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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:41 pm 
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I bought my EX490 second hand and after a short time the 1TB Seagate system drive was showing bad sectors. It died the day before I had set aside time to replace it! I put the drive in my PC and it wouldn't even boot with it connected. Confirmed HDD fail.

As HDD prices are still high and my storage requirements low, I used a 2-year-old Samsung F1 500 GB that had appeared to work flawlessly as the storage drive in my main PC. A couple of days after it's in the HP I get errors about 7 or 8 bad sectors. Now it seems to have died again (obviously headless headless so I don't know exactly why yet).

Could it be chewing system drives? Is that even possible? Or is it just more likely to expose a faulty drive because it's 24/7 and I've just been unlucky?


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:04 pm 
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Did you check the Samsung drive for bad sectors prior to moving it to your WHS? I can't think of a way a server could "chew through hard drives" unless the fans weren't working and it was overheating but that would affect numerous components, or if you were bumping/moving the server while the drives were spinning.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 10:02 am 
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yakuza wrote:
I can't think of a way a server could "chew through hard drives" unless the fans weren't working and it was overheating but that would affect numerous components, or if you were bumping/moving the server while the drives were spinning.


Bad power will do this. Is your WHS plugged into a UPS? The same outlet as your PC that is fine?

If not, why? :shock:


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 10:26 am 
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EricE wrote:
yakuza wrote:
I can't think of a way a server could "chew through hard drives" unless the fans weren't working and it was overheating but that would affect numerous components, or if you were bumping/moving the server while the drives were spinning.


Bad power will do this. Is your WHS plugged into a UPS? The same outlet as your PC that is fine?

If not, why? :shock:


No UPS due to cost and the fact 24/7 uptime isn't at all critical for me, just a surge protector. Also bear in mind power in the UK is much, much cleaner than the US (assuming that's where you're from) from everything I've been told - mostly from SPCR. I've never had anything die from power surges or spikes from my knowledge, of course I could be wrong.

Also, wouldn't spikes affect all components? The other 2 HDDs, the guts of the MSS and I also have a router and switch on there with no other noticeable incidents.

Someone else had suggested faulty drive controller potentially causing the drives issues, but didn't seem likely to me.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 1:40 pm 
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I think a lot of the issues between US and UK power is that alternating current is historically a lot less table than direct current. The US uses AC for transmission and many appliances and electronics have transformers that not only step the power down but also convert it to DC.

That aside, a faulty power supply can probably cause any number of problems, regardless of power source. Certainly a good UPS or high-end surge protector, especially ones that can "condition" the power, can help, but once a power supply decides it's time to throw in the towel, there's not much you're going to do about it.

In my experience, I have never had an HDD fail due to a faulty power supply--at least not that I could tell. Most PSUs I've had die will just do so outright, more often than not on a reboot or a power cycle. On a couple of occasions I've had one fail when under normal use, and the tell-tale sign was a brief buzz followed by the machine rebooting itself. In almost every case, only the PSU died, and all other components were fine. I lost a CPU in one case and had a fried mobo in another--which trashed the CPU too, but the memory and PCI cards survived, as did all of the disks.

So, while not impossible, I'm not sure I'm quite ready to blame the PSU. I would think you'd start seeing other problems, like odd reboots or possibly damage to other components.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 2:08 pm 
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Ah, I hadn't actually considered the PSU itself, which is crazy of me as I am always banging on about buying a quality PSU to first time builders.

Could be a single rail/connection that's only causing one HDD to fail. But as you say, I haven't seen any other odd behaviour so it's probably only an outside chance.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:31 pm 
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Ledard wrote:
Also bear in mind power in the UK is much, much cleaner than the US (assuming that's where you're from) from everything I've been told - mostly from SPCR. I've never had anything die from power surges or spikes from my knowledge, of course I could be wrong.


Huh, must be those "magic electrons" in the UK that I've heard about :spit:

Anyone can have bad power no matter where you are. Yes, some parts of the world are really bad - but even the best infrastructure the phrase S___ happens is always appropriate. A UPS is cheap insurance for any expensive or sensitive electronic equipment.

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Also, wouldn't spikes affect all components? The other 2 HDDs, the guts of the MSS and I also have a router and switch on there with no other noticeable incidents.


Why would you assume just spikes? Brownouts can be just as damaging. Routers and switches tend to be DC devices with low power requirements, as opposed to your server that have spinning hard drives that pull quite a bit of current - relatively speaking.

And not all power supplies are created equal - perhaps your computers is more tolerant of transient line issues with your power?

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Someone else had suggested faulty drive controller potentially causing the drives issues, but didn't seem likely to me.


It could be - maybe the drives aren't getting good contact with the sockets. Is your fan working well? If you have the drive installed in a PC with good airflow what does the drives temperature sensor report via the SMART monitoring? When you move the drive into your WHS and let it run for at least an hour what's the hard drive's temperature sensor report via SMART monitoring?

Something is different - you'll have to do some testing like that to narrow down if it's environmental like power or temperature, or something hardware related like the controller, the backplane the drives plug into or power supply in the WHS.

Is your WHS on a bouncy table and your computer on a stable floor? Vibrations and hard drives generally don't mix... and it may not be obvious. Had a file server in a small office "back in the day" that got moved from one end of the building to another - started having hard drive problems. Come to find out the new closet the server was in was adjacent to an outside door that slammed and vibrated the server in the new closet....


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