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jhubbard

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Harddisk Failure?

I have a PII300, Gigabyte dual CPU capable MB, and Maxtor 6.4GB disk. The problem is that since the CPU and MB from a P150, the disk gives errors like

Sep  1 14:44:56 bloodroot kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady S
eekComplete Error }
Sep  1 14:44:56 bloodroot kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { Uncorrectable
Error }, LBAsect=7181597, sector=542
Sep  1 14:44:56 bloodroot kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda),
sector 542

when booting Linux. This has lead on one occasion to the complete loss of the OS. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
James
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jhance

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theh95

I have agree with Jhance's answer.  
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But I've only had it for a month or two!

So, to prevent this happening with the next one, do you think that it was shipped faulty with the faults only showing up now it's being used at full speed with UDMA, or is it more likely damaged since it was bought (the computer does run fairly hot)?

The age of a drive is not a factor in whether it's good or bad.  The highest failure RATES, however,  occur in very new and very old drives.  Manufacturers try to weed out the quickest failures by burn-in tests but, so called, "infant mortality" of products is well documented.  If you were to plot failure rates for almost any product you get what is called a "bathtub curve" where the failure rates are high at the beginning, drop down quickly during "mid-life" and then gradually move upward as the device ages.  You problem could be with the electronics or  the mechanism, from this vantage point it's not possible to tell.  In any case, MAXTOR will send you another one (granted it will be a refurbished one) if you send it back.  If you bought it retail, you might try returning it to your place of purchase and asking them to exchange it.