Hard Disk Dies / Fujitsu Drives

I recently had an new drive die on me (2 months old). It is a Fujitsu MPG3102AT IDE. The only problem is that I cant take it back for warrenty due to the data on it. I dont believe the platter itself is damaged but just the motor or something similar.

Any ideas on how to get it working for an hour or so (It didn't make any grinding sounds and now the bios does not see it at all).

Secondly has anyone else had bad experiances with Fujitsu drives? I need to know if it is my case (too hot??) or the drive. My Athalon does make the machine a bit warm + cd drive, cd buring geforce 2 etc etc. What sort of operating temp should drvies be ok in?

If the BIOS doesn't detect the drive it has suffered a failure in the electronics on its controller board. (I assume you have tried eliminating faulty power connector/IDE lead etc.) The BIOS will detect the drive's ID string even if the motor isn't running.

A board from an identical drive could be substituted to get it operating long enough to erase sensitive data or similar, bearing in mind if something shorted in the drive has damaged the controller it could happen to the second board too!

I always found Fujitsu drives good, they had very fast caching and were reliable until they moved their manufacturing from Thailand, when I stopped using them. Have no current experience with them.

excellent. I will try that. I have a stock of drives I can use. I was not sure if it was the motor because i can hear it spin up.

Poo :(

It didn't work

When I was working at CR, we had an entire BOX of Fujitsu drives that were defective. About 1/2 were dead out of the box, the other 1/2 died within a few weeks. And that particular model (3G, I think) was one of our top sellers. :P