# HDD Verging on Failure 3 Months in Time



## Ammonite (Jan 30, 2012)

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?


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## Completely Bonkers (Jan 30, 2012)

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.


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## Norton (Jan 30, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



  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.


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## Ammonite (Jan 31, 2012)

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).


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## Norton (Jan 31, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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


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## Ammonite (Jan 31, 2012)

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. 




Completely Bonkers said:


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



O u.


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## Norton (Jan 31, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



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


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## Ammonite (Jan 31, 2012)

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.


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## Norton (Jan 31, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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
> 
> ...



Sounds like it's working out for you


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## Ammonite (Jan 31, 2012)

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


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## Norton (Jan 31, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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....


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## Widjaja (Jan 31, 2012)

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.


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## Norton (Jan 31, 2012)

Widjaja said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



+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.


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## Ammonite (Feb 1, 2012)

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.


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## Norton (Feb 1, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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.


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## Widjaja (Feb 1, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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.


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## Norton (Feb 1, 2012)

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


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## Widjaja (Feb 1, 2012)

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


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## Norton (Feb 1, 2012)

This software will clone the drive: 

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-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/showpost.php?p=2528166&postcount=25

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


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## Ammonite (Feb 1, 2012)

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.


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## Norton (Feb 1, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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


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## Ammonite (Feb 2, 2012)

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.


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## overclocking101 (Feb 2, 2012)

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


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## Norton (Feb 2, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> 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
> 
> ...



  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


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## Ammonite (Feb 2, 2012)

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


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## Ammonite (Feb 2, 2012)

Almost done the backup.

On further inspection, the letter indicates that if I don't send it back they will attempt to contact me, and if they can't after a week you get invoiced for the part. I won't be risking that.

Oh well.


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## Norton (Feb 2, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> Almost done the backup.
> 
> On further inspection, the letter indicates that if I don't send it back they will attempt to contact me, and if they can't after a week you get invoiced for the part. I won't be risking that.
> 
> Oh well.



  Maybe it's different down there Would still wipe the old drive and/or call customer service regarding security of the data on your old drive and what they recommend. CCleaner (free download) can do a multipass wipe of the old drive.... will take many hours to do.


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## Ammonite (Feb 2, 2012)

Mmhm, apparently HP is more strict with the deal. I guess it makes sense otherwise you could get people claiming free hardware from warranty.

Definitely will be erasing the data. Does CCleaner also erase free space to ensure no dirty recovery of deleted files?

Have horrible visions of some pervert looking through photos, passwords, invoices and documents. 0_0


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## Ammonite (Feb 2, 2012)

Argghhh nooo.

I opened the hard drive compartment, started unscrewing and the first screw comes out, rolls and disappears into the computer. I can hear it rattling around. Now I'm going to have to take the whole thing apart but I've never done this before with a laptop. 

Such a simple task and it always HAS to go fucking wrong. ;_;


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## Ammonite (Feb 3, 2012)

EaseUS Disk Copy worked a charm. It took just under 7 hours using the USB SATA cable but the results were perfect; all my partitions converted over, all my data perfectly moved. Its strange how everything was perfectly cloned byte for byte... feels like I'm still on my old drive.

Gonna give it an hour to make sure I don't find anything missing, then I'm going to do thorough erasing with Apple's Disk Utility.

Solved. c:


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## Norton (Feb 3, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> EaseUS Disk Copy worked a charm. It took just under 7 hours using the USB SATA cable but the results were perfect; all my partitions converted over, all my data perfectly moved. Its strange how everything was perfectly cloned byte for byte... feels like I'm still on my old drive.
> 
> Gonna give it an hour to make sure I don't find anything missing, then I'm going to do thorough erasing with Apple's Disk Utility.
> 
> Solved. c:



Great to hear 

Quick tip- be careful on the double/triple posting- all you need to do is Edit your last post if no one has responded since you're last post.

How's you're other project going?

Off to work for now.....


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## Ammonite (Feb 3, 2012)

Double posting guilty, but I'm used to other forums were you can repost after 24 hours. Guess that doesn't apply here, maybe I should read the rules.


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## Norton (Feb 3, 2012)

Ammonite said:


> Double posting guilty, but I'm used to other forums were you can repost after 24 hours. Guess that doesn't apply here, maybe I should read the rules.



Not sure on all of the rules but I've seen cautions given to other regarding double posts so I try to avoid- I know you can bump your for sale thread once per day so you may be right on reposting to another thread... 

Any noticeable difference in speed or spin up noise in going from a 5,400 to a 7,200 RPM drive?


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## Ammonite (Feb 3, 2012)

It is slightly louder than the other one, I can occasionally hear it if the fan is going low. As for speed, the startup time was a little faster at first, but I'm not sure the difference is hugely noticeable.

If I was to buy the same hard drive and could get a 5400rpm cheaper, I probably would just go with that. It may be a little faster and I'm just not noticing, but practically the difference is hard to tell.

I imagine the only way to really notice a hard drives speed increase is if the transfer rate was larger.


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## Widjaja (Feb 3, 2012)

You honestly probably won't notice much difference, if any.

I personally found the loading times, are most significant depending on other components.
e.g. Motherboard, RAM and processor.

For example, going from a Opteron 180 X2 2.4Ghz nf4 chipset 2GB Low Latency RAM to Core 2 Q6600 2.4Ghz nf 680i 4GB RAM with the same drive made a huge difference in loading times.
Took jalf as long with load times in games.


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