system are monitored and they were low at
the time. The case is a bit basic - just a power supply fan and CPU fan
and not a lot of ventilation holes. It's a midi tower and the HD sits
just about half-way up it, in the lowest 3.5" bay, with the floppy drive
right on top of it, sharing the same metal crate. Right above those is
the trio of external 5.25" bays, the top two occupied by CD-RW and
DVD-ROM, the lower one empty (I remember when buying the system, the
company that made it said they weren't putting Zip drives into the empty
one as placing them there was causing the HD to overheat....hmm.). Then
of course there's a tangle of cabling including flat IDE ribbon cables,
obstructing the overall airflow, occupying most of the gap between the
rear of the drives and the front of the power supply, which is up at the
top rear of the tower.

The only other thing I can think of is that directly before this HD
problem, I'd left the system sitting at a full-screen DOS prompt (just
an oversight actually) whilst it was still connected via its
bog-standard modem to the internet; however, that had timed out and
disconnected as normal and the system was back onto Windows proper for
around 20 minutes before I noticed the problem occurring...

Thanks again for any advice,

H

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks very much for your reply, Rod. I have responded
to your comments as they appear in the text.

That is clear evidence that it might be
getting too hot except for the time of year.

Yes, it was pretty cool in the room on the day of the problem - in the
very hottest days of summer it does drive my system temperature up about
6 degrees C or so, but not the rest of the time.

Yes, but its unlikely to be getting stinking hot at this
time of year unless one of the case fans has failed etc.

Which they haven't (I also checked visually, just to be sure).

Then there's the PC itself - it has a 250W power supply
which I wonder is a bit weedy for this type of system

It is a bit on the low side for an Athlon.

(though the PC vendors have always insisted to me that
they tested it and it's "high quality and perfectly adequate"),

They're likely right and an inadequate power supply
shouldnt produce the cool down symptom you saw too.

and also runs at a pretty high temperature (41-52 degrees C for the CPU,

Thats fine for an Athlon.

30-38 for the motherboard, according to VCool,

Ditto.


though Asusprobe (in Windows) says 10 degrees C higher for the CPU,

Thats a bit of a worry, getting up a bit.

but it's a version that was known to give too-high readings and the
figures given in the system's BIOS match the lower VCool temperature

Trouble is that bios temperatures dont mean much with a cpu
because the cpu is doing bugger all work just displaying those values.

[when the system is well-warmed up, obviously]).

Try SpeedFan and see what it says about the cpu temp and hard drive temp.

It agrees with VCool (exactly) about
the CPU and motherboard temperatures.

Yeah, likely Probe is allowing for something different
about how thats implemented on the motherboard.

One of my systems, an Asus P4XP-X motherboard,
actually reports a cpu temp below the room temp when
its idle and that clearly cant be physically possible. Not
below by all that much, but enough to be physically impossible.

Unfortunately, the Promise controller (which seems
to be a sort of independent entity on this motherboard)
blocks any information from the hard drive,

True, most of the SMART utes, and its a SMART
function being used to get the drive temp, cant see
drives on those controllers. RAID controllers too.

because apparently it acts a bit like a SCSI device.

Thats really just how the bios lists them.

If I feel daring, I will connect the hard drive to one
of the UDMA 66 connectors on the motherboard some
time and see what SpeedFan says about the drive.

Yeah, that would allow you to see the drive temp properly.

Which country?

Australia. If the seller of the drive has gone broke, we have
to send the drive back to Singapore and that isnt that cheap
because Maxtor requires a receipted delivery system be used.

I'm in the UK (which you probably already worked out).

Yep. Mine isnt quite so easy to work out.

Though it's hard to imagine anything sounding louder than my current drive!

Thanks for the reassurance regarding message length. I keep
wondering what caused this (so far isolated) possible overheat.

One obvious possibility is just a fault which is temperature sensitive.
In other words the temperature isnt too high, just enough to make
the fault visible. Thats usually due to a bad solder joint or a cracked
trace in a printed circuit board, but can just be a flakey ribbon cable.

Only the CPU and motherboard temperatures in my
system are monitored and they were low at the time.

Yeah, its unlikely that the drive is getting stinking hot given
that you have only seen the problem in winter. If its jammed
right up against another drive with very little airflow, you
would expect that to be a problem in summer, not winter.

The case is a bit basic - just a power supply fan
and CPU fan and not a lot of ventilation holes.

Yeah, thats a bit minimal for an Athlon, but clearly the cpu and
temperature inside the case are measuring fine in winter at least.

It's a midi tower and the HD sits just about half-way
up it, in the lowest 3.5" bay, with the floppy drive
right on top of it, sharing the same metal crate.

Again, thats not ideal, its better to have a free slot
between the hard drive and the floppy drive, but with
Maxtors particularly its the logic card that gets quite
warm and its got free space adjacent to it, and again,
you wouldnt expect to see a problem in winter and not
in summer. The room temp makes a surprising difference.

Right above those is the trio of external
5.25" bays, the top two occupied by CD-RW
and DVD-ROM, the lower one empty

Thats fine, they're far enough away
from the hard drive to be irrelevant.

(I remember when buying the system, the company that made
it said they weren't putting Zip drives into the empty one as
placing them there was causing the HD to overheat....hmm.).

Yeah, the case is a bit under cooled for an Athlon.

Then of course there's a tangle of cabling including flat IDE
ribbon cables, obstructing the overall airflow, occupying most
of the gap between the rear of the drives and the front of the
power supply, which is up at the top rear of the tower.

The cpu is clearly managing fine temp wise tho.

The only other thing I can think of is that directly before this HD
problem, I'd left the system sitting at a full-screen DOS prompt
(just an oversight actually) whilst it was still connected via its
bog-standard modem to the internet; however, that had timed out
and disconnected as normal and the system was back onto Windows
proper for around 20 minutes before I noticed the problem occurring...

Thanks again for any advice,

I'd try another ribbon cable for the drive, mainly because thats
cheap to try and use the problem as a good excuse to get a
bigger drive. I do that even without any fault indication now,
hard drives are so cheap that any suggestion that more space
would be convenient and I just get another drive. Best to replace
the existing drive with the new one in your situation. I'd just buy the
new drive and a new ribbon cable at the same time for insurance.