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    Harddisk Failure and Strong Magnets

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by huangker, Oct 23, 2007.

  1. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Hi All,

    The hd on my new thinkpad failed recently. It didnt die outright. It would boot but hang right after the windows vista black book screen with the green bar. The service partition on the hd refused to reimage the drive. Recovery cds didnt help either. Lenovo didn't have a hard drive and is taking two weeks to deliver the new one. When the new one is delivered, they will want the old one back. I just bought a new hard drive in the meantime and put it in my laptop and it re-imaged fine.

    I couldn't figured out what could have caused and thought it might just have been a manufacturing fault. However I visited a consumer electronics store today and remembered that two weeks before, I had attempted to turn on my computer over the machine that demagnetizes the anti shopping devices. I wanted to test if an SD card would be able to run readyboost. The computer restarted itself a couple of times before the store assistant realized that the laptop was on the magnet and told me to get off it.

    Did this cause my hard drive to fail? If so, can this be detected by lenovo's contracted repairers? They will undoubtedly want to check the hd and will charge me for both the hd and a $135 quote fee if they realize that it was damage not covered under warranty.

    Thanks in advance.

    Cheers
    Jeremy
     
    huangker, Oct 23, 2007
    #1
  2. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    I doubt that caused the problem. The harddrive works by having a pretty powerful magnet extremely close to the platter, so it's used to it, so to speak. For a magnet *outside* computer to affect the harddrive, it'd have to be *very* powerful.

    Of course, that doesn't mean that it can't happen. Just that it's very unlikely.
     
    Jalf, Oct 23, 2007
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  3. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Well the other thing I've done to the thinkpad is spilling water over it and it died for a week (yes I'm very bad to my poor thinkpad) but I don't think that would be it either right?
     
    huangker, Oct 23, 2007
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  4. Zero

    Zero The Random Guy

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    Its unlikely. The hard disk is for the most part completetly sealed, except for a hole or two, which allow the air pressure to equalise. Its likely that you just recieved a bad hard disk from the beginning. Also, I doubt Lenovo will bother checking the hard disk for user damage, or damage which is not covered in the warranty. They may just visually inspect it, but I don't think they would invest too much time in trying to diagnose the problem with the non-functioning disk.
     
    Zero, Oct 23, 2007
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  5. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    great that makes me feel much better about it! thanks guys! cheers
     
    huangker, Oct 23, 2007
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