TiVo Community Forums Archives - Which diagnostics tests to run? Please help.

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Which diagnostics tests to run? Please help.
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Posted by: NFLnut

I just received two Maxtor 120GB hard drives from Newegg, detailed here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...19&pagenumber=2

To summarize, the drives arrived wrapped back-to-back in bubble wrap and loosely packed in styro "peanuts." Definitely a warranty-voiding method of shipping! I'm about to run the PowerMax diagnostics on both of these drives before I upgrade, just as a precaution. I'm not sure which tests to run. I thought some of you who are more knowledgable about hard drives could help.

Maxtor states that the following tests are possible with the PowerMax utility:

1) Basic Quick (90 Second) Test

2) Advanced Test (Factory Re-Certification)

3) Burn In Test (20-30 minutes per test cycle)

4) Write Disk Pack (low level format, data destructive)

How many and/or which of these tests would any of you recommend to confirm that Newegg's sub-standard of shipping didn't do harm to these drives?

Thanks!

Posted by: tom_h

I'd run a write disk pack/low level format followed by a factory recertification, and then if you're not in a hurry run the burn-in test overnight. The first two will identify any bad spots that already exist and test all the electronics. The latter will test for any occasional problems that might pop up as the drive runs. Your attended time will be about zero and it'll just delay your upgrade time by a day.

I got the same thing from Ubid, bought 3 drives and they showed up wrapped in a layer of newspaper, then ups'd in a box only slightly larger than the drive itself. They all passed the test but who knows if the lifespan of the drive will be as good after all that banging around. I'm not as worried about media surface problems as I am about the drive bearings and media alignment.

Make sure you have mfstool backups...

Posted by: NFLnut

I just want to make sure...

I have recently read comments, both pro- but mostly con- regarding running LLF on new factory drives. Before I hose a new drive, any comments?

Posted by: tivoupgrade

no reason to run the LLF (it can't hurt, though) but the factory recertification is worthwhile if you have a few hours to spare for each drive. unfortunately, most drives that are going to fail usually don't fail if they pass the quick diagnostics right out of the box - it takes a few hundred hours of service before the real problems can show up. if you really have lots of time, let the burn in test run for a week or two, and if it doesn't fail, there's a good chance you'll be ok for the long haul.

fwiw, i have yet to see a drive fail right out of the box (out of about 750), but still have failures from time to time - usually within a month or two of being in service...

Lou

Posted by: Want1394

You were certainly the victim of crappy sshipping, but those drives are pretty tough unless there is other evidence of damage. I would NOT do a low-level format unless there is a known reason to. I would run the burn-in test for 24 hours on each drive. If there is nothing detected, I would :) and continue with an upgrade with confidence. If any problem is detected, I would return the drives as defective immediately - no waiting, no reformat.

Sorry to hear about this problem (and a couple of others) I've got lots of stuff from Newegg (including this week) and it's all been great (including packing). They must have hired some CC trainees that needed a second job.

Posted by: tom_h

All the "low level format" does on an IDE drive, including the maxtor tests, is to write zero's across the entire drive including any partition information. It can and will uncover write faults or bad media areas that the factory recertification will not discover. The factory recertify tests (lightly) the drive electronics and does a media read test via SMART.

There is absolutely, positively no harm in doing a disk pack write (aka LLF) unless the disk has data on it, which will be wiped out. There is absolutely, positively a benefit to doing it as you may identify and mark off bad data areas. The benefit may be small, and of course problems can crop up later in the disks life. But as it is not a complicated process nor does it require any significant amount of your time, why not?

The worst thing that will happen if the media is perfect is you'll have "wasted" about 5-8 hours of unattended time running the write test.

If nothing else, its worth it to me to gain the peace of mind of having given it not only a nice write test, but a good 5-8 hour busy burn-in before I put 50 hours of stuff I wanna watch onto it.

Start it up, go to sleep, when you wake up start the recertification process, go make coffee and read the paper, when you're done, your drive will be ready to go.

Posted by: NFLnut

I ran LLF and the other tests on one of the drives and it checked out okay. Now if I can just get DirecTiVoMad to work, I'm set!

Thanks for the replies!

Posted by: MichaelK

is there any such thing as a freeware drive test utility like ezmax/powermax? Or are these low level things based on proprietary stuff?

I can't get the maxtor util to run on the pentium box with prehistoric bios that I am using to play with my Tivo drives?

Dylan's boot disk has no problems so i dont feel like cracking open any of my newer stuff to toy with.

I tried a WD disk i had lying around and it refuses to work on anything but wd.

Any suggestions?

Posted by: tom_h

As far as testing the drive electronics, I think those are mostly proprietary tools. However, the proof is in the use...boot up a dos disk, partition the drive with fdisk, do a format (not /quick) and a scandisk with the 'test surface' option. That'll give it as good a beating as needed to make sure everything works and the IDE subsystem maps out any bad blocks

Of course, if your bios doesnt recognize the full size of the hard drive, this wont help. Try a BIOS upgrade from the manufacturer (still likely to not recognize a large drive if this is a pentium system) or a plug in IDE controller (also unlikely to work since most big drive IDE controllers are PCI and your pentium system probably only has ISA slots).

Some disk manufacturers provide drivers to enable availability of the larger hard drives, that may be your only option to go this route.

Posted by: MichaelK

thanks for the input - makes sense - i was having tunnel vision and didnt think it that far through myself.

Actually i think i might be able to get it in dos through the pci ata133 card packaged with it. It does have an pci bus with a free slot (in its day it was a butt kicker- i got it direct from intel right when the pentiums came out when they where still making boxes of their own)

No time till the weekend to pull tivo all apart to do the upgrade, but i might as well start munging with scandisk before the weekend.

Thanks again-
Mike

Posted by: ADent

Which version of Powermax are you having problems with?

Powermax 3.03 (on the web site) works with my machine, but the menus text doesn't appear (I unplug all the other drives and play 'in the dark' with it until it selects the right IDE port).

The version that comes with the retail drives on floppy (powermax 2.5) works fine, but it would not fail the obviously bad 80GB drive I had and it does not work with Quantum drives.

I have a PR200 (Cyrix 166?) Acer given to me by a neighbor.

Posted by: MichaelK

it's on the "maxblast plus II version 1.00" disk that came with the drive.

It starts up but then reboots.

I didnt even think that maybe they have another version on the web site, maybe i'll try a fresh dl.