Help with a Dimension 8200 Memory and Freezing
in [Dell]
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From: Sam on 8 Feb 2010 21:51 "William R. Walsh" <newsgroups1(a)idontwantjunqueemail.walshcomptech.com> wrote in message news:rLmdnQ26h4nEDfLWnZ2dnUVZ_gOdnZ2d(a)mchsi.com... > You can, but it will be very, very expensive. You could be better off > planning for a newer system. Lots of nice secondhand systems out there, > including the later (and blessedly RDRAM free) Dimension 8300 and 8400. > >> The PC freezes up infrequently and I want to try a memory upgrade >> first. > > How hard does it freeze? Do you lose all control (can't move the mouse, > keyboard "lock" LEDs don't go on and off when you hit the respective keys) > or does it seem like the system is just trying to come up for air (hard > disk > light on solid, lots of "churning" sounds)? > > You could have a failing hard drive, but I'd strongly advise you NOT to > run > CHKDSK on it. CHKDSK is a brutish tool that will favor file system > correction over your data, which it will toss aside with reckless abandon > in > order to put the file system "right" again. > > The disk manufacturer's diagnostic, HDAT2 or even GRC SpinRite would be a > MUCH better idea. > I decided not to spendy anymore money on it. The PC locks up no HDD activity. I'll check the Dell website for utilities. I keep all of my data on an external HDD. s.
From: Sam on 8 Feb 2010 21:54 "RnR" <rnrtexas(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:t300n51jt9n4uonjqr79bfckqb9lqj9ig1(a)4ax.com... > On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 15:10:19 -0500, "Sam" <sasdfas09(a)lkuy.com> wrote: > Just in case you decide you don't want to risk the data and to add to > William's post, you might want to make a backup to another physical > drive before any hard drive diags/testing. And I agree with William > that Spinrite as well as some HD mfgrs diags are likely the best > choices to run tests on your hard drive before any others. Often you > can download the mfgr HD diags for free from their website. Spinrite > in the past was not free (not sure now). I forgot about SpinRite. I've got a licensed copy of it around here somplace.. If I can't find 'll d/l utilities from the mfg website,
From: William R. Walsh on 9 Feb 2010 00:59 Hi! > >Thanks William. You deserve it with this long "informative" post. > >I mean this in respect, not scarcism. Thank you. > Forgot to mention, yes I read every word of your post !!! > thanks.... It's my hope that it was useful, understandable and informative. Sometimes I am a bit of a "storyteller", although some folks don't mind that too much. I try (loosely) to keep it under control. <plug> If you'd want to read more by any chance: http://greyghost.mooo.com/ I'm always interested in what people think about what is written there. </plug> William (there was this time I had a flat in the pouring rain, uphill both ways...)
From: Ben Myers on 9 Feb 2010 09:55 On 2/8/2010 7:14 PM, William R. Walsh wrote: > Hi! > >> As a quick overall test of hard drive sanity, HDAT2 is very good because >> it allows one to view the SMART data, especially the info maintained by >> the drive about relocated sectors, pending relocated sectors, maximum >> temperature of the drive ever, etc. > > SpinRite has some degree of SMART support in version 6, but it doesn't show > you the "worst ever" values (at least not for the most part) and I'm not > sure it always interprets the values by the right name. > >> The only fly in the ointment is that some drive manufacturers do not >> comply with the alleged industry standard for SMART, so there will >> sometimes be wildly improbable SMART values, as with Fujitsu drives. > > I didn't know there was an industry standard, other than "everyone do as you > please". I'm only half joking. > >> As far as I know, EVERY hard drive manufacturer still in business today >> EXCEPT TOSHIBA has a free download of diagnostics for its brand of >> drives. And Toshiba? Who knows? > > As I said the last time you brought that up...you don't need a utility for a > Toshiba hard drive. If you have to ask, it's bad. :-) > > Maybe that will improve. They bought Fujitsu's mobile hard disk business, > and so far as I can say, the Fujitsu mobile drives are very good. (Desktop > drives are another story entirely.) > > William > > Hence my use of the phrase: "alleged standard". Fujitsu desktop drives? Did Fujitsu ever make any desktop drives since the start of the SATA era? Fujitsu made low-capacity PATA drives, up to 10GB or so, but I've never seen anything larger. (Of course, I still have not seen all drives ever made by all manufacturers, but I did have a Rodime drive once.) Fujitsu server-class SCSI drives are also very good. Agree about Toshiba drives. I do not recommend them to anyone, and I constantly tell my distributor that I will not buy them at any price. Drive manufacturer acquisitions always go in one of two directions. Long ago, CDC/MPI engineers complained about the possible loss of product quality when they were acquired by Seagate. They were right, but Seagate SCSI drives have largely maintained product quality, while Seagate consumer-oriented MFM/RLL/PATA/SATA have had their ups and downs. (CDC/MPI made drives with removable disk packs and a lot of early 5.25" SCSI, for those who can't recall.) Maxtor's acquisition of Quantum's drive business sacrificed quality products for schlock. Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor remains somewhat of a mess, and I think it has hurt Seagate's reputation. Hitachi lost nothing when it bought IBM's drive business. Time will tell about the Toshiba buy of Fujitsu's drives. Toshiba's engineering in other areas, notably laptops, is decidedly unimpressive, to put a nice spin on it... Ben Myers
From: Ben Myers on 9 Feb 2010 09:58
On 2/8/2010 7:34 PM, William R. Walsh wrote: > Hi! > >> Has SMART improved because from my past experience, SMART info was >> wrong? > > Yes and no. > > Every drive maker has a different idea about how SMART should be > implemented, how errors should be detected and what categories they should > watch. And the thresholds all differ as well--which is to say that each > manufacturer has a different idea of "how bad" things have to get before the > drive is considered to be failing. > > Out of all of the drives I've seen, I'd say that Maxtor has the most > informative SMART reporting. Yes, believe it or not. Their drives monitor a > wide variety of parameters and the values do shift around while the drive > operates. Second in line would be Seagate, whose drives don't show as many > parameters but still seem to be pretty honest. Quantum drives fit somewhere > in between, and Quantum was actually one of the first companies to implement > SMART in a hard drive. > > Hitachi GST/IBM drives have a similar selection of monitored parameters, but > I'll have to admit that I've never seen them vary a whole lot, even on very > obviously sick drives. ExcelStor drives behave very similarly, which isn't > too surprising considering that A) their drives are mostly Deskstar clones, > B) HGST made some of their control boards and C) someone told me that HGST > owns ExcelStor now. > > Western Digital (who makes otherwise excellent hard drives in my experience) > has typically been very conservative with SMART data...with only a few > monitored parameters and seemingly little variation, even on drives that > were starting to have problems. > > Of course, SMART data is sometimes only collected by a drive when it is > idle. In a modern operating system, between power management events (spin > down) and disk activity in general, a drive may never get a chance to do its > SMART self test routines because it either isn't idle for long enough, or > it's spun down. (Other drives seem to observe what's going on while they are > active, such as drives from Seagate, HGST and Maxtor.) So sometimes a drive > needs a little prodding to update its SMART data and notice a problem. That > kind of defeats the purpose. Tools such as SpinRite, HDAT2 and SpeedFan can > all initiate that prodding. > > A funny thing that I've seen happen across multiple brands of drive is where > the SMART historical data indicates that a drive was in very serious > trouble, as a monitored parameter would drop down to the lowest possible > (worst) value. Later on, for whatever reason, the drive recovered to perfect > health. Most recently, a 40GB WD hard disk in a Dimension 2400 showed this > behavior, with its "raw read error rate" dropping to 0. But at some point, > it recovered to perfect health. Why and how this could happen baffles me, > but I've seen several drives do it and go on to work fine for quite some > time. They're not drives I would trust, so they don't go into roles where a > drive failure would cause a real problem. > > SMART would probably work a lot better if there were more consistency in how > it was implemented, if drive makers were more honest and didn't mind their > drive looking bad if it meant an advance warning of disaster, and if all > drives gave their self test routines a higher priority. > > All of the above makes the assumption that SMART is enabled AND that someone > is listening. Most drives can disable their SMART diagnostics upon receiving > a command to do so. Some ASUS motherboard BIOSes (and others) do this! Of > course, even if the drive's SMART system is enabled, someone has to be > listening when it calls for help. Very few systems do that...most Dell > desktops do, as do the good old Compaq Deskpro EN systems. I've even seen a > few eMachines whose BIOS was watching for SMART problems, amazingly enough. > It's usually the BIOS that sounds the alarm, so a user only gets a warning > at power on time. Later SMART alerting would have to come from software that > knows how to find and interpret SMART data, as the BIOS can't do much after > the OS has taken control. > > I've seen SMART warnings save the day. If only that sort of thing happened > more often... > > William > > And that's why the hard drive manufacturers are sponsoring a revival of the old TV show, "Get SMART"... Ben Myers |