Defrag killed my hard drive!

Hi all

Yes I know it seems stupid but I kid you not! I defragged my dv6519tx (while running a program over the top), no problems. I closed the "defrag complete" message and almost immediately my computer blue screened. I tried chkdsk but it stalled at 15% for an hour so I aborted and tried to reinstall windows. Nothing but a quick format worked and each time the setup copy finished and the computer rebooted the setup reported itself to be corrupt. According to the BIOS diagnostic I need a new hard drive, but is there anything else I can do? My desktop is already dead (I seem to have all the luck with technology) and I really need this computer, I can't wait for warranty support to sit on their asses for months before sending a new hard drive. Data is expendable, I just need to be able to reinstall windows.

Help Please!

Grand Admiral

 

Let go, Admiral. The HD is gone. There's nothing you can do but buy a new one. I promise you that it'll be just as good as your dead one.

 

You're sure? I want to know how the hell defrag did this! Anything up to as serious as complete MBR and partition corruption I could understand but how the hell did I destroy my hard drive?!

Grand Admiral

 

Sorry to hear, and no I am not shocked that it happened after defragging. It likely would of happened within the next few weeks if you hadn't defragged so just accelerated the inevitable. High demand functions stress components, those with weaknesses fail. I wish I could help but what you described sounds like dead HDD to me and I am no HDD expert. Hope someone else can.

 

Hmm... I that case its probably a good thing. I have a project coming up which i would prefer not to embarrass myself over by having my computer randomly die. One more question, is there any chance of installing Windows XP to my portable hard disk and using it to drive my laptop? XP setup says no, but I prefer to get a human opinion.

Grand Admiral

 

You can try jumpstarting the drive
It sounds like your harddrive simply failed. It may be a defective drive, or it may have been the result of an accumulation of drops, heads scratching the disc, etc. It just so happened that it occured after a disk defragment. I would pick up a new harddrive for cheap, just to get the machine back up and running again. You can get a new sata mobile harddrive for about $70.

If you have a desktop around, open the side panel, and connect the drive with a sata power connector and sata cable to the motherboard. You may be able to successfullt low level format the drive with the other computer.
After the format, you can try reinstalling the operating system again.

K-TRON

 

I can't touch it, its still under warranty. Know of any software I can use to try it from a CD?

Grand Admiral

 

Ty for giving a good deal of info, it is refreshing and helps a lot.

Yep, you need to buy a new HDD. just confirming that conclusion here.

 

No problem, I'm the go to guy among my friends on technical crises and I know how annoying it is to have no information whatsoever.

Thanks for your help guys, reputation for everyone.

Grand Admiral

 

I don't think K-T's suggestions affect warranty but you did say desktop is down. I am going to guess your external is not able to disassemble or is 3.5? If it is 2.5 and can take apart, install it in notebook. This will not affect your warranty. If can't be done maybe as K-T said buy a new one (that will work well as external once warranty replacement arrives) and get by for a while?

 

what brand drive was it?

i think ill put off defragging for a while...

 

and whilst waiting for replacement, you can try to recover the data.

Lucky once, i managed to get almost all of my data back off Hitachi Travelstar with failed controller. Using usb caddy and EasyRecovery Pro.

 

No flip! That is not the moral of the story. It was going to fail anyway, yea the defragg caused the when but make no mistake it was going to fail shortly.

Edit: NJoy that sounds like a plan if he gets a HDD in the computer. Then yes he has options like you said.

 

Ill stop multi-tasking whilst defragging then.. i usually have alot open when defragging

 

If your hard drive is gonna die, it'll die. But I would not recommend running defrag with something as intensive as a game! It was a stupid thing to do. Have no idea as to the brand, whatever the 160GB hard drive in a dv6519tx is. And I can't use the hard disk in the external case unfortunately, it was my first thought but its a parallel. Laptop is SATA.

Grand Admiral

 

I'm not really fussed about the information. I only used it for work mainly, so most of the stuff is expendable (Movies, downloads, games) or backed up in another location (I'm a web designer so I just downloaded the server copies of everything). The really important stuff is on my desktop (If whoever is responsible for the crap service doesn't get off their butt soon i'm going to scream down the phone at anyone between now and when the part arrives). Its just the inconvenience, now I have no readily accessible computer capable of running the stuff I need.

Grand Admiral

 

defective HDD..
must be.....

 

It was just a conicidence that the harddrive died after a defragment.
There is no correlation between the drive failing and disk defragmenting. If anything, defragmenting is good for the harddrive.

For a replacement drive, I would go with Hitachi, they make the best harddrives in my opinion. I would stay away from Toshiba and fujitsu, they usually have much cheaper drives, and that cheap price comes with the cost of lack of technology, and a not so robust manufacturing process. AKA, they die much faster than Hitachi, wd, and seagate drives.
This is why most servers use Seagate Cheetah, and Hitachi Ultrastar harddrives.

Just for confirmation, removing the harddrive does not void the warranty.
It only voids the warranty, on ultra mobile pc's, where you have to take the whole system apart to get to the harddrive.

K-TRON

 

Let me make clear, just using this quote as it says much. Seems to be much confusion among the others. "I will no longer defragment and multi task"? Well I would not do that as defragg cannot move things that are in use. So I keep running apps to a minimum. There is a correlation between this hard drive failure and defrag. But it really is irrelevant as the failure would of happened in very short course regardless. So it is related but only as to when it happened. A HDD in good shape can handle multi tasking and defragg. Not an issue. If it was an issue the HDD would likely fail in a relatively short time frame anyway. So it is not an issue! This is important for all of you to understand. Don't be afraid to use your HDD as it is meant to be used. What K-T said about defragg being good, is correct. A defraggmented drive will do less work over it's lifetime than a fragmented drive will. And that can only help longevity. So defragging caused this to happen at the moment it happened but all of you should defrag your drives as it is a good idea and likely will extend the life of your drive!

 

Just curious... what Defragging software did you use? I know there are some companies like Diskeeper that supposedly improve the performance of your hard drive by running all the time in the background and performing "real time defragging"... I'm not sure I trust these so much. I used a demo of Diskeeper once and it made my hard drive make constant beeping, squeeking, and squeely noises. Anyway... Sorry to hear about this bro... happens to the best of us I suppose.

 

Sorry for the late response - but if you haven't already you should try one or more of these tools:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

They work on all drives.

 

Nice but does that and all those require a HDD that works?

 

It was just regular Windows XP defrag. Laptop now booked in for courier pickup. Hopefully it'll progress faster than my desktop, been on the phone all morning trying to find out whos holding up production.

Grand Admiral

 

My guess is that defragmenting didn't "kill" your drive- I bet it was already damaged/failing in the first place. I suspect that, during the defrag, vital windows files were moved to damaged sector(s) of your hard drive. That would explain why everything seemed ok before the defrag and why your windows install is now corrupt.

Sorry to hear about your luck with computers. I've been there before too. The Uniwill in my sig went to Taiwan 5 times in one year for the same problem. Each trip lasted around 2 months, so I was pretty much without a computer for a full year. Of course, as soon as I bought a replacement laptop, Uniwill finally fixed the issue and the machine has been working fine since.

At least you didn't lose any important data. Hopefully you'll have a computer to work with soon.

 

Similar thing happened to me... twice.

Although it didn't kill my harddrives (2 out of 5 hdd's on my desktop), it was pretty close and I ended up reloading the whole system.

Haven't done any defragging ever since.

 

I defragged my drive 3 x today, and I do about 3 x everyday. Once in thr morning, noon and night. I like to keep my drives running at peak efficiency.
Those who choose to not defrag their drives are foolish. Defragmenting puts some strain on the harddrive, but in perspective, it is putting less strain on the drive over the course of a day.

K-TRON

 

3x a day?! thats abit overkill. Is there alot of files getting moved around and created every hour or something?

I mostly defrag my external HD, thats where most of the stuff i access is. Rougly once a week or so.

I havent defragged since i dual booted to linux. I wonder if the ext3 format is gonna affect the defrag?

 

Say whatever you want, I value the availability of my HDDs much more than their performances. I'd rather have a slow HDD than having an HDD that doesn't work at all.

Experience has taught me a lesson and I choose to learn from it this time.

 

Defragmenting is not the problem, its the physical drive itself. You may have bought slightly defective drives, which is why they burned out on you.
I keep my computers and harddrives running in top shape all of the time, and I have never had any problems with any of my drives, all of them work and last for long durations of time. I have not replaced a drive less than 5 years old.

Yes, I defrag 3x a day, well actually its more than that, its usally about 3-6 times a day depending on how bored I am.

K-TRON

 

I used to be like K-T. Not any more, no reason. If you defrag as much as he does nothing really happens as the HDD is barely defragmented. So it hurts nothing and therefor also stresses nothing. Just wanted to throw that in there. On my current notebook. About 1 1/2 years old I have defragged maybe twice. If I did it now, sure it would take a while. And stress it a little bit.

 

since we are on the topic on defrag, is it okay to jus use the windows defrag programme? wats the significance of using other programes?

 

My Inspiron 9100 has been using the same 40GB Fujitsu drive for 5yrs since it was bought. Nothing has happened to it, though it rarely leaves the desk.

I use Auslogics Disk defrag and jkdefrag, both of which are free, and faster then the built in Windows defrager.

 

K-tron mean the MTBF (mean time before failure) rates are lower on those drives and they have higher annual fail rates. It doenst mean they are all gonna fail within 3 years but chances are higher

 

thanks for the info. will give them a try.

 

Finally, good news!

After being jerked around for almost a month about my desktop I was completely blown away when, less than 24hrs after reporting my hard disk failure to HP, a courier didn't show up. Instead I got a tech from the next town at my door with a brand new hard drive which HP had shipped in overnight. He had my old hard drive swapped out and the new one installed and tested before I got home for lunch. Now thats what I call service!

Just on the subject, I defrag regularly but randomly (if i'm watching a movie or something on my computer I run defrag in the background).

Grand Admiral

 

So the repair dude broke into your house and installed the hard drive before you got home?

 

thats HP service for ya.. lol

 

LOL, no there were people at home who let him in. Very impressed with the service. Radio Rentals on the other hand...

Grand Admiral