Hard disk failing

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cynthia -> Hard disk failing (8/14/2008 6:05:49 PM)
I have a Dell Inspiron 6000. It is about three years old. I keep getting blue screen that tell me to contact the system administrator, as if I have a system administrator. The last time this happened, it gave me a chance to send an error report, which I did. The error report was corrupted. The Windows site I was at told me that my hard disk is likely failing. I assume that's my hard drive. I read in another thread that you can purchase a new system, with the hard drive. I don't even have a clue how to go about looking for that. I think my husband could probably install a new hard drive, but am not sure on that. I've heard it's "easy" and he's good at fixing most things, so I suppose he could do it. So can anyone tell me specifically what I ought to be looking for and what to avoid?

Technophile -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/14/2008 7:30:39 PM)
edit: some of what i wrote may only apply to to desktops, i havent worked on laptops much. installing a new hard drive is fairly easy (relatively speaking). first you need to find what kind of interface the drive is using. its likely to be either parallel ATA or SATA. parallel ATA uses wide ribbon cables to connect the drive to the motherboard. SATA uses much narrower cables. SATA tachnology came around a few years ago. Parallel ATA has been around for much longer. here's an image of the two cables. http://img.zdnet.com/techDirectory/_SATPAT.JPG once you figure that out, you can search for a new drive to buy for the appropriate interface. it shouldnt cost more than 100$, unless you want a super high capacity drive. when you go to install the drive, you could install windows on the new drive and boot up on the new drive while your old drive is still connected. this way you can transfer anything you want to save from the old drive, and then take out your old drive when youre done. with that said though, i'm still not sure if its your hard drive that is failing. it could be other things such as the power supply or motherboard. you might want to listen for your hard drive and see if it makes any unusual noises. typical hard drive noises are the soft to aggressive clicking sounds when the disk is accessing data. unusual noises might be spin up/down sounds at odd times (usually youll only hear spin up/down when the computer is powered on or off, or if the computer goes into power-save mode and spins down the drives), or scratching and grinding noises. i had an old drive that sounded like it was failing, i would hear the spin up/down noises at strange times. after researching my hard drive model, i found it was prone to failures...so i retired that one quickly. good luck figuring it out.

armydude -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/14/2008 7:59:59 PM)
Installing a hard drive can be very difficult for a laptop. A question. Could you talk with Dell to see if the computer is still under warranty? If it's not under warranty, you can get a hard drive for it from just about any computer store. If you have the original Windows disk, you can reload XP on it. If not, you may have to purchase one.

Miss Giggles -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/14/2008 8:05:14 PM)
If it's a laptop its not hard to replace the hard drive but you'll probably have to order it online. There are a few small screws to open up the slot , then you just slide the old hard drive and out and place in the new one. You'll probably want to contact Dell to make sure it is the hard drive. Replacing a system board on a laptop is not something you do without experience. Plus it will be costly if not under warranty. If you do replace the hard drive, then you boot off the cd (hit f12) and then either use the restore cd or your xp cd to reinstall everything. but the blue screens (which you are getting) is an extremely generic error that could mean anything. Dell will probably have you do a system restore so try to save any files now to a cd or external hard drive, etc. There might be a hidden partition with diagnostics on it but I can't remember what you press to get into it on that particular laptop but if you call them they'll tell which keys to push.

armydude -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/14/2008 8:07:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Miss Giggles If it's a laptop its not hard to replace the hard drive but you'll probably have to order it online. There's a store here that sells them. Decent prices, but not great.

iluvatar -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 9:06:25 AM)
What hasn't been mentioned is that if you replace the hard drive, you'll have to reinstall everything including Windows. Better hope you have the installation disks. If you suspect that the drive is going, start backing up your important data NOW. quote: with that said though, i'm still not sure if its your hard drive that is failing. it could be other things such as the power supply or motherboard. you might want to listen for your hard drive and see if it makes any unusual noises. typical hard drive noises are the soft to aggressive clicking sounds when the disk is accessing data. unusual noises might be spin up/down sounds at odd times (usually youll only hear spin up/down when the computer is powered on or off, or if the computer goes into power-save mode and spins down the drives), or scratching and grinding noises. i had an old drive that sounded like it was failing, i would hear the spin up/down noises at strange times. after researching my hard drive model, i found it was prone to failures...so i retired that one quickly. But they can fail without warning. I had a drive (part of a RAID 0 array) go a couple months ago and I lost a couple hundred GB of audio samples and projects I was working on. All the symptoms leading up to the failure (which were a few random power cycles) and after it pointed to the motherboard. -Dan.

Miss Giggles -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 9:40:24 AM)
Yes I know they can fail without warning but my point is those stop error messages and blue screens are pretty vague so it may be a windows issue or it could be hardware issue, without more info it is too hard to tell.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 11:01:41 AM)
My computer is fully backed up. In fact, I need to back up my back up, because I haven't really saved much on the computer itself. I'm going to ask my husband to read this thread, as I do not understand half the stuff posted here. Hopefully he'll be able to do that tomorrow. I appreciate you help. I really rely on my laptop and don't want to lose it. I'm afraid to even turn it on, so I haven't since that message that my hard disk may be failing.

riovannes -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 1:08:11 PM)
Your welcome. But the laptop harddrive is almost as easy to change out as a Desktop harddrive, i used to own the same laptop you have.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 1:43:07 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: riovannes Your welcome. But the laptop harddrive is almost as easy to change out as a Desktop harddrive, i used to own the same laptop you have. What happened to your Inspiron? Did it die? I love my little computer. It is so handy and nice to have. I really do not want it to die on me.

armydude -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 4:49:32 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cynthia quote: ORIGINAL: riovannes Your welcome. But the laptop harddrive is almost as easy to change out as a Desktop harddrive, i used to own the same laptop you have. What happened to your Inspiron? Did it die? I love my little computer. It is so handy and nice to have. I really do not want it to die on me. Rio's right here with me. He's busy (involved in a game) so he asked me to let you know what happened to his computer. He sold it to get traveling money when he moved to this area. It was still going strong, but he needed the cash.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 5:18:25 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: armydude Rio's right here with me. He's busy (involved in a game) so he asked me to let you know what happened to his computer. He sold it to get traveling money when he moved to this area. It was still going strong, but he needed the cash. Thank you. That is good to know.

armydude -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 5:20:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cynthia quote: ORIGINAL: armydude Rio's right here with me. He's busy (involved in a game) so he asked me to let you know what happened to his computer. He sold it to get traveling money when he moved to this area. It was still going strong, but he needed the cash. Thank you. That is good to know. You are very welcome. If you have any other questions, just let me know and I'll relay them to him.

netstroller -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 6:55:15 PM)
quote: So can anyone tell me specifically what I ought to be looking for and what to avoid? The first thing to do is run the Dell Diagnostics on this, you have to press one of the F keys to access it at boot up, maybe F8 or F12. Check your Dell Owners Manual or download on at Dell.com if possible. The diagnostics will test your hard drive. If your drive pass the tests, you can reinstall Windows from the CD's you hopefully have. If you don't, you might be able to order one from Dell, or use one of the same Windows version from another Dell. Don't worry about the license, the Dell install will pick up the license information automatically. You might even be able to do an automated reinstall on this laptop, but I'm not sure if that's available on your model. Here again the Owners Manual will be your friend. If you have a techie around, it's best to reinstall fresh from a Windows disk and download and install the latest software drivers from Dell. That way you don't get all the junk software back, but you also don't get the good software back. If you do need to replace the drive, Dell site has illustrated instructions on this to make it pretty simple. As always, pray first and things will go more smoothly. PS new drives are cheap, about $60 and up, see newegg.com.

KuKu -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 7:00:20 PM)
Cynthia, have you started getting warning from windows about an 'imminent hard disk failure'? My sister has a gateway, and first it was blue screens, then this message popping up randomly. Now it is more often, and at most startups... so I am assuming this is her issue too.

stateofgrace -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/15/2008 7:19:49 PM)
One thing that you might want to consider for the future - USB external hard drives have really come down in price recently. I bought one online for about $50 that was 250 gb, but my G4-dual mac doesn't have USB 2 and USB 1 is a lot slower. So I bought another one, about the same price, that also had fireware, and this one is 320 GB! I'm sending the USB one to my daughter at college so she can back up her macbook laptop with it. With backup utilities you should be able to back up your entire hard drive, and set it to scheduled backups. You may have to reinstall windows on a new hard drive but at least you're more assured of your files having a recent backup.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/16/2008 12:21:47 PM)
netstroller, Thanks for the info. I will ask my husband to run the diagnostics that you suggested. I printed off what you wrote, so he can take a look at it. quote: ORIGINAL: KuKu Cynthia, have you started getting warning from windows about an 'imminent hard disk failure'? My sister has a gateway, and first it was blue screens, then this message popping up randomly. Now it is more often, and at most startups... so I am assuming this is her issue too. I have been getting blue screens regularly, but not warnings about "imminent hard disk failure." I got a message that it might be a hard disk problem when my error report was corrupt. We are planning to get an external hard drive, but it hasn�t fit into the budget yet.

iluvatar -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/19/2008 9:35:24 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cynthia netstroller, Thanks for the info. I will ask my husband to run the diagnostics that you suggested. I printed off what you wrote, so he can take a look at it. quote: ORIGINAL: KuKu Cynthia, have you started getting warning from windows about an 'imminent hard disk failure'? My sister has a gateway, and first it was blue screens, then this message popping up randomly. Now it is more often, and at most startups... so I am assuming this is her issue too. I have been getting blue screens regularly, but not warnings about "imminent hard disk failure." I got a message that it might be a hard disk problem when my error report was corrupt. We are planning to get an external hard drive, but it hasn�t fit into the budget yet. If you've only got one drive in the computer and that's what's going bad, an external drive probably isn't going to work as a replacement. Some computers might support booting off external drives, but I wouldn't count on it being the case. Even if it did, it would likely require some reconfiguration in your system bios, which isn't all that hard relatively speaking, but could be more than you guys are able to handle. -Dan.

stateofgrace -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/19/2008 9:51:56 AM)
My suggestion regarding the external drive is that it's a good idea to have one to back things up with on a regular basis, not necessarily to boot from. Many folks have tons of music, photo and video files on their computers these days, plus last year's taxes, papers for school, etc. Since I've bought 2 recently for about $50 each, it is possible to get them for a reasonable price these days (shopping around online; you won't find these prices typically in a retail store). The drives I got recently were: Maxtor 250 GB USB2 LaCie 320 GB USB2/Firewire/SATA If the internal drive isn't totally bad yet, just having intermittent problems, I'd try to spring for both the backup and a new internal - so you can get your files backed up ASAP. If that can't be done, and you have a DVD-recordable drive on your computer, I'd back up as many files as possible ASAP (if your drive only records CDs, that's likely going to be a lot of CDs). And you should be able to get a really good price online on the internal drive as well...buying online you can likely get both drives for the price that you'd get one of them if you just walked into Best Buy or someplace similar.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/19/2008 10:46:38 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: iluvatar quote: ORIGINAL: cynthia We are planning to get an external hard drive, but it hasn�t fit into the budget yet. If you've only got one drive in the computer and that's what's going bad, an external drive probably isn't going to work as a replacement. Some computers might support booting off external drives, but I wouldn't count on it being the case. Even if it did, it would likely require some reconfiguration in your system bios, which isn't all that hard relatively speaking, but could be more than you guys are able to handle. -Dan. Oh! That's not what I was meaning. [:)] The external drive would be to back up our files, not to replace a bad one. Someone mentioned that we need to back everything up and that's what I was referring to. I didn't know there was such a huge difference if you purchase on-line. Liz, can you give me some suggestions on where to shop? Update My husband did something to my computer and it is working fine again. He said he doesn't think the hard drive was going bad, but something else, which I'm afraid I cannot explain. [8\|] I sure appreciate all the help and suggestions from all of you. Thank you very much.

stateofgrace -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/19/2008 1:28:11 PM)
Sure... First, there's a lot of "deal" sites you can check...DealNews.com, DealMac.com (for us Mac folks), xpBargains.com, TechDeals.net, SlickDeals.net - these sites just list good deals on online shopping sites. I have their RSS feeds set up as a tab on my google homepage. Anyhow, the last external hard drive I bought, the LaCie, was from eCost.com (they still have limited quantities @ $55). Geeks.com is another site that has good sales. Someimes OverStock.com does, also NewEgg.com, TigerDirect.com, Buy.com. One interesting site that has one - and just one - really good deal a day is woot.com. There are a lot more but those are off the top of my head. When I need something like the hard drive I go through all the deal sites and then search on Google Shopping. It may take a little while, but as I have posted earlier, it's so much cheaper than 90% of what typically can be found locally (OK, the $25 refurbished iTrip FM Transmitter that Big Lots had two weeks ago was a really good deal).

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/19/2008 1:42:10 PM)
Okay. That helps a lot. When we're ready, we'll go that route.

stateofgrace -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/25/2008 4:39:14 PM)
Take a look at this, Cynthia, and anyone else interested: This is from Seagate's site itself. Must be a model they're phasing out. 250 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive, PC and Mac compatible. $38 plus $8 shipping and handling in the US. Told ya the prices are dropping!

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/25/2008 4:43:12 PM)
Wow. That is a deal. Thanks for the heads up.

cynthia -> RE: Hard disk failing (8/26/2008 1:00:23 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: stateofgrace Take a look at this, Cynthia, and anyone else interested: This is from Seagate's site itself. Must be a model they're phasing out. 250 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive, PC and Mac compatible. $38 plus $8 shipping and handling in the US. Told ya the prices are dropping! We ordered this yesterday. It should be here within a week. I also haven't had any trouble with my laptop since whatever it is that my husband did to it. It seems to be fine now.

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