Dell Inspiron 6000 - Hard Drive Replacement

Makaveli · 24-02-2008 4:59pm #1

My sister has an Inspiron 6000 which up until last Saturday was working nicely. Since then there have been serious problems.

The laptop will boot into Windows. The Start menu and taskbar do not work. Pressing the Windows key does nothing. I can get into her My Documents and My Computer and everything within the C drive so I can access the Event Viewer. I can't connect to the wireless network

The event viewer is riddled with errors pointing to bad blocks on the hdd and I ran the diagnostic tool that comes with the laptop and that too returned errors.

From the looks of it the hdd is knackered. There are no clicks coming from it so I'm guessing it has somehow become corrupt.

If I replace the HDD can I use any HDD and will there be any issues doing this? I have XP Pro so that's not an issue and I can get the drivers off the Dell site so is it ok to just swap out the hard drive install windows on the new one and then install the drivers?

If the HDD has bad blocks would creating backup be a waste of time? At the moment I'm moving all her personal files/music/pictures etc to an external so that's a not an issue.

My biggest worry is replacing the hdd and finding out that half the stuff doesn't work any more because it's missing drivers or there is stuff tied to the old hdd.

AlmightyCushion · 24-02-2008 7:54pm

Changing the hard drive won't make a difference. I'd try a format and re-install before replacing the hard drive. If it has bad sectors, I think windows will ignore the bad sectors when installing.

Makaveli · 27-02-2008 6:26pm

Forgot all about this, cheers for the reply.

So if I format and reinstall Windows will basically just not count the bad sectors? Might do that so but I'd be a bit worried about the rest of the HDD eventually going pear shaped and having to swap the hdd anyway. Would it be better to install off the recovery partition or format the whole thing and install a clean version of Windows with no Dell crap tied in?

AlmightyCushion · 27-02-2008 6:28pm

It may skip over the bad sectors but I'm not 100% sure. I'd go with a clean version of windows. May as well get rid of the bloat.

majiktripp · 27-02-2008 7:13pm

If the hard drive has Bad Sectors...which we seem to be assuming..try running Hard Drive Regenerator on it, this program fixes bad sectors without loosing the data associated with the said sectors. Has saved me many times. Also run a program Called Drive Fitness Test, its a free diagnostics program from IBM for testing harddrives.
HDD Regenerator is your way to go, at least you will be able to take a full image backup of your hard drive that will make migrating to a new one a lot easier.

Capt'n Midnight · 02-03-2008 5:22pm

get hdtune
have a look at the health section to see if there are other errors
if the laptop has been bounced around or is over 5 years old, the HDD is probably not going to last

generally if a drive is showing lots of bad sectors it's on the way out. IDE drives have maybe 1% hidden sectors, to remap on the fly, if you are seeing bad sectors it means either the 1% is all used up or that the OS is having a canary.

komplett.ie are doing drives from €48

if the stuff is tied to the old drive make a note of the volume label. you can change this later on utility on microsoft's site

you can use ntbackup to backup the drive and system state and restore back later on - long winded and slow, but should work

Dell Inspiron 6000 - Hard Drive Replacement

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