Well, I've had LOTS of experience in dead and dying HDs - ATA, SATA, SCSI - 5.25" - 1.8".
Symptoms of imminent to near-imminent death:
- a new whining drive noise (zzzzzzziiiiinnnnngggg). Drive bearing failure. Will lead to hot drive, and eventual failure.
- 'Clank/Clonk' sound effect, when in use or idling (3.5" drives). Head actuator assembly (electro magnet) is failing.
- Excessive heat on drive (top/bottom), and no fan to cool it (3.5" - ATA, SCSI - 7200-10K rpm). Death within 6 months to a year.
- "An error occured when writing to the drive" or similar message. Sector failures. Toss the drive.
- HD powering up, down, up down. At random. Power connector is loose, or your power-supply is not providing enough start-up voltage/current for 12v provision.
- Drive won't format. Toss it.
Disclaimer:
- Some drives Whirrrrrrrr (spining sound). Like older Fireball Quantums or older Maxtors. They're just loud. Newer drives have fuild-dynamic bearings - both 3.5 and 2.5" drives, so you can't hear them spin even.
- Some 2.5" drives park their heads when a laptop has custom power-saving features enabled. 'Clunk' sound. This is normal.
In my experience, for the last 15 years of pro support and personal use:
- Maxtor dead: 6
- Western Digital dead: 4
- Seagate dead: 1
- Samsung dead: 0
- Toshiba dead: 1
- Fujitsu dead: 2
- IBM dead: 2
- Quantum branded dead: 2
- Connor dead: 3
- Winchester dead: 1
- Micropolis dead: 1
I've bought and used Quantum for most of my life, after having dabbled with Connor and Micropolis (and they both died badly), and then Quantum was folded into Maxtor in a merger, and all my Maxtor's bought after this have failed. 5 drive maxtor failures in less than 2 yrs. Usually bearing failures, the odd sector failure. All had heat issues. I had an 80 GB 5400 rpm 3.5" Maxtor die on me last night; Can't format it. I had a 40GB 7200 drive, in a USB 2.0 case. Death by self-cooking. I've since switched to a combination of Samsung Spinpoint HDs for ATA and Seagate drives for Serial ATA (SATA). I've had no problems since. Quiet, ultra reliable, and Samsung has the longest warranty in the biz now, since WD and Maxtor now no longer do 5 yr warranties.
N.