nw8240 - eating hard drives

I am now on my third hard drive since purchasing this notebook last November. The first drive literally died out completely in the middle of a windows session with no warning at all. The second drive died out this past weekend and fortunately it showed signs of croaking so I was able to make a backup image and get a new drive in there without any problem.

Both drives that have died happen to be seagates but the chances of losing these two drives to natural causes in such a short time is very clim as I am quite careful with the notebook.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? It could be a heat issue as there is more heat produced than i'd like to see but it could also be a controller issue taking out the drives...

Would appreciate any feedback

Thanks!

 

Seagate is about the most reliable HD maker, so yes, something is Not Right.

Can MobileMeter read your CPU and HD temps? If your HD is getting much about 50C, I'd say it's cooking. My Seagate 5400.2 is at 45C right now in my dv8000z. Hmm, looks like you have the same drive. You also have an ATI Fire GL V5000 video card... that adds some heat. Let's find out your temps at go from there.

 

I have to agree with you, this is a big part why I think it may be the notebook causing issues as opposed to just bad luck with the drives.

That is a cool little app! I have been running it since seeing your reply a few hours back and the max temp i've seen the hard drive at was a steady 46-47 degrees at work under heavier use and it seems to run about 43 degrees here at home just surfing and working through Outlook. Other temps listed are on average 57, 56, 35.9 and 40 degrees.

I don't do any gaming and under a heavier workload have multiple remoet desktop, putty and browser windows open but don't get much more extensive than that.

I will play a movie trailer tonight and see how the hard drive temps are affected.

Thanks very much for your reply

 

Well, I was unable to get the drive any higher than 45 degrees under a heavier load than usual.

Do you happen to know of any reliable apps that will run full hardware tests?

Thanks again

 

Spinrite is supposed to be the most thorough HD diagnostic and repair utility out there. Expensive though.

There's MemTest86+ for testing memory... Microsoft has an equivalent program here.

Hot CPU Tester Pro is good for stress-testing the CPU and cooling system.

HP has a few diagnostics you can run. Go to Start | Help and Support.

It's possible that Seagate made a bad batch of HDs, or that they were transported incorrectly at some point, or... you're just unlucky. Spinrite might be a good investment. It doesn't sound like you're having thermal problems.

 

Temperature = HD problems?

Example - HP zv1230 used to have HD temp of 65 oC as a norm; yet zv1230 were not reported to be HD eaters.
My zv1230 with Toshiba HD lasted for 2 years with no problems until I sold it.

Now, since both of your HD were Seagate, defective HD seems *likely* to me. Try another brand, HD are cheap these days.

 

Thanks brian, I will go through those usilities as well and see what happens.

I'm curious to see if the current drive suffers any damage over the next couple months.

 

Just trying to troubleshoot with the temperature possibility. The drive currently in here is a fujitsu which HP sent me to replace the stock seagate that came in the notebook. Be interesting to see if it was just bad luck with the two failed drives.


Thanks

 

Yea, I doubt temperature is a likely cause....my old P3 dell latitude regularly has the toshiba HD at 65* C. There may be some settings in your system somewhere (or bios) that's causing the HD to go through some erratic behavior or something....that or maybe it's the way you store your laptop or use it or something....that's the only thing I can think of...

 

I've gone through every power/acpi option available via the bios as well as windows) and everything is set to run identical to the other hp and thinkpad notebooks in our office so I've essentially eliminated power settings. Have also flashed the bios in hopes that an update may help but no luck with that either.

After the first drive died, I did a clean xp install (not the recovery) as to eliminate all the unneeded hp software that they deliver with from the factory and that didn't seem to have any effect either.

As far as usage, it is on about 95% of the time. When i'm not using it it usually just sits open with the screensaver running and i'll close it to hibernate on the way to and from work (about an hour each way). I'm very careful with it as far as bumping, rattling it etc... due to just being plain anal about an expensive piece of equipment. So it is on and running for extended periods of time as a desktop would be but not under any stressful conditions.

So i'm now back to it either being a motherboard/controller issue or just poor luck

The life span of this drive should definitely be the decisive answer.

Thanks again for all the input, it always helps to hear others experiences/ideas/suggestions.

 

Just wanted to give an update on this situation... After putting the third drive in I started getting the blue screen shutdowns. Nothin more than a memory dump. I lived with it for a few days and then started getting the instantaneous reboots (normally due to heat issues) so it was time to take it up with HP support.

Over a 2 day period I had called tech support about 6 times. The first time they wanted to send me a box to ship it back without even mentioning the onsite warranty when I told the gentleman that this had to be done onsite, there is no other option. He said ok and then put me on hold to talk to his tech department to schedule a tech visit. He told me I would be called within 24 hours to schedule this visit. Nothing. I then called back the next day (~27 hours later) and told them I had received no call and needed this taken care of asap as this is my work machine. He says ok and put me on hold for 15 minutes or so and says I will be called within an hour by the tech who will come out... No call again, I go through this process about 5 more times with the timeframes getting shorter and yet never got a call from the tech, the hp support guys always said that the tech had been paged but wasn't responding. I spent probably 4 hours total sittin on hold.

Anyway, I was done dealing with that garbage. Fortunately for me I bought this through our company vendor (Insight) and the first nw8240 I received was defective as the touchpad/eraserhead would freeze up after 10 minutes or so of use, anytime everytime.

So after the first bad notebook I was referred to a lady at HP to do a replacement (bought back in late november '05) who asked no questions and took care of me with a replacement. Long story a little less long, after all the troubles with HP support on getting this second notebook fixed with the hard drive eatin, blue screen givin, random rebootin problems, I decided to email her basically out of desperation and see if she could just simply point me in the right direction as to who I need to talk to for warranty repair.

I emailed her on wednesday evening before leaving work just to see if she had any advice and had a response first thing yesterday (thursday) morning when I came in to work. No questions asked, she offered to replace the notebook or told me I needed to talk to my vendor if I wanted a refund, simple as that. I was completely blown away. I've dealt with 50+ IBM notebook warranty issues at work and they are absolutely great, but this was new to me.

At any rate, I agreed to the new notebook and by the end of day yesterday (thursday) had multiple emails from her with RMA info as well as the link to the UPS return tracking #.

At this point I was honestly thinking it was too good to be true, I expected to see a motherboard show up this morning. Nope, she did indeed send a brand new notebook to me. Still can't believe this. Anyway, I popped the this beast on our network and transferred all my data via the admin share (didn't have a crossover cable handy) and life is good again. Dropped the other notebook off at a UPS store and off it goes back to HP in TN.

VERY weird scenario from original purchase in November of last year until now but I am very lucky to have this lady to email. As an aside I would not and will not take advantage of something like this to get a new machine. I just want a beast that works day in and day out like my 4runner

We have about 80 dl360's (both 1u and 2u) between our office and CoLo as well as about 300 desktops mixed with d220 and dx2000 machines which was what initially lead me to HP for a notebook (we are strictly IBM for our users but I don't like them) so all in all it is a happy ending.... Assuming this notebook lasts longer than the other two At least it has a new windows sticker proclaiming vista compatible

Whew, long week!

 

Congratulations on the new replacement.
Though I disagree on a comment about how Seagates are the most reliable.
Maybe for desktops, but for laptops.. It has the second highest rate of replacements just below Hitachi. Toshiba I have heard, and experienced have the lowest. HP in TN hmm.

 

Thanks bro. I did indeed goof on saying it was sent to tennessee as I had sent a projector to one of our users in TN yesterday and had the addresses mixed up. The notebook actually went to Omaha, Nebraska 68137.

 

ahh heh interesting