Hdd ?

[Osiris]

I have gone through 3 HDDs in the past 4 months and I was wanting to know why, so I thought about it and I came up with this:

I reformat my pc 3 to 6 times a month due to testing, tweaking, etc or just for the hell of it.

My question is, how many time can you format a hard drive?

 

[Win2kpatcher]

I dont about the same and dont have any problems with drives failing. I have had my 250GB Maxtor test drive in my system for about 2 years now. I always cool my hard drives though..maybe heat?

 

[Law]

Interesting question, from my experience I really don't know LOL. Because I have seen them come and go in the garbage. Some only last about a year and others can restand 6 years of abuse (formating, etc)...I have this maxtor for I think 7 years now, it still works fine and I know I have formated that drive atleast 30+ time. So it's really hard to tell. Good question though; made me do a google on it but came up empty.

 

[Nitestick]

i think either you have a major heating issue because heat always lowers the lifespan of parts or that you have just been really unlucky. i generally reformat several times a month as well and have NEVER had a hdd failure.

 

[Osiris]

This weekend when I reformatted and started to install XP,I would hear a slight "click", then it would stop at 39 minutes. If I was lucky enough to get past that, and onto my desktop, whenever I started to move something, I would hear "click", then everything would freeze. This happened a month ago but then it stopped. Now I can use it as a slave and it works fine. I went out and bought a new 80gb WD. It installed fine. It doesnt give me any file errors, etc. It just freezes. I probably just having bad luck. But o well, thats life.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Warez does the drive do it on another machine? Maybe your mobo is going? Espicially if you are having issues with the new drive. 39 minutes is the common death trap (thats when the install starts loading all your devices and drivers). SATA?

 

[Nitestick]

is the click akin to the hdd spinning down?

 

[brady]

Hey Warez, You have dogs and cats by any chance ?
Anyone there smoke in the room where the machines are ?
I have heard of smoke and pet hair completely devastating HDD's.

 

[Osiris]

No sata
No smoking in the house allowed!!

Have a black lab but parents keep her trim and she is rarely in my room, no cats

Nope, just a "Click" and freeze...sounds like a small floppy click to me, like when a floppy is being accessed, but its the hard drive.

Never tried it on another machine yet

 

[brady]

Do you always buy the same kind of HDD ?
Are there warranties on these HDD's ?

I have heard that HDD's that are reformatted a lot do have problems but It sounds like thats a little early for the HDD to kick the bucket.

I would check with the manufacturer.