Are old hard drives junk?

[weister42]

I have a Western Digital hard drive that I bought in 2004-ish and used it as a 2nd hard drive for storing music and what not. The hard drive's model is wd1600jd-00gbb0 and has a manufactured date of 1/19/2004.

I want to use this drive to replace the primary drive in my computer, now since this thing is over 8 years old is it automatically considered junk even if it wasn't used for an OS? I do know it is fairly loud, gets kind of hot and it is heavy so it isn't as efficient as today's stuff.

[PommieB]

It depends how much use it's had, might still be ok, they lasted longer in those days, I'd thoroughly test the drive before using as a primary drive, I have quite a few 40gb seagate drives, if they weren't so small I'd use them as a primary drive, they were very reliable, I'm sure the WD would be alright, but I'd give it a good test before using it as a primary drive.

Some drives ran both noisier and hotter than other drives, depends what you mean by hot, middle fifties be OK, hotter might be a sign it's on it's way out, hard to say.

[weister42]

Originally Posted by PommieB

Some drives ran both noisier and hotter than other drives, depends what you mean by hot, middle fifties be OK, hotter might be a sign it's on it's way out, hard to say.

It doesn't get hot under normal use but it got too-hot-for-touch when I was reformatting it (it took like an hour). I don't hear any abnormal noises from it or anything, but exactly how do I test a hard drive?

[digitaldd]

I've been using MHDD for a long time, so I recommend starting with that.

http://real-world-systems.com/docs/MHDD_en_manual.html

A simple scan of the entire drive with that and look for bad sectors. or sectors which take a really long time to read greater than 100ms if there are more than a few of those the disk is slowly dying.

[PommieB]

If it got that hot just formatting, that's too hot, I wouldn't use it as a OS drive, to be honest I wouldn't use it at all, that's up to you, most modern drives register in the 40's, at least the ones I use do and yes they push out a bit of heat, mostly after a session in a docking station, the drives are warm without being uncomfortable.

Drives vary that much, some they put heatsinks on them and require cooling fans, the question is, has the drive always ran this hot.

[weister42]

Well I do know my half-dying Hitachi Deskstar 320GB HDD runs even hotter, it feels a bit on the warm side even if it's just idling.

I do have another 250GB WD drive that I can use but that one has a fresh copy of XP Pro installed on it

[PommieB]

Hitachi are renowned for running hot, there may be nothing wrong with the drives, these drives may have run hot from day 1, if you feel the drives are okay, use them, it's your choice. If you are not happy with the drives, replace them or thoroughly test the drives and check the smart values for any indication of problems.

[maxgull]

If you only use it for an OS (I can pretty much guarantee it will take 2-4 minutes to boot to XP DT) and dont save docs, pics etc on it, you will only lose the OS when it dies, likely last a month or 2 if you are lucky.

One other thing, I have seen HDDs die and take IDE/SATA MOBO channels with them.

8 years old...I wouldn't risk it.

[weister42]

Okay so I got Norton Ghost and copied my 80GB hard disk (including MBR and all that) onto this old 160GB drive. Tried to boot but after the initial XP home load screen both of my hard drives (I have another one for storing music/pics) would shut off and I get a no signal screen on my monitor. The hard drives would start again in a few seconds but would do the same thing after the XP loading screen. Put the original drive back and every works just fine.


So did I mirror the drives wrong or that drive bit the dust? The power draw rating on the 160GB is a little higher than the 80GB but I don't think this is caused by the extra power use.

[PommieB]

I doubt that, I'd say the clone failed due to errors generated by the drive, I'd try a clean install with XP and see if that works, hard drives fail over time, especially if they get a lot of use, even if they don't solder joints can get brittle over time and fail, I would take this as a indication that the drives are maybe at the end of there life, try running a low level format from dos, the drives either going to come good or fail dismally, do a thorough surface check as well.

Cloning appears to be problematic on some drives, I have no problems with my seagate momentus drives, if I clone with a WD blue drive it throws errors and testing as come up with zilch.

At this point I'd delete all partitions and the mbr using Fdisk, I have Fdisk, ( the Millenium one is better than the Win 95 version, it as some very important upgrades ), I have this version set up on a CD, much better than floppy disk, doing this will return the to a "new state", in other your OS will treat the drive as a new drive, then install XP in the normal manner, if the full format doesn't complete properly bin the drive.

If your strapped for cash, then you can try the low level format with third party software, then try installing XP, if it still fails it's had it. For people with ssd's reading this, you don't low level format ssd drives, you delete the partitions and use the toolbox provided.

[larrymoencurly]

I use 160GB - 200GB WD and IBM-Hitachi boot drives from ~2005 on a couple of computers, and every month they still pass their long SMART tests and surface scans with MHDD (HDDguru.com has it). I use MHDD because it reports marginal sectors that require more than about 12 retries to read, not just sectors that are completely bad. There's a Windows equivalent, HDDscan, but it seems to give a lot of false positives for slow sectors, possibly due to delays caused by Windows (even for non-boot drives). Amazingly, MHDD will often find a few marginal sectors (need over 150ms, or 10 retries, to read) even on brand new drives that pass factory diagnostics, and some models seem to be consistently worse than others, except so far the slowest sector on any WD I've tried could be read in under 50ms.

How hot is the drive, in degrees? Some people will feel 40C and say it's hot, while 60C is the threshhold for other people. It's not unusual for drives to run at 45-50C, and a thick aluminum casting will seem hotter than a thin sheet of stainless steel that's actually a few degrees hotter. OTOH when motor bearings start to go bad or a motor winding shorts, it can run hotter than normal.

[weister42]

Originally Posted by larrymoencurly

How hot is the drive, in degrees? Some people will feel 40C and say it's hot, while 60C is the threshhold for other people. It's not unusual for drives to run at 45-50C, and a thick aluminum casting will seem hotter than a thin sheet of stainless steel that's actually a few degrees hotter. OTOH when motor bearings start to go bad or a motor winding shorts, it can run hotter than normal.

I would say it's definitely over 50 degrees while formatting (hard drive was sitting outside of the case). But right now my computer doesn't boot into windows if I try to use this old drive (computer is fine if used as storage drive) so either my Norton Ghost failed to do its job or the hard drive is bad. It did make a loud squeek when I first turn it on the first time I tried to boot from it so yeah... I donno.

[PommieB]

Personally I'd never use a old drive for an OS anyway, you need to download the testing software from Hitachi and thoroughly test the drive, see what you come up with, once I lose trust in a drive, I don't use it. Run a low level format on the drive and re-install win7. What your saying doesn't make a lot of sense, if the hard drive works as a storage drive, without errors it should work as a boot drive, the heats not good, the loud squeek would depend on your interpretation of the noise. Could be the bearings are failing. The only experience I've had with Hitachi drives was all bad, never really liked them.