New WD Scorpio HD

After struggling to find out what was wrong with my Vista Ultimate x64 wireless problem after the updates I decided to re-install the whole system. I was debating to re-install everything or just buy another hard drive. I was window shopping at Best Buy yesterday and saw a 2.5" WD Scorpio 250gb HD. The price was reasonable and the capacity was terrific. I decided to replace my hard drive instead and use the old one to install XP in or make it into an external drive. For now it will be in storage until I decide.

I have a dv2000z and it was the easiest swap I've ever done. I re-installed Vista Ultimate x64 again and promised myself not to "tweak" the system too much like previous. Everything is running well and no wi-fi problems even after the updates! The drive has good review. It's super quiet that I can't even hear it spinning like the original (Fujitsu).

 

Nice! i have always liked WD hard drives. Are you going to make your old drive an external usb drive?

 

I finally found out what was causing the wi-fi not working after the updates. It was the wireless assistant program. I've installed and uninstalled this program and it's the one causing the wi-fi intermittent failure. I thought it was the wi-fi card that was going kaput. Hope HP will find a solution.

 

Be warned that in a couple weeks you may start getting SMART hard drive warnings that your drive is going to fail. It's due to the spin-up speed. A lot of people seems to be getting the warnings. While many have gotten their drive replaced because they didn't like the warnings, I have yet to hear of someone whose drive actually failed. An under-average reported spin-up speed seems to be the only problem at all, though. I'm braving it and letting it continue just to see if it actually fails. I keep constant backups though.

 

I tried to install the 32bit version of Vista, updated and the problem happened again. So I decided to do a recovery restore (XP Media edition), updated and again the problem appeared. The wi-fi would still intermittently work. So I figured out that the updates are probably causing the problem. I re-installed Vista x64 again and now will defer the updates except the critical ones. I didn't update the "optional" ones. So far so good (crossing finger).

Hopefully SP1 for Vista will fix this problem. I won't update the hardware drivers for now since it's working fine. I never got a SMART warning on the old drive.