HDD Verging on Failure 3 Months in Time

[Ammonite]

So I'm building a mini-ITX system. But of course I have a few computers kicking around, namely an old MacBook and my Compaq Presario 357-TX laptop which was bought less than a year a go.

This morning I turned my computer on and got an "imminent hard drive failure" warning. I decided to boot into Windows and again I got a message warning me of problems. I'm sitting here doing a backup now, and I've been prompted to replace the hard drive.

Luckily I have 2 - 3 months warranty left. I'm not going to risk it, I'm going to contact the company soon. But its really annoying considering I wanted to dedicate my focus on the new mini-ITX and my poor Compaq's 500GB hard drive is now showing warning signs of dying out.

My question though is what causes issues like this? Is it as simple as bad luck?

[Completely Bonkers]

Earthquakes

Perhaps your HDD has a cousin down the road at Dotcom mansion servers and is occupying your PC as a protest

++++

Sometimes is just happens... a normal "risk" and unpredictable half-life on their reliability. Sometimes it is the fault of the chipset or cable. I have had all 3 causes in the last 10 years.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

So I'm building a mini-ITX system. But of course I have a few computers kicking around, namely an old MacBook and my Compaq Presario 357-TX laptop which was bought less than a year a go.

This morning I turned my computer on and got an "imminent hard drive failure" warning. I decided to boot into Windows and again I got a message warning me of problems. I'm sitting here doing a backup now, and I've been prompted to replace the hard drive.

Luckily I have 2 - 3 months warranty left. I'm not going to risk it, I'm going to contact the company soon. But its really annoying considering I wanted to dedicate my focus on the new mini-ITX and my poor Compaq's 500GB hard drive is now showing warning signs of dying out.

My question though is what causes issues like this? Is it as simple as bad luck?

I got the same warning on my Dell Studio 1640 (Dell refurb.) a couple of months ago (Toshiba 320GB HDD). Dell customer service replaced with very little argument. QC on the drives may not be as good as it once was.....

Check the data cable on the drive... if it's loose or damaged it may affect the drive. Mine goes out of warranty in 2 months and I've been pressing Dell for a new cable for "just in case" but no luck so far. May pick one up after I'm through arguing w/Dell over it.

[Ammonite]

Say, did you have to send them your old one or were you able to keep the potentially faulty one. Because I have an IDE / SATA to USB cable which I used once to salvage data off a broken laptop, might come in handy as a rough backup solution (sure, its a hard drive verging on possible failure, but it'd be pretty unlucky to have both the new hard drive and the old hard drive go at once haha).

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Say, did you have to send them your old one or were you able to keep the potentially faulty one. Because I have an IDE / SATA to USB cable which I used once to salvage data off a broken laptop, might come in handy as a rough backup solution (sure, its a hard drive verging on possible failure, but it'd be pretty unlucky to have both the new hard drive and the old hard drive go at once haha).

Customer service said I had to give it back but the service tech that I picked it from said he didn't need it.... told them 3 times to just send the drive and service tech not necessary but sent it that way anyway, still sent him away and did it myself.

I did keep the drive and Dell hasn't asked for it back.... They weren't going to get it anyway as there is no way I'm sending back a drive unless it's been wiped with a sledge hammer or a bullet

[Ammonite]

Hopefully I'll be able to keep it then. Haha, if I have to send it back I'll definitely be carpet bombing all data.

Originally Posted by Completely Bonkers

Earthquakes

Perhaps your HDD has a cousin down the road at Dotcom mansion servers and is occupying your PC as a protest

O u.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Hopefully I'll be able to keep it then. Haha, if I have to send it back I'll definitely be carpet bombing all data.




O u.

Send them back a box of metal filings and tell them you used a Data Shredder

[Ammonite]

Haha.

Well I finally finished dealing with customer service. I chose live chat with a support specialist. The first guy I dealt with had me do a hard drive check that took 5 hours. o___o

The second guy took me through all the formalities of live chat again, confirming all the details etc, before telling me he couldn't help since I was using the "US support channel" apparently. Oops I guess.

Found the New Zealand support and did it all over again. They had me updated the bios which I did but knew would do nothing. Finally another person came back and continued my case, and dispatched a hard drive to my address which I can install myself and hopefully have done in the next few days. I'm very happy. If it had to fail, I'm glad it did now; just in the nick of time.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Haha.

Well I finally finished dealing with customer service. I chose live chat with a support specialist. The first guy I dealt with had me do a hard drive check that took 5 hours. o___o

The second guy took me through all the formalities of live chat again, confirming all the details etc, before telling me he couldn't help since I was using the "US support channel" apparently. Oops I guess.

Found the New Zealand support and did it all over again. They had me updated the bios which I did but knew would do nothing. Finally another person came back and continued my case, and dispatched a hard drive to my address which I can install myself and hopefully have done in the next few days. I'm very happy. If it had to fail, I'm glad it did now; just in the nick of time.

Sounds like it's working out for you

[Ammonite]

Indeed it does.

Still need to figure out how I'm going to backup... needing to find if anyone I know has a 200GB+ external drive I can borrow, I've managed to backup all my documents (ironically using a salvaged 40GB hard drive from an older Compaq laptop I once had) but I need a way to cleanly move over a system image to the new drive.

I find it interesting how my old Compaq computer's hard drive still works even though it was made in something like 2005 - 2006. That computer ended up thrown across the room and warped in an earthquake (as Completely Bonkers aptly referenced) yet the drive was magically fine. 0_o

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Indeed it does.

Still need to figure out how I'm going to backup... needing to find if anyone I know has a 200GB+ external drive I can borrow, I've managed to backup all my documents (ironically using a salvaged 40GB hard drive from an older Compaq laptop I once had) but I need a way to cleanly move over a system image to the new drive.

I find it interesting how my old Compaq computer's hard drive still works even though it was made in something like 2005 - 2006. That computer ended up thrown across the room and warped in an earthquake (as Completely Bonkers aptly referenced) yet the drive was magically fine. 0_o

Check with Apricorn- that company has some excellent solutions for drive cloning and external storage enclosures... reasonable pricing... in the USA anyway?

That's what I used to swap my HDD's and the old one is sitting in one of their enclosures.

Off to work for now....

[Widjaja]

There are two options:-

Do a windows easy back up on to the drive you receive which should have the OS and recovery partition installed.

BTW if you have not made recovery disks I urge you to do so and hopefully it all goes well.

Usually you get a replacement HDD which is of the same brand and size.
If the brand is either Seagate or Western Digital you could do is go to either site of the HDD brand and download their free cloning tool to clone your current failing drive directly on to the replacement drive, then replace the failing drive with the replacement.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Widjaja

There are two options:-

Do a windows easy back up on to the drive you receive which should have the OS and recovery partition installed.

BTW if you have not made recovery disks I urge you to do so and hopefully it all goes well.

Usually you get a replacement HDD which is of the same brand and size.
If the brand is either Seagate or Western Digital you could do is go to either site of the HDD brand and download their free cloning tool to clone your current failing drive directly on to the replacement drive, then replace the failing drive with the replacement.

+1 on these options. You said you already have a USB to SATA adapter so your options are pretty open, clone, restore image, backup w/fresh install.

** In any case- make sure you have a backup copy of anything that you don't want to lose before the drive fails ***

A disk to disk clone is the easiest/quickest way to do it usually but in your situation, which was similar to mine:

- performing a full backup and system image may fail a few times in Windows 7 due to the failing disk. I needed to rearrange the options on what I wanted to backup several times to get a successful backup.
- The disk cloning software may indicate copy or copy verification failure due to the failing drive. Mine showed a clone failure warning but tried the new drive in the machine and it has worked fine.

[Ammonite]

Its a Toshiba MK5065GSX (500GB model). On the hard drive I recall it had the text "ATA" on it. I'm used to SATA and IDE but, what is ATA? (I think I saw somewhere its the same or similar to IDE, is that right?)

I did confirm with the person from customer support that the drive was totally blank however.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Its a Toshiba MK5065GSX (500GB model). On the hard drive I recall it had the text "ATA" on it. I'm used to SATA and IDE but, what is ATA? (I think I saw somewhere its the same or similar to IDE, is that right?)

I did confirm with the person from customer support that the drive was totally blank however.

That drive is SATA so no worries based on what you said so far. Some of the other folks here can describe these terms better than I can... I just use Wikipedia when I get stuck on terminology

*note- SATA- stands for serial ATA.

[Widjaja]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Its a Toshiba MK5065GSX (500GB model). On the hard drive I recall it had the text "ATA" on it. I'm used to SATA and IDE but, what is ATA? (I think I saw somewhere its the same or similar to IDE, is that right?)

I did confirm with the person from customer support that the drive was totally blank however.

Oh ok....

I don't think Toshiba have a free ghosting software application on their site.
So unless you decide to get something like Acronis True image Home payware, I don't know of any other way to ghost the image of your drive.
I have used Norton ghost but the last time I used it was with Ghost 15 which did not support Windows 7.

The best option would be to make recovery discs for your laptop if you have not through the Toshiba recovery software, replace the old hard drive with the new one, install windows 7 from the recovery discs and update.

Remove the new drive from the laptop and replace it with the old HDD, then create a windows east transfer back up on to your new HDD using your SATA to USB adaptor.

Once it is done, replace the old HDD with the new one and use the Easy transfer utility on the new OS to find and restore the files from the easy transfer backup located on your new drive.

This is all assuming you do not have enough space on your old HDD to create a backup.
Plus it may be risky since your drive is now failing.

[Norton]

I use this and have had no problems whatsoever... very easy to do (3 laptop swaps, 1 desktop HDD to SSD swap)

APRICORN EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive U...

Ugly color but now I have a spare external drive

Same company/cheaper option:

APRICORN ASW-USB3-25 USB3.0 to SATA Adapter

Copy/clone takes as little as 15 minutes depending on disk speeds and amount of data.

If you own one of these, the updated software is available for download as well

[Widjaja]

I think the OP mentions early on he has something like this.

[Norton]

This software will clone the drive:

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/...p-software.htm

erixx posted on my SSD install thread and had success on a HDD to SSD clone using it (see link below)... not sure if he used the free download version....

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...6&postcount=25

The retail version cost about as much, maybe more, than my suggestion which includes the device and software.

[Ammonite]

Thats the exact one Widjaja.

I'll take a look at this software. I can't find an external drive in time sadly, and the recovery disk option requires many, many DVDs that its ridiculous.

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Thats the exact one Widjaja.

I'll take a look at this software. I can't find an external drive in time sadly, and the recovery disk option requires many, many DVDs that its ridiculous.

How much room is on the failing drive?

Possible recovery option:
- partition failing drive- make room on new partition more system image
- use Windows 7 backup to create an image (save in new partition)
- create system repair disk
Swap drives> hook old drive to USB port > boot from repair disk> restore image to new disk

[Ammonite]

Well it arrived here this morning, sadly with instructions on how to return the faulty drive (I wanted to keep it olol).

Decided to use XXClone and its running its operation now... gonna take several hours. Very paranoid so I'm checking the heat of the laptop and the drive every so often. Concerned about overheating. o__O

The interesting news is that the new hard drive is still 500GB but instead is 7200rpm, rather than 5400rpm as the faulty one has. I guess that is good as far as system speed is concerned. Looks pretty cool too since the PCB is blue on the hard drive... never had a piece of hardware like that before tee hee.

[overclocking101]

laptop hdd's are more prone to failure then typical hdd's. if you have the budget I would get a 120gb SSD for it and you wont have the problem again. then if you need more space get a simple external drive and wahlah

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Ammonite

Well it arrived here this morning, sadly with instructions on how to return the faulty drive (I wanted to keep it olol).

Decided to use XXClone and its running its operation now... gonna take several hours. Very paranoid so I'm checking the heat of the laptop and the drive every so often. Concerned about overheating. o__O

http://i39.tinypic.com/2607f4p.jpg

The interesting news is that the new hard drive is still 500GB but instead is 7200rpm, rather than 5400rpm as the faulty one has. I guess that is good as far as system speed is concerned. Looks pretty cool too since the PCB is blue on the hard drive... never had a piece of hardware like that before tee hee.

If you want to keep the old drive just don't return it- they won't do anything with it other than dispose of it. If they ever call about it, which they won't, tell them that you are waiting on a call back from customer service on how to properly and permanently erase the data on the old drive as you won't release it to them until they can assure you that your personal files will never be retrieved from the drive... they don't have a script to answer this question

Good luck on the swap

[Ammonite]

Haha nice, will do then. Though it says "RETURN in 3 DAYS RAWR" but maybe I'll just wait it out. :I