Fujitsu 30GB (MPG3307AT dated Dec 2000) hard drive which went on the blink about 5 years ago after 13 months use. This drive had previously displayed all the symptoms of the faulty the Fujitsu 20 & 30GB hard drives manufactured in 2001\2002. Fujitsu at the time replaced the drives in USA and the rest of Europe but refused to do so in the UK even though the batch numbers etc. and fault symptoms were identical. It has lain around the loft since then (who says that I hoard useless items? )
A second Fujitsu hard drive (again 30GB – MPG3307AH and dated early 2001) which gave up the ghost with similar symptoms.
Out of curiosity (and because I have a masochistic streak in me) I got both drives out and connected each drive and tried them out. Windows must have had its eyes shut at this point because it could not see either drive. (In Win XP – Win98se and DOS) Bios said up yours (when connected direct to IDE).
Out of curiosity I and swapped over the circuit boards for both drives, knowing that they were different, but thought what the heck.
Put each drive (separately) into my external USB caddy and tried them out. Both went CLUNKITY - CLUNKITY – CLUNK. Everybody has my permission to snig-ger (won't accept complete word) and laugh up their sleeve at this point.
Being the neat, tidy and fastidious person I am (you can laugh out loud at this statement if you want ) I then swapped the circuit boards back. Now being thick headed and somewhat dumb I then reconnected the drives to the PC (again with my external USB caddy. With the following result?
The AT drive is now working. I have partitioned this drive into three (Working in XP and using Partition Magic) and copied over 6GB of data onto one of the partitions. No hick-ups or faults.
The AH drive can be seen by Windows XP but cannot be accessed. When I check the details of the drive it show twice. Once showing the correct details and once showing a load of “gobbildy gook”
I would not trust the AT drive for anything important until I have put it under extreme stress.
So I am looking for a good stress test software (Freeware\Shareware). This I would run on a spare PC and leave running for a few days. Can anyone recommend something to me? Either something that will run in DOS (drive formated into FAT32) or from within Windows with the drive set at either SLAVE or MASTER (as per any recomendations).
A second Fujitsu hard drive (again 30GB – MPG3307AH and dated early 2001) which gave up the ghost with similar symptoms.
Out of curiosity (and because I have a masochistic streak in me) I got both drives out and connected each drive and tried them out. Windows must have had its eyes shut at this point because it could not see either drive. (In Win XP – Win98se and DOS) Bios said up yours (when connected direct to IDE).
Out of curiosity I and swapped over the circuit boards for both drives, knowing that they were different, but thought what the heck.
Put each drive (separately) into my external USB caddy and tried them out. Both went CLUNKITY - CLUNKITY – CLUNK. Everybody has my permission to snig-ger (won't accept complete word) and laugh up their sleeve at this point.
Being the neat, tidy and fastidious person I am (you can laugh out loud at this statement if you want ) I then swapped the circuit boards back. Now being thick headed and somewhat dumb I then reconnected the drives to the PC (again with my external USB caddy. With the following result?
The AT drive is now working. I have partitioned this drive into three (Working in XP and using Partition Magic) and copied over 6GB of data onto one of the partitions. No hick-ups or faults.
The AH drive can be seen by Windows XP but cannot be accessed. When I check the details of the drive it show twice. Once showing the correct details and once showing a load of “gobbildy gook”
I would not trust the AT drive for anything important until I have put it under extreme stress.
So I am looking for a good stress test software (Freeware\Shareware). This I would run on a spare PC and leave running for a few days. Can anyone recommend something to me? Either something that will run in DOS (drive formated into FAT32) or from within Windows with the drive set at either SLAVE or MASTER (as per any recomendations).
