Hey all, my HD died again last night. this is the 3rd time within the last 6 month. I have added 2 new HD fans + another PCI slot fan in my overture case to make sure it's not the heat but the HD died like before. It was working fine yesterday til around evening time. Then I notice the HD light was on and I cannot even ssh into the box. The mythtv menu responded a little bit then hardlocked. I figure ok, I'll reboot and things should be ok. Reboot and the kernel can't read HDA to continue to boot and kernel paniced. (it also takes freaking forever to detect the HD during bootup) Anyway, I was wondering if it's possible that the PSU in the overture case is not good and not sending good power to the HDs.

On another note, what other cases can you guys recommand where it's roomie and easily fit 3 HDs in there? I got my pcHDTV card so I might just rebuild the box from scratch and maybe do RAID 5.

My little bitty 200W Shuttle power supply seems to be doing fine with 2 HD's, a DVD ROM, and a PVR-250. Antec is a good name for power supplies and you've got almost twice the watts, so the power supply certainly wouldn't be my guess. In your shoes I'd be wondering if you're not inadvertantly doing something evil to the drives...

Have you checked the tempratures with smartctl to make sure they're not overheating?

Are you leaving the front end in a state that causes continuous playback?

Do you have the machine protected by a good UPS?

I don't believe my HD is over heating. then again, I didn't really run smartctl to check. (I just touch the HD after I notice the HD dies and it was warm but not burning hot). Also I never left the front-end at a continuous playback and yes the machine is hooked up to an UPS.

The beauty of smartctl is that it can not only tell you the current temprature but also the max temprature... Again for what it's worth I didn't manage to cook mine despite running in my un-A/C-ed living room all summer in a black SFF case...

If I had to guess the most obvious ways to kill a HD it'd be overheating, electrical surge, wear from continuous operation, and impact shock.

- Does the machine get power cycled frequently? (I'm guessing no)

- Is it well ventilated? I.e. - not in a closed rack or cabinet where heat can build up? (Again I'm guessing no) Have you monitored CPU/Mobo temps if not the drive?

- How about impact? Because of the type of case it is, I'm guessing it's in a rack with other components rather than freestanding where it might get kicked, bumped with the vacuum, ...

- About how many hours are you recording/watching daily? How often does the disk fill up? (there's an ugly continuous access bug when that happens)
I know I already asked this, but you don't leave the GUI on the recordings screen with the thumbnail previews running right?

Otherwise I'm fresh out of ideas and while 3 drives in 6 months could be coincidence, it sure seems improbable...

that box gets a reboot once in a while (when it hard lock) but other then that it never gets power cycled. I actually do record a lot of shows and watches a lot of TV (both my GF, my bro, and I) so I dunno if I am effected by that bug. (what's that bug anyway?)

as for the preview screen, once in a bluemoon someone would left it like that over night but i don't think it'll kill the HD like that.

I got a cramped Shuttle XPC upstair with HDs that's 3 yrs old and never failed me.

hmm..I dunno.....