Hard Drive Failing?

[RH77]

I never had this message before, but the "Intel Matrix Storage Console" reported a SMART event with the HDD and reports that it could "fail at any moment".

This is on a very recently refurbed Dell XPS M1530/T7500/Vista Laptop with a Western Digital WD2500BEVS-75UST0.

Should I expect impeding doom or could it be a fluke? The system has been sluggish and crashed a few times this week. Otherwise, it's business as usual.

The stinky part -- I'm not home to backup any recent stuff if it does grenade.

I'll open yet another ticket with Dell. This is a replacement to a new Inspiron that failed in less than a year (all replacement parts would not allow the AC adapter to be recognized and wouldn't charge the batt or run both cores). I'm really starting to question my choice of brand.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

RH77

[cfg83]

RH77 -

Ahhhhhh, Western Digital, the kiss of death. We only buy Maxtors and Seagates where I work. For 2.5" laptops, I have only grown to trust Fujitsu. No smart reason, but it's what we use in some of our products.

I would burn some ca$h on a flash disk that will save your data, or burn to DVD ASAP.

If you are having drive problems, I would look into a "hardened" hard drive like this :

MHW2120BK SATA : FUJITSU United States

First Fujitsu 7,200 RPM Extended Duty hard disk drives with Rotational Vibration (RV) compensation technology.

Extended duty hard disk drives feature 24/7 operation and storage capacities up to 120GB(1)
Featuring Rotational Vibration (RV) compensation technology for reliable operation in multi-drive systems and servers
7,200 RPM spindle speed and 3.0 Gb/sec SATA interface for outstanding performance
Low power consumption and cool operation for data center environments
Ideal for server, blade server, nearline storage and industrial PC/robot applications

Fujitsu MHW2120BK - 120GB MOBILE SATA 7200 RPM 8MB - $200

This doesn't mean my selections are the best, it's just my "computer voodoo" (if something works, keep doing it).

CarloSW2

[Red]

Its on its way out, a SMART failure usually means some physical damage to the disk. I'd burn your stuff to a disk and run it till it goes

[RH77]

Thanks for the advice...

After trying to explain the problem to tech support (twice) it turns out that it's a bad sector, so I'm getting a new one. I just have to copy everything (again, argh). I just hope it holds out until I get home tomorrow night. I've made it to 450 hours this time around on Flight-Sim!!! If I lose that...

WD's used to be the drive of choice until the "Caviar" days. I have many WD desktop drives, in a stack in the basement -- waiting for teardown to use the magnets (from back in my PC repair business days) -- back when 1GB was HUGE! I never have had a problem with a laptop drives until now, which threw me for a loop all of the sudden.

Carlos -- I would totally get the Fujitsu if I could, but whatever they send is what I get under warranty. It's likely going to be a 120GB/5400RPM They tease me with a nice replacement system and a 250GB HDD, it fails, and they go back to the original purchase for specs and cut 100 GB. And so it goes.

Essentially, is there a laptop brand that can handle "the road"? I travel for work, and my laptop goes where I go -- whether that's at 37,000 ft. or in a rental car somewhere in Iowa. I'm not rough with them by any means, so it's frustrating. I went through a few HPs that did better, but Fujitsu systems seem to superior overall from work experience.

Live from Wichita, Kansas -- RH77, EcoModder News.

[cfg83]

RH77 -

Originally Posted by RH77

...

Carlos -- I would totally get the Fujitsu if I could, but whatever they send is what I get under warranty. It's likely going to be a 120GB/5400RPM They tease me with a nice replacement system and a 250GB HDD, it fails, and they go back to the original purchase for specs and cut 100 GB. And so it goes.

Essentially, is there a laptop brand that can handle "the road"? I travel for work, and my laptop goes where I go -- whether that's at 37,000 ft. or in a rental car somewhere in Iowa. I'm not rough with them by any means, so it's frustrating. I went through a few HPs that did better, but Fujitsu systems seem to superior overall from work experience.

Live from Wichita, Kansas -- RH77, EcoModder News.

If I were you, assuming they send another WD and your boss would bankroll a tougher drive, I would diskcopy the contents of the new disk onto a Fujitsu Extended Duty and re-use the WD as an external USB "backup disk". This would lower it's usage and reduce it's likelihood of leaving you in the lurch.

Even though hard disks can "take anything" these days, I treat them as if they are still 20 year old technology. I always try to keep the hard disk platter oriented in the horizontal plane. If I carry the laptop while it's running, I walk with it as if it is a bowl of soup. More computer voodoo, I know, but I have been lucky overall (knock on virtual wood). The hard disk is more important than the computer. But, my experience is not yours because I don't use it "on the road". It basically goes from safe work environment to safe home environment to safe coffee shop.

The weak link in portables is still the hard disk. They are coming out with solid state (flash) hard disks. But the capacities are small and they cost an arm, a leg, and an ear.

CarloSW2

[Coyote X]

walmart has 4gb flash drives for 20 bucks if you feel like going and finding one.

At school we have had to replace pretty much every dell laptop at least once. They all have lots of random failures. I just took mine back to computer services for a bad solder joint on the motherboard. I pretty much quit saving anything at all on it so when it dies again I won't have to deal with backups.

Dell used to be pretty solid but I guess it is their turn for a run of bad systems. I have been using my Asus EEE 901 while my work laptop is dead and I am not even sure if I am going to use it when I get it back.

We have a few other random brands and they all have been better than the dells for the last year or two. I would say sell it once your warranty runs out

[RH77]

Originally Posted by cfg83

If I were you, assuming they send another WD and your boss would bankroll a tougher drive, I would diskcopy the contents of the new disk onto a Fujitsu Extended Duty and re-use the WD as an external USB "backup disk". This would lower it's usage and reduce it's likelihood of leaving you in the lurch.

Even though hard disks can "take anything" these days, I treat them as if they are still 20 year old technology. I always try to keep the hard disk platter oriented in the horizontal plane. If I carry the laptop while it's running, I walk with it as if it is a bowl of soup. More computer voodoo, I know, but I have been lucky overall (knock on virtual wood). The hard disk is more important than the computer. But, my experience is not yours because I don't use it "on the road". It basically goes from safe work environment to safe home environment to safe coffee shop.

The weak link in portables is still the hard disk. They are coming out with solid state (flash) hard disks. But the capacities are small and they cost an arm, a leg, and an ear.

CarloSW2

I'll have to admit, I qualify for nerd status -- I carry 2 laptops when I travel.

My work laptop is so locked-down, I can't even add a printer. Very frustrating.

So then, I carry the second (personally owned) machine as a way to game, access my radio freqs for storm spotting/reporting, and to act as an MP3 player. I'm still too cheap to buy an iPOD, so I run the laptop to play music, using an inverter and (if the rental is equipped) an AUX cable to the stereo. The XPS came with a remote (docked in the PCMCIA slot when unused) so I can skip songs and adjust volume without taking the eyes off of the road or SG

So then, the laptop is subject to vertical stresses with the up/down motion of road bumps and undulations -- not to mention aircraft turbulence. I hear that this is hard on HDDs. I'm not sure what airport X-ray devices have on computers these days either.

The thing is, 7 years of this kind of use has never failed a laptop drive. The life of this refurb model is very questionable, however. There was even gunk on the keyboard when they shipped it to me (yuck). At least it's an upgrade.

My work machine is an HP NC6400. So far, very durable over 2-3 years and rarely crashes. Before that, we had terrible IBMs. These days, If something goes wrong, IT takes care of it quickly. It is very integral to job function and stays at 100%. They even issued us Blackberry's to check e-mail in real-time (and check EM while in WIFI darkness )

Long story short, the personal machine's data is somewhat expendable, but is personal. I have a large Seagate in a backup server at home that saves data regularly. It would still stink to lose the last 2-weeks of collected FE data, etc. Photos are backed-up to a DVD and placed in a fire-proof safe, so that's all good. In the electronic age, if it isn't printed, it has to be backed up in duplicate.

So then, that's my computing life in 100 words or less.

Coyote-X: I guess whenever they send me a new system, the warranty is extended from date of possession. The flash drive backup is looking more and more like a viable, portable solution (and getting cheaper by the day).

The odd thing, my last POS HP is still going as the "Living Room DVD Player" and Gene Folding (100% CPU Load) unit. It's on it's 4th board since the AC connector created too much stress and would bust the connector repeatedly. Since it just sits, it keeps going. It was bought during my days as an independent contractor (from Best Buy). They just sent me an offer to extend the warranty. It's still cheaper than a DVD player, so I might go for it.

RH77

[BlackDeuceCoupe]

Originally Posted by RH77

I'm really starting to question my choice of brand.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

All laptops are made by, like, 7 or 8 companies in China. The badge that you're lappy wears - Dell in this case - doesn't mean jack! It's ALL Chinese junk...

For instance, I'm running a Toshiba A215-4807, 64-bit with 4 GB RAM - which is basically a rebadged Compal JAW91 with Toshiba's name on it - Vista HP SP1, the latest BIOS & driver updates, yada, yada, yada. It's been working fine for a year and a half, so I'll ride this horse until it drops!

If I was you, I'd give that Dell lappy away and build my own, or at least do some research and find out who the REAL manufacturer is... and go from there.

Put another way, it sounds like you got a lemon on your hands. If it was me, I'd cut n' run...

[SuperTrooper]

Dell makes fine desktops and servers, but they just can't get the hang of making a quality laptop. Cheap components don't help.

We have 3 Dell desktops at home, but when it came time to arm my oldest daughter for college 3 years ago we went with Lenovo (formerly IBM). Yes, it's made in China, but my daughter has been unable to kill it. She admits to dropping it several times (twice while running) and it keeps humming along. Still has the original battery. Quality components in a solid build. When daughter #2 goes off to college next fall she will have one too.

[MechEngVT]

RH77,

What model Inspiron did you have to replace? I have a nearly 5 year-old Inspiron 5150 and that whole model design is FUBAR from start to finish. I bought the 4 year warranty (thank goodness) and have had literally everything except the hard drive replaced in it. Went through 7 motherboards and 4 cooling/CPU units just within the warranty period. There have been repeated problems with the charge receptacle failing where the box containing the port would either separate from the motherboard due to solder failure (thanks, RoHS...gimme my damn leaded solder that WORKS!) or in its current death state the motherboard itself fractured along the layers and causes lifting separation of the electrical circuit at the charge box. It'll work if you get it just so...but gets so dang hot you can't charge for long.

I'm done with Dell, their service was great when I first got the machine in early 2004 but went to hell in a handbasket over the years, to the point that the first service call after I moved from GA to VA and updated my address the flippin tech lost the address change and DHL sent it back to GA where it was "lost" for 3 months. I managed to get a hold of the guy that bought my house in GA (who had the laptop) and through DHL got Dell to re-ship it...I thought I was gonna have to drive 16 hours round trip to go pick the thing up. Only having DHL beat up on Dell got them to do a dang thing about it.

I do agree with BlackDeuceCoupe that who makes the laptop doesn't affect the quality. I'm sure they can all make design f-ups like the Inspiron 5150. Only Dell can fail to service their crap in spectacular fashion.