SMART event on my dv9500t primary hard disk

Today suddenly a message balloon popped up on my dv9500t running Vista, saying that a SMART event occurred on my primary C harddisk (100 GB 7200 RPM SATA, dual drives) and that I needed to back my data up. I backed up my data on C drive, to an external harddisk immediately.

After that I restarted my machine but was greeted with the message on boot screen itself -

SMART failure predicted on Hard Disk 1
Warning: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent
Press F1 to continue


I pressed F1 but nothing happens and the computer simply hangs

I ran disk diagnostics on the disk, but it won't run simply giving me a message "Replace the hard disk drive".

The other drive ran the diagnostics smoothly without errors, it contains lots of data (including some precious photos). But I can't access the other drive as my primary C drive plunked.

What options do I have now?

Is there any way that the C drive can corrected? If not can I access the drives some other way and safeguard my data on the D drive?

In case I have to replace the drive, what drive should I buy now? I would like to buy a larger harddisk at lesser speed as a replacement, may be a SATA 250GB 5400 RPM one. Can I run the 250GB 5400 RPM harddisk as primary to a 100 GB 7200 RPM secondary drive? Will the space be sufficient? The current disks are 2.5 inch I suppose.

 

You need to replace the first hard drive. Your second hard drive is OK, you can access data when replacing the first HD and load OS. Be careful when buying a new hard drive, check your old one if it's Sata I or II. Your motherboard won't be able to detect the new hard drive if it only support Sata I (1.5 MB/s ) and you install a Sata II.

Read this from Western Digital.

Your first HD may be still readable when using on second bay as data hard drive under condition that the first bay has a hard drive with OS. HP hardcode to the BIOS that only first hard drive is bootable.

 

Can I have both 5400 and 7200 RPM disks on the same machine?

 

Yes you can as long as it's the same interface as your old drive: 1.5 or 3GB/s.

 

Can anyone tell me whether DV9500T supports Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ST9200420AS - Hard drive - 200 GB - internal - 2.5" - SATA-300 - 7200 rpm - buffer: 16 MB ?

 

This drive is SATA II, you can buy with the same price on Ebay and free shipping.

According to the manual , you can lock it to 1.5MB/s mode if your motherboard doesn't support Sata II.

 

I'm in the same boat, but I'm not convinced my hard drive is dead yet. The "predicted failure" is supposedly on the data drive, not the OS drive, so it should boot ok. Furthermore, it won't even boot to a recovery CD, it just stays on the warning screen. This would indicate that the BIOS is not trying to boot anything - maybe the problem is that it doesn't recognise the f1 key.

Not sure what to do next - did you ever fix your problem?

 

Since your laptop has dual drives, you could try the method that I tried. In my case, I did not want to use the Windows Vista version that came with my laptop.

Swap the primary and secondary hard drives with each other and install an OS (In my case, I installed WinXP after slipstreaming the drivers for the Intel chipset on the WinXP install CD) on the secondary hard drive.

The data in the secondary drive (which was the primary drive earlier) should remain accessible. For me, it worked with a dual purpose - Firstly, I was able to use the OS of my choice (WinXP) and secondly, could retain the recovery partition (which holds Win Vista and all the HP installables). It has been 2 years since then and I now wonder if I will ever end up using the Recovery Partition for its intended purpose .

Please Note: If you swap your primary hard drive with the secondary hard drive, you are off-loading the OS work from the hard drive (which is indicating a imminent failure). Try backing up as much data as you can once the laptop boots from the secondary hard drive. If you have to replace the defective drive then, get a larger capacity drive with a slower spindle speed. This measure might make your laptop cooler to run and extend its life a bit.