I woulda thought, when a sector couldn't be worked with, after repeated attempts, it would get "marked bad"...
Hmm... The drive itself has a number of spare sectors, and does some auto-remapping of bad sectors, so there's no software that shipped with the drive for doing this (unless it's software housed in the drive itself), or so I remeber having read. Perhaps I should check up on this a bit more...
I can definitely say 2 things here. My 2 Cheetahs were bought in December 2000 (the Ultra160 LVD SCSI drive), and June May 1998 (the Ultra 2 Wide/LVD SCSI drive). They're obviously d*mn good drives to have lasted this long, as from my experience hardware can start going before then...
That said, there is some thinking towards them getting on in years/general wear and tear. The only thing older in my box now, is a Teac floppy drive which I got back in 1997.
A gfx card I bought back in 1998 (the Voodoo 3 3000) I had given to my father in 2000 or 2001 when I upgraded from a Pentium II to an Athlon. I rebuilt my old PC (upgrading the RAM, and swapping the PII 400 for a Celery 700, got new components such as hard drive for what I was taking, and shipped). At the time, he still had a Pentium 166 with some S3 Virge the OEM stuck him with
He told me his gfx is going on the blink, and was trying to re-format, change drivers, and nothing worked. He finally called me.
First question outa my mouth: Is this happening in Windows only, or are you seeing this when you boot? (You see, I already had an idea, what it might be, but needed some info.)
He told me it happens when he first turns it on. I asked if before he loads the system, and when we got down to it, yes, when the comp is in BIOS doing POST.
I promptly told him that there's nothing wrong with his OS install, and reinstalling it and everything won't do a thing. The card I passed on to him was bought in 1998 and has gotten on in years. Sorry, when I shipped the thing to you, the gfx card was fine, or I wouldn't have shipped it, but unfortunately, I think your video card is dieing.
Oh, BTW, he had also in the interum upgraded his monitor, and it didn't do a thing to correct this either. It was more a cold boot, though hitting the reset button a few times, it then could come back up. Well it's either that, or the mobo, but I have a sneaking suspiscion with all he said, about that now almost 8 year old gfx card. Unfortunately he doesn't have the money...so if I get the money for a new gfx card, I think I'll just send him my Radeon 9600 for now. Should hold him for awhile. I don't even care about trying to get some recompensation for the card, especially given he's helped me get through college and all
As good as it does suggest the drives are, it also means they have thus far lasted longer then some hardware has, out on the market now. So yeah, it's a thought
