HDD Failure?

Hello,

I've got a hard drive problem (TOSHIBA 3252GSX 320GB) in my XPS M1530. I've went trought many threads on this forum, but I couldn't find any solution. I do not know if the problem I have is serious and I'll have to send it back do DELL or no. That's why I tried to fix it first.

Basically everything starts tree days after recieving my XPS from DELL. I've been working on my laptop, browsing the internet and so on, when finally my hard drive starts to make funny noises, more like: krr-krr-krr-krrr . I have restarted it and after that my OS did not want to load any more. I've tried to fix it with OS cd in but non of those options were working.

I've format everything and install the OS one more time (as well as the DELL Media Centre).... it was ok. For a while... later on in two weeks the problem occurs again. The funniest thing is that when my hard drive starts to make those funny noises it's unable to do anything on it. All applications stops working, everything is not responding and the only thing to do is to reset it.

I have two partitions C:\ and D:\

In my opinion, the important thing to say is that only when I'm working on my partition D:\ the hard drive is going mad. I've tried to fix it with chkdsk but by the time I'll try to check my partition and I will turn on option to 'scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' it stops as well.... I've leave it for several hours - when I came back it does maybe 25% and - of course - I had to reset my XPS.

For Example media which has been download on my D:\ drive on the begining works fine: I can do everything and nothin' will happen, but in around 70% of capacity all media stops working at all.

I've format D:\ partition one more time (I've changed allocation of the files to default). Miracle - it was working again perfect!

Two months passed and suddenly guess what - it happens again. Even defragmentation of the D:\ partition freezes after some time. None of the Windows programs couldn't help.

I've installed one HDD diagnostic program to check if it show me any errors on my hard drive... it reached 70% of the capacity - the transfer rate falls down from over 60Mb/s to 0.06Mb/s and later on to 0.00Mb/s. Laptop obviously 'dieds' and I had to reset it.

Now, everytime when I try to download sth the problem occurs and just makes working on my XPS another mission impossible.

Does anyone has an idea what might be wrong? I hope I've explained the problem accurately. Is it able to fix it without sending it back to DELL, cause I'm not fancy of losing all my data.

Thanks for any help,
Kamil.

 

Welcome to the forums Kamil

It's very easy to replace the hard drive yourself, but that's what it's going to require, because those noises you're hearing, almost certainly indicate your hard drive is on its last legs

You should've done it as soon as you started having these problems, but I'd suggest you backup any/all important data ASAP now, before the hard drive fails completely!

Then you need to contact Dell tech support, and explain the problem to them.
As I've said... replacing a hard drive is very quick and easy for the end-user/customer to do themselves, so it's unlikely Dell will be willing to send out a technician to do it for you?
They'll most likely just send you a replacement drive, and expect you to do it yourself?
But if you're not happy about that, you need to let them know.


All that assumes your laptop is still under warranty of course?

 

It won't be naturally a problem for me to repleace it

Of course it's under warranty

Thank You for Your help, I'll contact DELL tech support asap!

Cheers mate!

 

Dell would send you a HDD to replace yours... if you feel comfortable doing the swap... and have the recovery disks....

if you feel better leaving the repair to them,,, then by all means do so,,,

but techincally a HDD is a Customer Replaceable Part.....

later,
bigO