Bad luck with 160GB laptop hard drives
Paul
120GB SATA drive with a Samsung HM160JI drive. About 5 months later,
windows booted with a "lost user profile" error. I ran SpinRite on the
Samsung drive, and SpinRate came up with a big red error message saying it
would not even attempt to analyze the disk. Not good. Anyhow, I managed
to mount the drive on another computer and do a Ghost drive copy to a new
drive, a Seagate Momentus 160GB ST9160821AS. After running chkdsk on the
new drive and doing an XP repair reinstall, everything was fine again.
I ran SpinRite on the new Seagate 160GB drive for the heck of it, and it
popped up a warning about going over the manufacturer's recommended maximum
temperature. It was only running about 1 degree F higher than spec, so I
didn't worry too much.
Now after about a month with the Seagate Momentus 160GB, the machine boots
with a "c:\windows\font folder is corrupt" error. Running chkdsk gets stuck
at about 34%. So I pull the drive and mount it in my Vista desktop, and run
chkdsk from there. After a couple hours, it finds and fixes a bunch of
errors. I put the drive back into the Inspiron and everything is peachy
again.
I've now ordered a Western Digital 160GB WD1600BEVS drive so I have yet
another drive manufacturer on hand in case the Seagate gives up the ghost.
So I wonder - is the Inspiron 6400 design cooking these drives, or is this
new 160GB "perpendicular recording" technology just not ready for primetime?
-- Paul
William R. Walsh
> I ran SpinRite on the Samsung drive, and SpinRate came up with a big
> red error message saying it would not even attempt to analyze the disk.
> Not good.
Was the listed capacity correct? Spinrite is very picky about that, and will
complain loudly if the drive's layout doesn't match what its capacity is
listed as.
> So I wonder - is the Inspiron 6400 design cooking these drives,
I tend to think that the problem is with the computer or its design. I've
found Seagate's drives to be pretty reliable. The same is true of the
Samsung drives, which I've also been pretty happy with.
It sounds like a lot of the problems you're experiencing are damage to the
file system. Have you tried turning *off* the "enable write caching"
checkbox from your hard drive's property page in Device Manager?
The Fujitsu MHT2060AH in my Latitude D800 will also trip Spinrite's
temperature alert, and if allowed to continue, may go as much as ten to
fifteen degrees higher. It's been running fine since March of 2005.
William
S.Lewis
"Paul" <pa...@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:136ge2r...@news.supernews.com...
Nice work, Paul.
I know of (4) of these E1505/6400 systems I've personally placed with
people. The oldest of those maybe out in the field perhaps 2 years?
Anyway, one (less than a year old) was brought to me just last week and in
the course of running diags on the system, the hard disk reported a few bad
blocks.
Looking at the support site, it indicates for the hard disk:
KH474 HARD DRIVE, 120G, Serial ATA, 9.5, 5.4, W060
I'm not sure of the brand of that disk, but it's the first of the four to
have any issue(s) at all.
Stew
Paul
in message news:r4%9i.91724$n_.24614@attbi_s21...
> Hi!
>
>> I ran SpinRite on the Samsung drive, and SpinRate came up with a big
>> red error message saying it would not even attempt to analyze the disk.
>> Not good.
>
> Was the listed capacity correct? Spinrite is very picky about that, and
> will
> complain loudly if the drive's layout doesn't match what its capacity is
> listed as.
I don't recall what SpinRite said about the capacity on the Samsung 160GB
drive, but SR had no problem with the layout/capacity of the Seagate 160GB.
>> So I wonder - is the Inspiron 6400 design cooking these drives,
>
> I tend to think that the problem is with the computer or its design. I've
> found Seagate's drives to be pretty reliable. The same is true of the
> Samsung drives, which I've also been pretty happy with.
I also agree the Seagate Momentus 120GB and under are quite reliable.
However the 160GB drives from all manufacturers are a totally new breed with
"perpendicular recording technology".
Based on the reviews of the Seagate drive at newegg.com, I'm inclined to
move my data off it and onto the Western Digital, before it's too late.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148073
> It sounds like a lot of the problems you're experiencing are damage to the
> file system. Have you tried turning *off* the "enable write caching"
> checkbox from your hard drive's property page in Device Manager?
Sure, it is damage to the file system. The question is whether the drive is
causing that, or it's just standard windows XP OS nonsense. I might try
turning off write caching but I'm afraid to see performance plummet.
> The Fujitsu MHT2060AH in my Latitude D800 will also trip Spinrite's
> temperature alert, and if allowed to continue, may go as much as ten to
> fifteen degrees higher. It's been running fine since March of 2005.
Your Fujitsu is a 60GB drive, tried and true technology. I wouldn't expect
problems with any 2.5" drive 120GB or less. However these 160GB 2.5"
drives seem to be a different animal. Maybe they're more sensitive to
temperature or something.
-- Paul
Ben Myers
6400? I heartily recommend i8kfanui, developed originally for the hot-running
Inspiron 8100.
http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html
Depending on the sensors in the notebook, you can see temperatures of the CPU,
GPU, memory, and hard drive in real time under Windows. The program also
allows you to set temperatures at which fans kick in, and monitors fan RPM with
the right sensors inside. Awfully good stuff in this age of notebook computer
hardware designs that push the envelope.
Nex, also consider downloading and using the drive manufacturers' diagnostic
utility software. Samsung, WD and Seagate all have the software free for the
downloading. Of the drive manufacturers still around, only Toshiba does not
have diagnostic software, a checklist item for me when buying new drives.
Semi-finally, NEVER EVER use Scandisk to analyze hard drive problems. Bill
Gates (actually Steve Ballmer is more likely) may want to bust my kneecaps for
saying so. The layers upon layers upon layers of Windows software obfuscate a
lot of the important information about hard drive health.
Finally, get yourself a copy of MHDD, which reads out the table of information
kept by the drive's controller, including number of bad blocks re-allocated.
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
IMHO, the drive manufacturers have pushed the envelope too far, but time will
tell... Ben Myers
S.Lewis
"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:37pi63916a5qmvar3...@4ax.com...
> First, are you using any software to monitor temperatures inside the
> Inspiron
> 6400? I heartily recommend i8kfanui, developed originally for the
> hot-running
> Inspiron 8100.
>
> http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html
>
<snip>
BTW, HDTune also monitors drive temps. While the overall drive analysis is
probably not as detailed as some other utilities, the program is small and
uncomplicated:
http://www.hdtune.com/download.html
Stew
Paul
> Bill
> Gates (actually Steve Ballmer is more likely) may want to bust my kneecaps
> for
> saying so. The layers upon layers upon layers of Windows software
> obfuscate a
> lot of the important information about hard drive health.
Do you mean CHKDSK ? Unfortunately almost every third party hard drive
maintenance app seems to default to dumb old CHKDSK as their tool. Outside
of SpinRite, I haven't found another utility that truly checks the disk in a
different way than Microsoft's CHKDSK. There was Norton Disk Doctor, but
I stopped using that years ago as it seemed to be far more dangerous than
helpful, especially in the early NTFS days.
-- Paul
Ben Myers
ude, plus MHDD to see inside the drive's internal table that keeps track of
error counts. Spinrite is OK. Steve Gibson knows his stuff... Ben Myers