Dell Inspiron hard drive failure

osh

Hi my sister has a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop and the hard drive seems to have failed.

Whenever she starts up the laptop she get's an error saying "No Drive detected" . It is possible to load up by first running through some scan but that takes a fair amount of time to do.

At first we thought it might be a virus but she rang Dell and it seems to be a cluster problem or something , any idea what would have caused this or is it a common problem with these laptops?

Problem is that it was bought around Nov 08, so it's out of warranty now. And Dell are quoting a price of €300 or so to fix it which seems fairly pricey.

Anyone have any idea on whether it can be fixed cheaper than that or do you think she'd be better off with just buying a new machine? At that price a new machine is probably better value.

Alanstrainor

If it's a hard drive failure, you can buy a replacement for about 60 euro. Installing it is a piece of cake. Do you have the Windows installation disks that came with the laptop? (The laptop my not have come with discs, but sometimes they do).
There's definitely no need to bin the laptop, it still works.

Oh and by the way, hard drives just fail, sometimes they can last for years and years, other times they can fail after a short period of time, it's just they way they are.

dun79

Hi osh

If its the olny hard drive thats damaged (cluster problem).
you could get a new hard drive from here http://www.komplett.ie/
you can get a new hard drive for alot less than €300

token56

Hey there as the others have said it can fixed for a lot cheaper than 300. I had to fix 3 different inspiron laptops myself last week. I got 320 GB hard drives for about E45 each off pixmania.ie. The actual replacing the hard drive takes about 10 mins to do and should be simple, and the rest is just installing windows which is easy to do once you have the installation CD. Certainly no need to scrap the machine.

osh

Thanks for the quick replies.

I actually thought it would be alot to harder to replace a hard drive in a laptop than a normal desktop. If it's easy enough then I suppose that's the way to go about it. I guess there's instructions on youtube or elsewhere on how to do it.

When I'm buying a hard drive is there anything in particular to look out for? Or would any internal hard drive be suitable?

I don't actually know if she has installation cds but if any came with the laptop then I'd say she still has them.

Alanstrainor

SATA 2.5" drive is what you're looking for, some of the larger drives ie 500GB can be thicker than standard drives so i would steer clear of them just to keep things simple.

bullpost

If you're in Dublin and want one quickly , peats on parnell street have them in stock . Was also looking in Maplins who want crazy money for them. In Peats they start at just under 60 yoyos.

osh

Cheers Alanstrainor, I thought there might be a limited amount of space alright.

Never noticed the komplett link above was filtered to the 2.5"

So is this one suitable? It doesn't mention SATA but is 2.5" and I reckon 320gb would be a nice size to get

WD Scorpio Black Edition 320GB, 7200RPM,
2,5", 16MB Cache, 3 Gb/s

osh

bullpost wrote: »

If you're in Dublin and want one quickly , peats on parnell street have them in stock . Was also looking in Maplins who want crazy money for them. In Peats they start at just under 60 yoyos.

Thanks Bullpost, I'm in Dublin alright but she's not

plus there's no major rush with this so komplett will offer the best value I reckon

Alanstrainor

osh wrote: »

Cheers Alanstrainor, I thought there might be a limited amount of space alright.

Never noticed the komplett link above was filtered to the 2.5"

So is this one suitable? It doesn't mention SATA but is 2.5" and I reckon 320gb would be a nice size to get

WD Scorpio Black Edition 320GB, 7200RPM,
2,5", 16MB Cache, 3 Gb/s

Yes that would be spot on. It would also be a faster drive than the one that was in there originally, so you may notice a speed increase.

osh

Excellent thanks again. Definitely alot cheaper

Alanstrainor

osh wrote: »

Excellent thanks again. Definitely alot cheaper

Also, if there was any stuff on the drive that has failed, it may be possible to recover it if needs be. Again, it's generally quite easy to do. Let me know and i can run you through the steps.

MoodeRator

Even cheaper is to take the driver out and put it in freezer overnight. take it it out let it thaw/dry out completely and try it again! Slim chance but has worked for a few

Alanstrainor

MoodeRator wrote: »

Even cheaper is to take the driver out and put it in freezer overnight. take it it out let it thaw/dry out completely and try it again! Slim chance but has worked for a few

It's delaying the inevitable imo. That's if it does anything at all!

MoodeRator

Alanstrainor wrote: »

It's delaying the inevitable imo. That's if it does anything at all!

you are probably correct, I am no expert on these. BUT if it did work, at least OP might be able to back up important data?

Alanstrainor

MoodeRator wrote: »

you are probably correct, I am no expert on these. BUT if it did work, at least OP might be able to back up important data?

Generally speaking, even if the drive will not boot, it is possible to use a live cd to access the drive and retrieve important data. I have done this many times in the past and never had any trouble. Placing the drive in the freezer could just ruin the drive completely.

If that fails, then i'd try something like the freezer, as a last resort!

osh

Hah I might give the freezer a miss for now Although useful to know for the future maybe

The only stuff needed on the hard drive should be easily transferable to an external before we make the switch.

The thing is the hard drive does boot up eventually after a long time so the contents are accessible. It's just that you have to run a long memory scan (or something like that anyway) before it will boot up.

That's why i initially thought it was a virus. If the hard drive was damaged then surely it wouldn't load at all...