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I'm working on a HD upgrade. It is a PB platinum XL 166mhz pentium. I installed a WD 13.6 gb in it with the EZ-bios, I could not download from PB ftp the bios update. When I installed it it showed 13.6 HD but only 12.6 total on c: I scaned disk with norton utilities and the HD made a clunk and then nothing. The HD is now DEAD.. No power. any ideas why this may have happened?? It has an AMI bios from 1992.
Thanks
What said it had 13.6 GB and what said it had 12.6GB ? Different problems report the size differently. You said you get no power now. Is that just the drive or the whole computer? If it went clunk it may had a defect and died, if that's true get ahold of WD they are really good about replacing defective drives. I've never had a problem with them.
GLSmith
Drives are usually reported by windows and dos a little smaller than the manufacturer claims they are. It's the way they measure MB.
Be sure the drive is dead by hooking it up to a real machine (non PB.) Also drives will not power up sometimes if any IDE is on backwards.
The HD is dead not the computer. No matter how I jumpper it or cable it, it does nothing. I did contact WD and I'm waiting for email instructions on shipping. Should I do advanced replacement or just wait?
I know that windows might be off slightly on the HD, but 1gb??
Thanks for your Help
Maybe it's just me but it seems that WD drives have more returnable defects than any other hard drive we install. I don't really care what hard drive you want to install in your computer, they all install about the same. If given the choice we install Seagate or IBM. Not one return for defects to date.
It seems the last couple of years that WD drives have been having a lot of trouble. I've had several returns also, usually on new drives (only 3 or 4 months in use).
Yes 12.6GB after formatting a 13.6GB drive is normal. Actually it's not really that much lost when you consider you lost 100-150MB on a 1.2GB drive.
I agree, problems with Western Digital drives is increasing but I still have better luck with them than a lot of other brands. I have had luck with Fujitsu though also. Bad.Iron, I agree with the new IBM drives they seem to be good but I have had so many problems with Seagate in the past I still have a hard time believing in their drives. Of course, working for a small local company I don't deal in the volumes you guys probably do. I have seen lots of dead Quantums and Maxtors and some buggy Seagates lately! My 2 cents.
GLSmith
The foramting over head seems correct, al drives are reported smaller by the Os after they have the partiononing information writen to them, its just a fact of life. As to the clunk several things could cause this.
1. drive failure (entirelaly prosible for a WD)
2. a controller card failure (giving erronous instructions to the drive) very posible becasue you had to use a drive overlay, teh drive may be jsut to big for teh system, even with th over lay.
best bet is to test hte drive on a newer system that will reconize the drive without hte overlay.