Hard drive failure[ish]? what should i do now?

Hi Board,

My WD 320gb hard drive failed for the first time since I got it in January by registering the error 2000 0141.
I phoned dell after it wouldn't turn on again and I reseated the drive, took out battery, powered on to discharge static etc.,
he arranged for a replacement drive to be sent on monday. after that I tried again last night and now it works., typing from it now, and no noises or anything seems to be functioning fine!

So, what should i do now?
install the new drive & all my software - real pain, but knowing new drive won't fail? did the error message mean my current drive is on the way out anyway?

can i keep the new drive & the old drive?

best
keith

 

Your HDD is about to die for good. Transfer everything to the new one ASAP.

Link to explanation of error message

 

Probably not. You typically have to pay extra to keep your old HDD. If you don't return the defective drive to Dell, they can, and often will charge you for the replacement drive. Get as much data as you can off it - if you can get anything at all, then ship it back to them. If they did not supply returns labels etc then call them / use live chat to ask them about it.

 

thanks guys,

I did a scan with the western digital software & it came back clean with no errors...

i will transfer my stuff when i get the drive tomorrow, but it was only one time that it wasn't recognised so was still full of hope about my current drive

any suggestions about file transfer method?
best

 

As they are the same size and everything I'd probably say just use a free trial of Acronis True Image and create a disc image on an external drive (it might even fit onto a DVD, depends what you've installed so far). Then simply restore this onto your new drive.

 

You can use Acronis True Image WD edition. It's a free version of Acronis True Image that only works when you have a Western Digital drive installed. It's really easy to use and can clone an entire hard drive.

URL to download:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp

After you install it, tell it to clone the entire drive. You might need an external enclosure so both drives can be hooked up to your laptop at once. Otherwise, if you have an external hard drive, Acronis will create and save an image of your current drive onto a connected external drive. After you swap the internal laptop drive, you can use Acronis again to extract/restore your clone from the external.

 

sounds great! will that do the whole operating system etc?

i have 150gb used so far [mainly pictures etc., ] but a few gb of programs so hoping i don't have to reinstall everything?
beste

p.s. Hope dell send me a WD rather than their samsung Hard disk then if i can only use it with the WD.

 

hi all,

Dell sent the new hard drive just now which is good. the bad [ possibly] is that it's a samsung momentus 320gb so does that mean i can't extract/restore the free acronis image as it's not WD? if that's the case then i might phone dell and get them to send a WD drive instead.

oh, and i can't even access my hard drive today having to use my other half's inspiron to access net, so any suggestions as to what i do now to get my data off?
best
keith

 

You can still use Acronis True Image; but you'll have to use the trial version - which is valid for like 30 days. You can try to ask Dell to send a WD HDD, but they by no means have to. They have supplied a working HDD to the same spec as the non functional one. Brand does not come into play; it's not like you were given a choice when you ordered your computer.

 

thanks fragilexx,
I had thought of the WD drives as better than seagate [newer?] & more reliable [not in this case evidently] i will phone them today and see about a replacement before I start anything more - still can't access my original hard disk anyway

 

Do you have an external enclosure for 2.5" drives? Do you have an external hard drive?

 

hi,
I have still no life in my old hard drive so can't get any data off it. looked at the acronis free trial program, but said that i can't clone the current disk image unless there is another drive present in the system!?
so does this mean I need both to be wired up at the same time to my computer, for which i'll need to get sata usb cable, and tak eoff the HD caddy they sent the replacement disk with.

I need my computer up and running, but if i can't get the data off my current drive, i need to install the new one anyway and back up my most recent [though not recent enough ] files and begin again.

I don't want to send my old drive back, even if i can't access my data as there may be someone orr some program in the near future i can buy to retrieve it. what do dell charge for me to keep my current drive?

frustrated at the moment, as not really any help from Dell with regards retrieving data, just send a new drive and say sort it. which is difficult since i can't access my old drive yet. [i did manage to switch it on again and ran for a time, but came back after short break and had tried to restart.

any suggestions?
best k

 

I'm lost here, your old drive will not power up? if it will not no program will help you ever, its dead. send it back. Dell charges full retail for the replacement drive if you do not send in the other one. They will bill you for it and if you do not pay put it on your credit report as bad debt, if you used a CC then they may charge it on that.

Honestly do not fool with this too much.

 

Questions:
Is the old drive completely dead as in, it won't power up when it's inside the laptop anymore?
--or--
Is the old drive fine but you just don't have another computer to put it in to access it?

 

See questions from KingRaptor above.

If your old HDD wont power up when in your notebook, even though the new one does, then there is little you can do. There are professional data retrieval companies, but they are expensive.

If neither HDD powers up inside your machine, then you have more than just a problem with the HDDs.

If the old HDD powers up, put it back inside your notebook (taking the new one out), run Acronis, get your disk image, swap the HDDs back around again and restore the image onto your new HDD. You can use an external unit if you have one, but it's an expense that you don't need to incur to be honest. If you can't get to the point at which you can create a disk image, we need to know what point you get to and any error messages / lights / sounds that happen. Otherwise it's kind of like saying "my car doesn't work, it starts, but then it stops. It is a red car, and my yellow car works"

If you keep the HDD you will be charged for it. To get a price, have a look on the Dell website at the price of their HDDs, that is what you'll get charged most likely. If you wanted to keep it in the case of failure, you should have taken out the additional warranty which allowed this (I forget what it is called).

Sorry it's not better news, but that is just the way the cookie crumbles.

 

My old HDD does power-up & today I've had it on for most of the night. It restarted at some point, i was away making tea, so not consistent but far from dead i think.

i now have a usb/2.5 HDD cable extension that i could use.

I was wondering that If i couldn't get the data off old HDD, if it crashed while running Acronis Clone tool, what my options were for data retrieval, just seemed a bit harsh really to lose everything

my dad got me it as a present, but he didn't go for this option, also feel bad for telling him until it is fixed, he just got me the basic 1yr warranty [i might extend this sharpish

Tried that this afternoon. old HDD was running nicely, I loaded my programs up to test it and checked my important files to back up some smaller ones to fob. Ran Acronis Trial [see earlier posts about WD & Seagate free versions of Acronis incompatibility], but faced with this Msg:
'unable to continue - you only have one drive. This program is designed to work with two or more disk drives.'
what do i do now?

best
k

 

Alright, at least your drive can still power on which means there's a chance for you to get some of the data out.

Another question: Is the laptop in question the Dell Studio 17 in your signature?

If it is the Studio 17, you actually have two hard drive bays inside. Follow these general steps (I may have omitted something, but the general idea is here)
1. You can put both the bad drive in and the good drive in. (Good hard drive can go into the slot labeled "HDD 2")
2. Boot into Windows from the bad drive.
3. Start Acronis Trial Edition/Acronis WD Edition (it shouldn't give you an error message anymore since it should now see 2 hard drives instead of 1)
4. Use Acronis to clone the stuff on the bad drive to the new, good drive.
5. Take out the bad hard drive.
6. Take out the new, good drive.
7. Put the new good drive into the slot labeled "HDD 1"
8. You should be able to boot from your new drive now. (Windows won't even know it's been cloned and all your stuff should be there with it.)

Just a note for the future: When it comes to dead hard drives or dying hard drives, the chance of losing data is very big. That is why a lot of people regularly back up their laptop hard drives to an external hard drive, so in the event of a drive failure, the bulk of their data has another safe copy somewhere else.

When a drive is failing and you don't have a backup, you must have a mental preparation that things might not go well and your data might be lost forever. It's the unfortunate part about mechanical hard drives of today.

 

Why can't you then just put the stuff you need on a DVD and call it a day?

Burn a DVD and or CDR of the stuff you need, you do not need a whole image of programs like office and windows and others you have installers for, you should have disks of them and you cannot use them on an image file without potential problems anyway.

If you are trying to save installed programs, you can't really, it will not work right in many cases, it has to be the same set up and even then I have had many problems with that. You will need to reinstall for the best functionality.

Most of us will reinstall Windows once a year anyway, this helps it to be clean and run better, some people reinstall windows 3 and 4 times a year, I think that is too much.

But I think a reinstall is better in the long run.

good luck

 

Yeah, if I were in his shoes, I would just get documents, photos, music, etc. and reinstall Windows. However, a full reinstallation takes a lot of time. Sometimes for me, I cannot afford such a lengthy downtime and, thus, need a quick means of migrating the entire system over...that's when cloning comes in.

With disk cloning, you don't have to worry about Windows and programs not working because everything currently installed will be cloned along. Registry keys, temporary files, documents, programs, activations, Windows, etc. all go to the new drive at once. It's as if the drive crash never happened. It gives you minimal downtime when migrating to a new drive. Of course, the bad thing is all the junk files, system errors, (and any virus/spyware) goes along with the cloning too...that's why it's good to keep your system safe and clean.

While true that I reinstall Windows 2-3 times over a year, I only do that when I want to and have time, not when the hard drive wants me to...

 

great thanks for that KingRaptor, only thing is I can't see any way that I can use both disks in the same machine: The HDD 2 bay caddy , has a different screw configuration but more importantly a different SATA Connector/Interposer. the one i was sent only works with the HDD 1 bay and has a different SATA Connector/Interposer.

so at the moment I have no way of getting any data at all to the new drive, apart from, as DRFP suggests, I burn thing to DVD then reinstall all programs. I was just hoping for the quickest, most complete way of transferring everything as it was working and configured just perfectly [for me] before this all went down.
Best
k

 

Okay, I didn't know the HDD2 in the Studio 17 uses a different connector/caddy than HDD1. It seems like a dumb design decision on Dell's part...why not have common parts for one computer??? Anyways, I'm off topic.

Do you have an external hard drive or an external enclosure for a hard drive? If not, I believe your only course of action (without spending more money) is to burn things onto DVD-Rs like DRFP suggests.

On the other hand, if you can buy or borrow an external hard drive - USB, ESATA, firewire - you can hook that up and use it as a temporary storage location for the clone.

Either way, good luck and let us know if you have more questions.

 

I nave only got an external enclosure for my older inspiron 1300 which I'm currently using but that's IDE so no good. I don't have ESATA on this machine, even though the port looks like it is! I phoned Dell yesterday explaining my situation, and got a call back today [after 40 minutes on the phone - they did phone me back after 20 mins so props to them], and said I would be getting the HDD2 caddy within a week. in themeantime I have some backups that i can work from, but if cloning will keep all my setups, program settings, bookmarks, internet history etc., then i'm definitely going down the cloning route. will let you know if;when i get the caddy & how things go from there, thanks for the hlp guys best k

 

Oh, it's good they're sending a HDD2 caddy. Once you have the new drive in the HDD2 caddy and the caddy in the bay, you should be able to fire up that Studio and perform the clone. Good luck and keep us posted if you run into more problems.

 

thanks KingRaptor, once i get it i will follow your clone instructions above:yes:

i was given some info by a dell technical manager yesterday to change the interconnector from the one they sent to replace the existing one on HDD1 which i have just done. I had tried to start-up my Studio with no luck prior to this. After I changed the interconnect my laptop booted up perfectly as per before which is encouraging, but I switched it off pretty quickly as i don't want to chance my luck too much - only when i've fully cloned the damn thing.
this might be a good work round though, for those who think its a definite HD fail, as the technical manager said that these interconnects sometimes fail and would be worth a shot while waiting for the caddy.

 

Update: Mo Problems...!

I received the 320 GB Seagate HD and installed it into the HDD2 bay.
I cloned the my WD 320 GB HD drive to the Seagate one [thanks KingRaptor for suggestions]

I then unplugged, but left in place in my laptop, my original [faulty] HDD & booted up the laptop - all fine!

1 week later on start-up, a msg appeared saying "HDD cannot be found, please reseat drive" for under a second before booting up as normal, this happens now every time I start up. There is only 1 HDD connected [the new one] so don't quite understand how this msg appears.

CLicking:
I have twice had loud clicking coming from my new active HDD!
This I have recorded on video, with sound, [*any suggestions as to how I should post this to the forum are welcome* maybe put it on my youtube account].
this clicking culminates in my computer freezing! so now i'm left with 2 possibly soon-to-fail-disks [that is as i kept the previous one so far]. I take it hard drive clicking is a bad bad thing, something I can't really be misinterpreting?

any suggestions? I should get back to Dell & say you've sent me a faulty replacement disc?

 

Harddrives aren't supposed to click. Ever. Tell them you're having the same issue. Maybe request a different brand?

 

I tried that last time, will persevere though! I take it that this new HDD will fail pretty soonish then? How very annoying after transferring all my data across etc., but at least I didn't lose any data - yet...

hoping now they'll send me another new HDD without much fuss. Is there a program that tests the stability of HDDs?

thanks

 

run dell diagnostic software. its under boot options when you start up. its pretty good at scanning the entire system, or you can specify a component to scan for issues.

i find it very accurate/effective

 

I use a program called HDTune to test the speed of HDD, but you can also test drives with it. I think it just looks for bad sectors though. I don't know if it would turn up any physical defects.

 

thanks will try and run those. no further noises from the HD since, but those 2 times were pretty bad. will give an update soon.

 

Update -

I have still had some trouble with my replacement [seagate] harddrive: freezing & making noise. My charger gave me error messages [i have the old one with no light indicator at the end of the lead.] long story short: dell recommended engineer comes out on monday to replace charger, HDD 2 [seagate one - another cloning drama to come for me!] & motherboard!

*customer advisor mentioned that I have been having lots of problems and they might want to bring it in - sounds like they might want to replace the system at some point or something? I have seen the newer studios and don't like them as much as my 1735: the keyboard has those flat keys that i find annoying & i like my crazy media-panel also i wouldn't change my WUXGA screen as i love it - only ones that seem to have them are the m17x & precision 6400 (don't think i will be getting them any time soon...)