Imminent HDD Failure

The_Illuminator

Hi all,

I've recently updated my Dell Inspiron 1501 (about 3 years old) to Windows 7. It's running perfectly, but unfortunately since the update, the machine has been continually throwing up warnings about the imminent failure of my hard drive, a Samsung HM160H1 ATA, 160GB.

I'm not too worried, as I have everything backed up onto an external hard drive, but what I'm wondering is if there's any way to save the hard drive? I've run checkdisk twice but no joy. Device manager claims the hard drive is working fine, but windows says different.

If it can't be saved, would a laptop hard drive be easy to replace? The current one seems to slot out of the side of the machine relatively easily (once the power is off, of course). I've priced some new ones online but I'm not sure about 3.5 inch vs 2.5 inch etc. Will a new one slot in as easily as the old one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

bonzodog2

I have a 1501 too, its very easy to change the disk. 2 screws secure the caddy in to the case and 2 more fix the disk to the caddy. Its a 2.5" SATA disk, you should find one for < 50 euro; I got a 320 GB in an enclosure for less, more than a year ago. Lidl, or maybe Aldi, had 500GB external for 60-70 ish a few days ago.

[edit]: I dont know if there's a limit on the size of disk the BIOS will recognise. Mine worked with a 320GB disk fine.

hearny

Safest bet would be to replace the hard drive which is very straight forward.

If you have an external case you can clone the drive using HDClone http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html so you wont have to set everything up again.

A program I use to try to recover hard drives is Spinrite http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm which may be able to fix any issues with it.

PM me for more information on spinrite.

CreepingDeath

The_Illuminator wrote: »

Device manager claims the hard drive is working fine, but windows says different.

Windows device manager will only tell you that the device is responding to requests, nothing else.

Modern hard disks have "smart" reporting, when they maintain counters of read and write failures, number of times powered on etc.

You can download a free version of HD Tune, select your hard disk and click on the "Health" tab.

Mine shows 16 key values, eg. raw read error rate ( at 0 ), seek error rate, write error rate etc.
With the error threshold for each of the parameters, eg. 51.
So after 51 write errors, it'll start complaining to windows.

HD Tune Download Page

It's worth downloading HD Tune just to see what is failing out of curiousity.

ricman

Don,t lose the caddy screws, theres 2 on the front, and 2 on each side, they are very small, use driver max free program, to back up all drivers, to a cdr ,or dvdr or usb drive, it saves time.
Install it on new, drive, new windows installation, and then restore the drivers via drivermax, function.

The_Illuminator

Thanks very much, folks.

SpinRite tells me to replace the hard drive immediately, and that any attempt to recover it could 'cause it to die completely.'

Looks like it'll have to be replaced. Downloading HD Clone now. Thanks again, everyone.

GarRo247

The_Illuminator wrote: »

I've priced some new ones online but I'm not sure about 3.5 inch vs 2.5 inch etc. Will a new one slot in as easily as the old one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

You can only but a 2.5 inch for a laptop, 3.5 inch HDDs are only for desktop computers, and if you get a 2.5 inch yes it will fit in exactly the same as your old one.