Did SL Kill my Hard Drive?

I was in world today and started getting weird lag spikes like I had never seen before. I thought maybe something was up with my connection, so I logged out. I then rebooted my system and got an error that my registry could not load its files. Called PC support, ran a dianostics test, and learned my hard drive is history.

I lost a hard drive earlier in the year and it also happened immediately after I had performance issues with SL. Last time I locked up and could not shut SL down, so I turned off the PC to find my HD was dead after I turned it back on.

Two hard drive failures in within eight months of each other and both immediately after unusual SL performance issues. It just makes me wonder. *Sigh*

I take care of my system. I dont download a lot of pron or weird programs from weird sites. I run defrag and system tools frequently and keep spyware in check. It just bugs me that this has happened again. Im not really blaming and pointing fingers, I just dont get it. Mostly just frustrated and venting.

Has anyone else had problems, looking back on them, might suspect SL had a finger in on? I hope its not the case, just a fluke of machinery, but it should be looked into if wide spread.

Hard drive failure has a number of factors that go into it.

1. Drive quality
   
2. Use
   
3. Temperature
   

If you buy a noname harddrive you may not get the best hardware but i think all the nonames went ouf of business years ago.

All modern harddrives keep statistics as to the performance. There are utilities on the market for checking these statistics (most will cost you anywhere from 20->50 US$). The statistics are called S.M.A.R.T. (free utility for checking them at the bottom of the page)

Temperature is the most important thing. Modern harddrives spin anywhere from 7200 -> 10000 RPM. This creates alot of heat, from friction, in the bearings that support the drive platers. In most computers you buy pre-assembled they will lack the capacity to adequately cool the harddrive (Dell). Harddrives mostly effected by this are drives greater then 40GB & laptop drives.

I'm willing to bet it's improper cooling that has caused your harddrives to fail.


If i could find my digital camera i would post a picture of how my computer is setup. I have 3 harddrives. One is a small 5 GB laptop drive from my dead laptop. One is a 20 GB maxtor HD, The last is a 40 GB maxtor. The laptop drive I expect to die any day now, the SMART stats ran out almost a year ago. I have it mounted in the HD bay with conversion rails. The two maxtors are sitting ontop of the case with a fan blowing are between them and wooden spacers separating them (who says high school woodshop is just for jocks). Mounting them this way has resulted in smart stats running down slower (good thing).


HDD Health (it's free, free of spyware, not cripled, good quality utility)
http://www.panterasoft.com/

I'm no expert Loki, but there are a few things I know that might help you out here. As I see it, there are five possible causes of your repeated hard drive failures:

1. Bad luck. This is the least satisfying explanation but it's entirely possible. Lightning strikes twice all the time.

2. Something else is wrong with your computer that is causing your hard drive to fry. I think this is the most likely explanation. Perhaps you have a short or a malfinctiong component elsewhere in your computer that is causing too much or too little power to be sent to your hard drive at times when it is in extremely heavy use, as it is during SL, orr perhaps, as Strife pointed out, your computer needs better cooling. Afterall, SL is extremely taxing on your system resources. Your CPU and hard drive are working serious overtime when SL is running so it's not that suprising that if indeed you do have an electrical problem somewhere in your computer it would choose to rear its ugly head at that time.

3. Crappy hard drives. If you have a Quantum or IBM hard drive, be glad you've only gone through 2 of them. They are the least reliable drives on the market and they crash all the time. I'm a big Western Digital fan. Never had a problem with any drive from them. *knock on wood*

4. Power surges. If you live in a house with older wiring or in an area with unreliable power, your electronic devices are not exactly living the sweet life. A hard drive would likely be one of the first devices to be affected by such conditions. Invest in a good UPS/surge protector. They aren't cheap but they are worth every penny. Without it every time your refrigerator or air conditioner kicks in and the lights dim for a split second you just took a few years off the life expectancy of every elctronic device you have. (...And don't skimp out by buying a cheap one. Expect to pay a couple hundred bucks. I know from having witnessed testing that the cheaper ones do absolutely nothing for you, despite what the packaging may claim.)

5. It's a grand conspiracy organized through Linden Labs by all your various enemies. They wait 'til you're not expecting it, just relaxing in SL, having a grand old time, and then they send the magic script of death and destruction right up your broadband modem's wazoo and KABLAM!, no more hard drive for you. MUHAHAHA!!!!

Yeah, bad motherboard could also fry it. But that sort of thing usualy makes it self obvious pretty quickly.

I'm not so sure about paying hundered for a surge suppressor. I live in an older house and sometime the lights do dim but if your not over stressing your powersupply (in your computer) then it shouldn't be to much of an issue, they are pretty good at handling small surges. I got my 9 outlet, coax & phone one at home depot for about 20$. (currently only have 4 things plugged in, just dodn't need the others all the time)

In all my years of owning hard drives i've only had 2 crash (had one other fail do to bad handling). Over all the computers in my house i think i have 8 active harddrives with about 300 GiB total... and a pile of smaller drives that probably add up to 10 GB of various ages. Pretty sure they all work. Probably have 20 harddrives total.

Switchmode power supplies like the ones in computers are surprisingly robust. Theoretically, a well-built switchmode PSU would be able to take anything from about 50V to 300V, at any frequency from 45Hz on up, and put out well-behaved power to the computer. I've heard about people running computer PSUs off direct current, but I'm not sure I believe it.

I went through 3 harddrives on my laptop this summer, fortunately had a service agreement w/Best Buy. After they replaced the harddrive the first time it and gave it back to me, it died again - at that point I knew it was something else. So they reset the bios - well it didn't help got same errors, and then they only replaced the harrddrive again after I asked them to check the motherboard. But to make a long story short, they ended up replacing the whole laptop. Its faster, stronger, bigger, and cools better.

OooOOOOooooO!!! Drahma! SL KILLED MY HARD DRIVE!!! And from Loki Piko too!

We're all doomed! Doooooooomed I tell you!

*looks round at all the serious faces*

*backs away*

I think the trolls got to it...

*points at kris*

Strife,

Many thanks for the link to HDD health.

I'm currently running three fairly large drives. When I started the programme I discovered that they were running hot - between 51C and 56C.

I changed my fans, so that I took one from the back of the cabinet and put it at the front, so that it sucks cool air into the case, and it has brought the temperature of the drives back down to the safe range again. The highest reading I have had has been 41C.

So many thanks for saving all my data. *thinks about what would have been lost in a crash and chews fingers*

It's called "backups". Should I have a hard drive failure, the only thing I'll lose is the hours needed to reinstall everything.

Thanks for the link, Strife. Great little utility.

Also, in response to what you said about my surge protector suggestion, I gotta reiterate for a second that I stand by what I said 100%. I once observed a technical test of several brands of surge protectors. They were each taken out of the package and plugged into a 120/220 voltage switch. When the voltage was cranked up, each of the cheap ones failed to disconnect. They smoked, popped, put on a good show, but the power stayed on, meaning any device they supposedly would be "protecting" would in fact be getting no protection at all (and that was only 220; imagine a lightning strike). Also, even if the cheap ones had done the job (which they didn't) none of their literature stated anything about blocking power that is too low in addition to too high. Brown outs are the some of the worst possible conditions for electronics.

For the test all that was plugged in was a light bulb, which understandably got considerably brighter each time the switch was thrown but, I repeat, never went out. Any sensative electronic device would have fried for certain.

The better model surge protectors that were tested (the least expensive of which was around $120 US) did what they were supposed to do. As soon as the switch was thrown, the lightbulb turned off, instantly. Many of these claimed to block brown outs as well, but I didn't get to see that particular test.

Anyway, at that moment I was sold. That light bulb staying on said it all. No cheap surge protectors for me.

When I was in the entertainment electronics business (which I'm thankfully not anymore), I used to tell it to clients like this: Spend the money on proper surge protection and you end up wondering if you wasted the money because you never get to see it work. In other words, nothing ever goes wrong. On the other hand, if you don't spend the money on it, then chances are still nothing will ever go wrong, but if it ever does, you're gonna hate yourself for not having done the right thing when you had the chance. A friend of mine had his satellite dish struck by lightning, and all he had protecting his stuff was cheap power strips from Walmart. He lost his all 4 of his satellite receivers, his home theater, his computer, his VCR, his DVD player. The only thing that miraculously survived was the TV in his living room. Everything else was toast. All because he opted not to get a good surge protector. So instead of spending a hundred to a couple hundred on surge protection, he had to spend thousands to replace all his stuff, not even accounting for all the lost data on his computer.

Anyway, that's my rant on surge protection. Listen to it or not.



edited for typos

Im still down, scanning the forums from the free internet access at the public library. I should have a new drive tomorrow and I should be back up Friday night sometime. I miss SL, geez.

I know it is an unhappy coincidence that my drives failed when they did. I appreciate the info on possible causes, cooling may be my issue. Anyway, I dont really have time to look all your replies over closely, but I will get to it when I am at home and not rushed with this timed public access. Thanks again for your help, I appreciate it.

I had something similar happen to me this year. Hard drive started acting flakey, so I duped it on another machine and went about my business. A few months later, the new hard drive started acting flakey. I think the chances of both HDDs doing that within such a short time span are pretty slim. So, I got a new motherboard, duped the disk to a larger serial ATA drive, and everything has been A-OK since.

Buy Seagate Hard drives, they just upped their warranty to 5 years.

Don't use surgeprotectors, esp cheap ones. With most surgeprotectors you can never tell when they are no longer good. Get a battery back-up. If you are like me and a cheap a$$ got to www.fatwallet.com and/or www.anandtech.com and look in the "hot deals" forums for rebated deals on them. Good luck.

What voltage did they test the surge protectors at? Just about every surge protect lists the kickout voltage on the package (most i believe kickout at around 250v). Always get one with a warranty that protects the devices plugged into it. You can't go wrong spending lots of money.

Didn't realize it check temperature... glad it could be of use
51 - 56C is hot... (120-130F)

FYI: battery backups die in about 2 years.

I am back up. Does smoke damage sound like a plausible cause for my drive dying? A day or two before it died, I had a small kitchen mishap. It was not a fire but I had some boiled over milk in the pan below the burners and when I used the stove after the spill, that milk smoked up the whole place. It set off the smoke detector and lingered maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

The tech that put in my new drive (free replacement, their time and labor) said he replaces hard drives all the time. He said he thought that the larger drives are more of an issue because "there is more room for stuff to get knocked around in".

Anyway, thanks agian for all your help and insight.

As I said, the test was done with 120-220 converter. All the cheap ones failed to stop the 220 from getting through, despite the fact that the packaging on many claimed they would protect equipment from any unsafe voltages. 220 is clearly unsafe for American electronics. (And if anyone doesn't believe that, grab your laptop, fly to Europe, plug it in, and see what happens.)

As for warranties, absolutely. Just make sure to read the fine print. Many have a lot of loop holes so they won't actually cover what they imply on the package. For a good warranty, Panamax comes to mind. Their warranties are paperless (important, no being penalized for forgetting to send in a registration card), they cover $5M connected equipment, and their products are super reliable. Also, looking at their website now, it appears their prices must have come down in the last couple of years, which is great.

Depends on the electronics. A good computer power supply can handle both 120 and 220 with no trouble -- that switch on the back is just to make the user feel good. A cheap computer power supply can still handle 220, but the 50Hz frequency in Europe would burn out the transformer coil. (In technical terms, the lower switching rate causes the transformer coil to saturate, turning an inductive load into a short circuit.)

As for surge protectors, a typical inexpensive surge protector will have a clamping voltage of 330V, meaning it won't do anything for a smaller spike. An expensive one might be rated for 220 or 180.

A thought hit me, if one of the fans in your case stalled it would send a voltage spike (when it stalled). You may want to check that they aren't gunked up.

Strife, thank you for the link! I've been through 13 hard drives since my first 386 PC so long ago. And each time never knowing if the HD would die until GROINK!! Click click click click click whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr <dead silence> or screeeeeeaaaaaaccccchhhh! Clink!

I'm willing to bet most of the HD failures I've had were due to poor air flow in cramped cases. I'd often leave my system running overnight to run anti-virus, scan disk, degfrags and software patches. And most of these HD deaths were in the middle of summer too.

Unlikely as drives are hermetically sealed and smoke just couldn't get in. Gunking up the fans as others have mentioned might apply, but the mishap you describe doesn't sound intense enough.

Banging on the machine in frustration does not help drive reliability as it did to fix an old Philco vacuum tube based TV.

There is in fact a potential causal relationship between playing games such as SL and thermal problems. For example, both the CPU heatsinks in the machine I play on rise at least 15 degrees F while playing, and that with the fans spun up to max speed. Should you have a machine with any latent thermal vulnerabilities such as poor circulation or malfunctioning fans, playing SL for an extended period could increase internal temps enough to make a thermally challenged unit such as a disk drive (the IBM 60 gig drives made in Thailand come to mind readily) go over the edge. Especially if it happened to be a day with high ambient temp in the room.

Not that this necessarily happened to you, but it certainly can... and is an example of ways in which playing can *cause* problems yet the code itself is absolutely blameless.

Just a factual contribution, I don't read the forum regularly enough to see replies, so if you want to talk about this stuff pls do so in-game. Cheers -