Dell XPS 1340 Replacement Hard Drive needed in warranty

BenEadir

Hi all,

I bought a Dell XPS 1340 with Intel Core Duo CPU P9500 @ 2.53ghz, NVIDIA GeForce 9500M graphics adapter, 4gb RAM, 450GB hard drive and it runs Vista Ultimate.

It's used 10 hours a day and for mainly office type applications, nothing too fancy.

It started freezing after a few weeks and a a lengthy service call to Dell's support line seemed to solve the problem. I can't remember exactly what the solution was but it was software/settings based. It started freezing again a few days ago and this time when Dell asked me to run a hardware diagnostic it came up with an error indicating a bad sector on the hard drive was causing the problem and they want to replace the hard drive.

The error code was "0142" or "2000-0142", status "79".

As I'm sure you can all imagine replacing the hard drive is the easy bit, backing up all the data locally (I use an online back up service day to day but would only restore 250gb data from there in an emergency!!) and reinstalling all the programmes again is going to be a major pain in the ass and not something I've ever been able to do successfully.

Can the experienced amongst you recommend how I should proceed here? Dell absolutely won't have anything to do with backing up or restoring the data, they'll plug in a new hard drive and that's it. Are there any qualified/reliable/cost effective options out there for someone to take off the data and rstore it again once the hard drive has been replaced?

Is there any alternative to all that hassle? Is there software out there which will isolate the bad bad sector and just ignore it going forward?

If I do have to go through all this pain should I take the opportunity to load Win 7 instead of reloading Vista???

I was really hoping this was going to be a good week!!!

Regards,

Ben

Overheal

I would figure out what data you can chuck (program files mostly) and get it down to less than 250gb-320gb. Then go out and buy an external drive. Ive had great luck with the WD Passport Essentials and Elites.

Frankly you're inviting disaster by not having some form of backup. I've got close to a TB worth of storage in pocket sized drives to fall back on.

BenEadir

Thanks Overheal, good suggestion.

Is there a programme which will export everything from the current drive (Vista, applications, data, settings, favourites etc etc) and reinstall them exactly as they were on the new drive and if so is the interface easy enough for someone with no experience to follow and not mess up? Whilst I want to do this as low cost and quickly as possible I don't want to save a few €€ and end up with all my data gone.

Ben

Overheal

Its called Ghosting or Cloning and there are a few options out there: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=231147 check out G4u and MAxLister.

Personally I dont bother. I grab all the documents I want to keep (Pictures, Music, are all very easy to grab when you only keep them in 2 or 3 directories) and a few save files from games or settings from certain programs. Pretty easy to drop these back into a fresh OS install.

Getting comfortable reinstalling an OS/starting fresh is something I regard as a high value skill anyway. Its usally a fear of doing this that screws people up - when their OS build becomes so bulky, bloated, and full of broken file associations, old installation files, and inevitably cookies, bugs, spyware. Then one day a driver fails on you, you get a blue screen, and there go your files.

majiktripp

Could try using Vistas own Easy Transfer -> to a USB Hard Drive
Info here
That way after reinstall you can re-import it using the same feature in the fresh vista install.
Be sure to double check it has *all* the files you want copied over though if you use it.

BostonB

Overheal wrote: »

Its called Ghosting or Cloning and there are a few options out there: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=231147 check out G4u and MAxLister.

Personally I dont bother. I grab all the documents I want to keep (Pictures, Music, are all very easy to grab when you only keep them in 2 or 3 directories) and a few save files from games or settings from certain programs. Pretty easy to drop these back into a fresh OS install.

Getting comfortable reinstalling an OS/starting fresh is something I regard as a high value skill anyway. Its usally a fear of doing this that screws people up - when their OS build becomes so bulky, bloated, and full of broken file associations, old installation files, and inevitably cookies, bugs, spyware. Then one day a driver fails on you, you get a blue screen, and there go your files.

+++1 everything he said.

Ghosting can be useful. But I don't bother with it either.

duckysauce

if you want everything the exact same buy a replacement hard drive the same size and clone your orginal drive, this may not work if the sectors are badly screwed on the orginal drive,manual reload is the best though but can take ages to config everything again especial if you dont know too much about pcs

monkeypants

Most of the stuff on your hard disk can be downloaded or installed from CD again. Just backup the stuff that's personal to you.

BenEadir

Getting to be an expert at this now lads. I'm on my 3rd hard drive from Dell on this piece of sh1t.

Overheal

Though if you want to go another option, Arconis has been the leader in the Cloning industry since they virtually re-pioneered it.

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/acronis-true-image-review.html

The Idea being you build the OS the way you want it from the start. Then if you need to "Reformat" Just load the image, and youre back to day one, with all your preferences, programs, etc. already setup, save for a few more recent updates, and documents [edit: Actually I think thats one of its backup features - it can add new documents to the image periodically]

@Ben ask Dell about its Lemon Policy.

BostonB

From the web, others are having this problem, and its looks like its over heating due to the graphics chipset. I don't think its the drive at all. Solutions on the web were to update to the latest BIOS, and/or not use the Nvidia drivers (use default driver) . I'm only guessing but I wonder if its the drives just getting too hot, and corrupting. You could install the OS on a external drive and see if the problem re-occurs.

Thats said after a 3 replacements which obviously isn't fixing the problem, I'd just ask for a refund, and at the same time without waiting for a reply just log a claim with the small claims court, and notify Dell of the same.

In my opinion, XPS 13" laptops with the lower end graphics, the onboard Intel graphics don't seem to have any of the problems that some (alot?) of ones with Nivdia graphics do.

Overheal

And thats part of the problem I'd adress in the Lemon Policy.

People are sick to death of me throwing around these links but here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-10020782-33.html

monkeypants

There are a lot of Dell machines with nVidia chips giving problems, including a rather expensive M1730 of mine. :rolleyes: