Vaio TZ HDD damage.

Two days ago, I had left my Vaio TZ on all night to download by wi-fi while I was sleeping, my first time doing this. I had left it running with the lid closed below my bed on carpet.

After this, it seems as though the hard drive has been permanently damaged. I noticed that Windows XP now takes minutes to boot up instead of seconds. I ran HD Tune on it and was shocked to discover that the transfer rate is now only 1.5MB/sec vs. ~30MB/sec!

Also in the S.M.A.R.T information, the "Reallocated Sector Count" is shown in yellow. It shows 100 as both the current value and the worse value, a threshold of 50 and a data value of 4. The Error Scan shows a clean bill of health.

I suppose either it downloading many gigabytes of data in a short period of time killed the drive or more likely, heat did, especially it being on carpet for hours. My Vaio TZ does yet quite warm on the bottom after some use.

Is there anything else I could do barring a HDD replacement? Too bad it uses a much less common 1.8" HDD vs. 2.5" HDD and not being easily accessible via a bay at the bottom like most notebooks. I'd have to take it completely apart just to access the HDD and I cannot do that.

 

IMO the heat caused this to happen (carpet/under bed/Lid closed).
At this point your best bet is to open it up and check if not only the HDD has been affected but something else.

 

It isn't that hard tot take it apart, removing the right hinge is the most difficult. Once it's open, the hard drive is easy to replace.

 

Try delete the hard drive and controller in Device Manager. The drive may have simply reverted to PIO mode.